Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 18:43:31 +0000 (GMT)
> From: "Mark Grant, M.A. (Oxon)" <mark@unicorn.com>
> Subject: Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers
> 
> About ten years ago a group I was involved with were thinking about
> putting something into space as a publicity stunt. One company we talked
> to claimed they could put 1 kg into orbit on one of their sounding rockets
> for about $ 30,000 (that's a 1 kg satellite, not $ 30,000 per kg). How
> small can you build a "data haven" satellite ? 
> 
> Looking a few years into the future, you could probably stick a
> stripped-down Linux laptop with solar cells and a stripped-down satellite
> telephone as a Net link on top of a slightly larger rocket and charge for
> on-orbit storage using ecash... Using remailers it should be pretty-much
> untraceable. 
> 

Actualy, both the Pacific Coast Rocketry group and the Experimental
Spacecraft Association are working on putting the first amateur payload in
LEO. ESA wants to put a telescope with real-time downlink up as their
payload. PCR wants to put some kind of transponder up.

Under current technology a group of about 30 dedicated amateurs (with
suitable skills) could put a 25kg payload in orbit for under 1/4 million.
It would consist of surplus and amateur built equipment.

Tripolli puts out a magazine called High Performance Rocketry which you may
be able to find at your local newstand (in Austin you get it at the Central
Market Bookstop). It usually carries at least a couple of adds for material
that PCR and a couple of smaller groups are putting out to help fund their
project. I would say it will be less than 3 years before this dream occurs
unless the DOT (the people who regulate all space shots now) decides not to
give them a permit.


Hi ho, Hi ho, it's of to LEO we go....