For Immediate Release
November 11, 2008
Interorbital Systems
Mojave, California, USA
Contact: Randa Milliron, CEO
Telephone: 661.965.0771 Email: ios@interorbital.com
Interorbital Systems’ Sea Star: Providing the Ride with BOOST-UP
(Mojave, California) How will the next generation of small satellites reach their full cost-cutting potential if no affordable, frequent launch opportunities are open to them? To actualize the cheap-access-to-space dream, the space industry must be willing to apply a radical design philosophy to the building and launching of new rockets on which these ‘future sats’ will ride to orbit.
Once destined to cost millions and sometimes billions of dollars, huge monolithic satellites were often priced higher than the rockets needed to propel them to their orbital locations. The current trend in satellite science is to break up what used to be one huge, massively expensive and vulnerable satellite, and to distribute what were formerly that one satellite’s centralized tasks among a flock, swarm, or constellation of inexpensive, easily replaceable small sats or CubeSats. A CubeSat is just that: a satellite designed as a cube measuring 10×10×10 centimeters, weighing one kilogram or less: think tissue box. CubeSats represent an evolutionary next-step in the industry: ‘plug-and-play’ (PnP) satellites. The small sats, made largely of commercial-off-the-shelf components, deploy as rapid-response, low-cost, simplified modular systems that can stand alone or function as part of a distributed orbiting array.
Clustered in universities and small start-ups around the world, CubeSat and nanosat pioneers are generally students operating on shoestring budgets. These intrepid young men and women must work in the same way independent filmmakers produce a no-budget movie: they must beg, borrow, and yes, sometimes even steal---well, one might call it ‘adaptively reuse’---in order to turn the dream of building an experimental space-based project into reality.
But a Cubesat’s promise does not end with its construction. The more daunting challenge that keeps hundreds of space science projects earthbound is the scarcity of launch opportunities. The expense of buying passage for a CubeSat payload is often more than a small business or an academic institution can afford, and usually more than a government or military entity would like to spend. Waiting for an opportunity to launch as a secondary or tertiary payload is often a frustrating, if not endless process. Global competitions among hundreds of student satellite projects for these rare flights leave all but the one or two lucky winners without a ride to orbit. To keep this whole new small-sat approach cost-effective, an inexpensive, dedicated launch vehicle and low-cost, rapid-response launch services are urgently needed to carry small experimental, academic, government, and private-sector nano-, pico-, and micro-sat payloads to orbit. Mojave rocket manufacturer Interorbital Systems’ ocean-launched Sea Star microsatellite launcher will fill those needs---for 12-to-15 CubeSats at a time, and for under $500,000.
Roderick Milliron, Interorbital Systems’ President and Chief Technology Officer explains, “IOS views Sea Star as a driver for the entire CubeSat/NanoSat community. The rocket, with its revolutionary design, and its at-the-ready, rapid-response launch capability, will serve as an enabling technology for lofting these innovative small sats. Sea Star will speed the evolution of this new space science movement through low-cost, high frequency launches. Sea Star is truly a plug-and-play launch vehicle created specifically for these plug-and-play satellites. It’s a COTS vehicle in the old sense of the term: Commercial-Off-the-Shelf; in Sea Star’s case, the shelf it’s taken off just happens to belong to Interorbital Systems.”
To assist the many scientific investigators who currently have no hope of ever seeing their experiments fly, Interorbital has created the BOOST-UP program: Broad Operational Opportunity for Space Transport of University Payloads. Randa Milliron, IOS Co-Founder and CEO explains, “An individual or company can purchase a multi-satellite Sea Star launch for $500,000, then give away as many as 15 or more individual launch opportunities (approximate value $35,000 each) to academic space science projects. The benefactor who buys the launch receives the right to title the spaceflight donations with his or her name, foundation, company, product, etc., and then donate the individual launches under his or her own award program to one or more universities or other educational institutions. BOOST-UP is an international program. IOS will enlist the expertise of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s CubeSat Program; Dutch satellite organization ISIS; Stanford University CubeSat guru Bob Twiggs; and a number of forward-thinking CubeSat manufacturers, including Pumpkin, to facilitate the nomination and inclusion of student payloads for flight in IOS’ program.” Milliron announced the BOOST-UP program at the November 7th Brown University / NASA Ames Nanosatellite Launch Vehicle Conference.
Interorbital’s academic clearing-house colleagues will help to select launch candidates from the massive backlog of intact CubeSat experiments that have been sitting on lab and closet shelves, gathering dust for want of a launch. Many of these sats have come in second or third in launch placement competitions, and are themselves exceptionally valuable experiments---but remain stranded because of the scarcity of launch opportunities. Sea Star, which is being readied for flight tests (www.interorbital.com), is scheduled to begin operations to deliver these and other payloads to orbit in late 2009.
CEO Milliron continues, “We know that the BOOST-UP program will radically accelerate the data-gathering abilities of these space scientists and advance the cause of on-orbit, small-sat space experimentation. All it takes is one benefactor to make 15 projects happen. The prestige and satisfaction gained from scientific educational patronage at this level is unsurpassed. Just as Interorbital Systems is an ‘enabler’ by introducing the Sea Star and offering it at a special academic price, the company, foundation, or person who buys a launch becomes an ‘enabler’ who will change the world of space-based scientific endeavor by speeding up, or, if you will, “boosting up” the process.”
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New video of Sea Star sustainer engine test and flight demonstrator under construction now on BBC World’s Fast Track travel program:
Sea Star photos, images, and video available
Contact: Randa
Milliron, CEO/ Co-Founder, Interorbital Systems
PO Box 662, Mojave, CA 93502-0662
Cellular: 661.965.0771 (preferred) Lab: 661.824.1662
ios@interorbital.com or cyberplex@aol.com
www.interorbital.com and
www.translunar.org