just wondering about the price
- Thread starter JF060392
- Start date
The Russians could probably do it for cheapest - I think current rocket costs are about $100,000,000.00 per launch, with additional payload costs of about $20k per lb - although that's for commercial satellite type launch rockets.
Don't know if there are lighter, smaller rockets capable of reaching geosynchronous orbit.
Don't forget to budget for insurance - typical geosynchronous launches have a failure rate of about 10%. I'm not sure that you get a refund if the rocket blows up.
Don't know if there are lighter, smaller rockets capable of reaching geosynchronous orbit.
Don't forget to budget for insurance - typical geosynchronous launches have a failure rate of about 10%. I'm not sure that you get a refund if the rocket blows up.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Cheapest? $0 to launch one into an altitude 0 above MSL geosync. orbit; costs increase rapidly with higher altitudes. 
The cheapest ticket to geosync. might be 'sort of free' if you could get sponsorship for the project and underwriting of the costs as an incidental (tiny) payload that just happens to fit in the spare space / weight budget of a bigger launch that will happen anyway.
IIRC there are various 'microsat', 'pongsat' (ping pong ball sized microsats IIRC), et. al. projects that places like ESA / NASA allow to be launched by various educational and research based groups whose projects are selected for free launch.
IIRC elementary schools have / will launch various pongsats like this, some of them with pretty irrelevant scientific function / payload, but the overall process is considered to be good educationally and good PR for the space program, public / educational outreach, et. al.
Also the amateur radio community has an AMSAT organization which is an international effort to create various amateur radio related payloads to be launched cheap or free. Search for AMSAT, OSCAR satellites, et. al. for some information on what has been done and what will be done. Some of the older / bigger already launched OSCARs/AMSATs are actually quite sizable / powerful / complex satellites in their own right, possibly comparable in size or bigger than to several smaller types of modern communication / science satellites. I'm not sure if even those larger units were still considered just small incidental ballast to much larger commercial / government payloads going up on big boosters at the time, but I suspect so.
These days you'd probably have to downscale the size a bit to stand a higher liklihood of getting launch space within the next several decades. Though if cheaper / more plentiful boosters become available, you could always have many new / more opportunities in a decade or so as new platforms come online.
I know many companies are trying to get the $10,000 - $100,000 "space tourism" business going within the next couple of decades to LEO; it wouldn't shock me if they'd have some similarly expensive option to launch small things to geosync. once their businesses are going. I imagine it'd be cheaper insurance-wise and mass/energy-budget-wise for them to "test" their technology launching some baseball sized pods to high orbit than looking for very brave human passengers for the first few dozen rides.
As for paying for the launch, yeah, check Russia, China, India, and hope that you're not paying in US$ since that's getting to be a more expensive proposition all the time. Commercially, I'd think that someone MIGHT at least start talking to you about a ping-pong-ball satellite that they just stick in as spare space-filler for upwards of $10,000 cold cash, and probably well into the $100,000-$xx,000,000 range for something of any substantial size / mass / engineering requirement. Maybe if you could find about twenty other people to each lay out similar cash (a few thousand US$), it'd be more likely they'd find some profit incentive to put 'em all together in an upcoming launch and at least make a little extra easy money with little work involved.
Of course putting more and more "stuff" into geosync isn't really that popular of a thing due to the space being valuable and not wanting too much junk floating around up there, so YMMV on that aspect of things. It'd be very much easier to get something put into LEO, or something slightly under/over GEO that would decay or get out of the way moderately rapidly.
Of course if you just want to hear your radio signal coming from space, check out the amateur radio activities involving the existing amateur radio satellites which anyone who operates in that radio system could freely use to send and receive voice, digital, et. al. traffic through the satellites.
