Today was a hard day. But someone who interviewed me yesterday sent me a news article about a satellite that is mostly made of wood and somehow that gave me a ridiculous amount of hope (probably WAY too much hope...)
@sundogplanets Maybe it's a little fanciful of me, and I'm not even sure wood could actually hold an atmosphere, but now I'm imagining starships of the future creaking like tallships of the past. Kind of comforting sounds for the crew to boot.
@sundogplanets I wonder how the costs compare these days to doing material studies by just building a cubesat/nanosat out of them, versus putting them all on a pallet on the outside of the ISS (or dragging them around with the Shuttle back in the day). Almost certainly a quicker turnaround; I bet it's pretty cost-competitive if you already have some cubesat experience.
@sundogplanets The site linked to below might be overly pro-Musk, but it does suggest that they are at least trying several approaches. Not that they need so vastly many satellites; even without the astronomy issue, the monopoly issue (one guy owning low earth orbit) is disturbing.
@not2b Oh yeah, I hate this website, but SpaceX has done some great work to make their satellites fainter with different materials. Meanwhile, they have also made their satellites much, much bigger, so they're not actually that much fainter in the sky...
Add comment