[cbozeman]

Given these insanely cheap prices, I have to wonder about the viability of sending your own microsatellites into space to create your own personal communications cluster.

I don't know enough to know what all would be required, how / if you could communicate with other networks, etc., but even just having your own personal LEO satellite-based communications network seems relatively plausible based on these launch costs and piggybacking on other, larger launches.

[mdorazio]

You're still looking at over a hundred thousand dollars to put a single 1U cubesat in orbit (including development, testing, and certification for the sat itself). And that would be moving at 6-7km/s relative to the ground, so you can see how expensive it would be to put any kind of useful personal constellation into orbit still

[cbozeman]

> And that would be moving at 6-7km/s relative to the ground, so you can see how expensive it would be to put any kind of useful personal constellation into orbit still

No, I can't see that... because I'm not a satellite communications expert. My training is evolutionary biology and international business.

I don't know how many satellites it would take to provide private communications across the United States, or the globe, or any section of area. It sounds like you might though.

Let's say one wanted to create their own personal satellite communications for telephone and data transmission. How many would you need?

[max_]

How much would it roughly cost to have a constellation of private satellites?

[VLM]

You probably want to talk to the ham radio AMSAT organization who've been doing stuff like that since the 60s.

I've been a ham a long time and its interesting to see the progress. Back when I was a gen-x kid amsat was about 20 years old and had just barely broken two digits of launched satellites and there were never more than a couple in orbit at a time. Now a days there's two digits of ham radio satellites launched per year...

The satnogs project is pretty interesting to see what goes into the ground station for a small satellite. Maybe start there.

AFAIK other than some obscure situations involving the ISS and some APRS satellites, there has never been any AMSAT multi-satellite networking, but at the current incredible rate of expansion I'd expect to see hobbyists having something like that by 2030 or so.

[huhtenberg]

Cheap means "of a low price", so a price can't be cheap, just low.

[wizzwizz4]

You can pay A for B, which you then pay for C. B is the price of C, and A is B's price. If A has a low value, then B is cheap, and thus a cheap price.

Pretty much all money can be bought for very slightly more money. Thus, a price can be cheap.

[huhtenberg]

"Cheap X" means "an X that costs less".

"Cheap price" literally means "a price that costs less".

You can certainly say that, but it makes no sense.

[wizzwizz4]

I've just demonstrated that it makes sense. But, really, that's irrelevant. You're telling me that a particular arrangement of 26 symbols “makes sense”, but another “doesn't”, even though both convey the intended meaning perfectly well – as evidenced by your critique describing the intended meaning?