Also it is pretty common/cheap/easy to do Amateur Radio baeed EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communications; you take a moderately powerful VHF/UHF transmitter, one you could probably easily buy for $500-$1500 or build for less, take a decent cheap antenna array like a YAGI or Helical or small dish -- not hugely bigger than the ones you'd use for good TV reception on VHF or an old C-band dish, point it roughly at the moon, send away, and use a sensitive receiver to see if you can hear your signal bounce back after about 2.5 seconds delay or so. It is really pretty commonplace these days now that the radio equipment is so much smaller / cheaper / more powerful and much much more sensitive in reception.
The cheapest ticket to geosync. might be 'sort of free' if you could get sponsorship for the project and underwriting of the costs as an incidental (tiny) payload that just happens to fit in the spare space / weight budget of a bigger launch that will happen anyway.
IIRC there are various 'microsat', 'pongsat' (ping pong ball sized microsats IIRC), et. al. projects that places like ESA / NASA allow to be launched by various educational and research based groups whose projects are selected for free launch.
IIRC elementary schools have / will launch various pongsats like this, some of them with pretty irrelevant scientific function / payload, but the overall process is considered to be good educationally and good PR for the space program, public / educational outreach, et. al.
Also the amateur radio community has an AMSAT organization which is an international effort to create various amateur radio related payloads to be launched cheap or free. Search for AMSAT, OSCAR satellites, et. al. for some information on what has been done and what will be done. Some of the older / bigger already launched OSCARs/AMSATs are actually quite sizable / powerful / complex satellites in their own right, possibly comparable in size or bigger than to several smaller types of modern communication / science satellites. I'm not sure if even those larger units were still considered just small incidental ballast to much larger commercial / government payloads going up on big boosters at the time, but I suspect so.
These days you'd probably have to downscale the size a bit to stand a higher liklihood of getting launch space within the next several decades. Though if cheaper / more plentiful boosters become available, you could always have many new / more opportunities in a decade or so as new platforms come online.
I know many companies are trying to get the $10,000 - $100,000 "space tourism" business going within the next couple of decades to LEO; it wouldn't shock me if they'd have some similarly expensive option to launch small things to geosync. once their businesses are going. I imagine it'd be cheaper insurance-wise and mass/energy-budget-wise for them to "test" their technology launching some baseball sized pods to high orbit than looking for very brave human passengers for the first few dozen rides.
As for paying for the launch, yeah, check Russia, China, India, and hope that you're not paying in US$ since that's getting to be a more expensive proposition all the time. Commercially, I'd think that someone MIGHT at least start talking to you about a ping-pong-ball satellite that they just stick in as spare space-filler for upwards of $10,000 cold cash, and probably well into the $100,000-$xx,000,000 range for something of any substantial size / mass / engineering requirement. Maybe if you could find about twenty other people to each lay out similar cash (a few thousand US$), it'd be more likely they'd find some profit incentive to put 'em all together in an upcoming launch and at least make a little extra easy money with little work involved.
Of course putting more and more "stuff" into geosync isn't really that popular of a thing due to the space being valuable and not wanting too much junk floating around up there, so YMMV on that aspect of things. It'd be very much easier to get something put into LEO, or something slightly under/over GEO that would decay or get out of the way moderately rapidly.
Of course if you just want to hear your radio signal coming from space, check out the amateur radio activities involving the existing amateur radio satellites which anyone who operates in that radio system could freely use to send and receive voice, digital, et. al. traffic through the satellites.
Also it is pretty common/cheap/easy to do Amateur Radio baeed EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communications; you take a moderately powerful VHF/UHF transmitter, one you could probably easily buy for $500-$1500 or build for less, take a decent cheap antenna array like a YAGI or Helical or small dish -- not hugely bigger than the ones you'd use for good TV reception on VHF or an old C-band dish, point it roughly at the moon, send away, and use a sensitive receiver to see if you can hear your signal bounce back after about 2.5 seconds delay or so. It is really pretty commonplace these days now that the radio equipment is so much smaller / cheaper / more powerful and much much more sensitive in reception.
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