Student Voyager Project
Students in universities across the globe and in SEDS have been building satellites - pongsats, cansats and cubesats. So, I've been thinking about going beyond satellites. The Voyager 30 years happened almost at the same time as I was thinking about this and so I thought - why not a student Voyager?
The limitation with satellites is we've been doing it since 1957 without ever considering if there were any alternatives to satellites and how bad they are or can be in the future - if every university launched a satellite in say, the next 15 to 20 years.
The Google Lunar X Prize sort of gives direction to the next area for the interest of students - the Moon. But, what about the solar system?
There are both pros and cons for designing and building a Voyager like system - time and money which have already been proved as not much in the most student satellites after the cubesat.
Any thoughts?
Posted at 06:09PM Oct 02, 2007 by Pradeep in Space | Comments[3]
What type of propulsion have you considered?
Posted by 222.127.223.70 on October 07, 2007 at 10:44 AM IST #
Isn't it a bit too early to disucss that? I don't even know how many people are interested in such an undertaking.
The original Voyagers used gravity assist and it might also be worth looking at other options - ion propulsion, solar sails :) ?
Posted by Pradeep on October 11, 2007 at 03:26 PM IST #
It doesn't seem to early to consider that...
On the other hand, you might want to finish the design of a CubeSat structure before you move on to something you'll need to pay $100M just to launch... But hey, go for it.
Posted by Kirk on October 12, 2007 at 06:12 PM IST #