[jjcm]

I wonder if this is a good thing. On one hand, the common availability of cubesats would be so much fun from a hacker point of view, but on the other I worry that such a low cost per satellite will start to pollute space. If every bay area hobbiest has one floating in the sky, we're inevitably going to have ones that go unmanaged, rogue, etc with no plans for cleanup/repair if things go wrong.

[saulrh]

Many of the cheapest, hackeriest cubesats are deployed into low orbits that decay within weeks or months. Space isn't completely empty, only mostly empty, and even minute air resistance is enough that things like the ISS need to thrust regularly to stay in orbit [1]. I believe it's a common mission profile for cubesats that're built as aerospace engineering senior projects, for example.

[1]: http://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx

[maxander]

If a cloud of 20000 cubesats were released by a single rocket, at least they would all be in approximately the same orbit, which is better than having 20000 cubesats spread out over 20000 orbits. Not to mention, they don't stay up indefinitely- launched into a low orbit, drag eventually pulls them back down.

I'd definitely buy a cubesat launch slot for 3k. Perhaps someone should set up a kickstarter or something.

[greglindahl]

You can't get a launch license unless you fit within the deorbit standard that was internationally agreed upon. "No plans"?

[tibbe]

Perhaps SpaceX could offer (a slightly more expensive) CubeSat module that has built in deorbiting thrusters that will bring it down after X years.

[ethbro]

Air resistance will already take care of that, depending on the orbit. (And for 3k, you aren't getting an ultra-high orbit)

[devrandomguy]

Yet another use case for solar sail laser arrays: deorbiting clouds of debris and tiny satellites.

[greglindahl]

Oh, they'd be able to deorbit big satellites, too, which is a bit of a problem.