Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR [wikipedia.org] series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
Exclusive to a very very small group of people relative to the others. Not a good choice.
This is the quote right here. Yes the concept is great but lets face it what won here was a small niche concept (networked satellite monitoring) in a small niche part (tracking satellites) of an already small subset (RF / Ham) of the hacking community.
Lamest One (Score:0)
Llama llama llama. This one was the worst of the 5. How many of us have satellites?
Re:Lamest One (Score:2)
Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR [wikipedia.org] series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Exclusive to a very very small group of people relative to the others. Not a good choice.
This is the quote right here. Yes the concept is great but lets face it what won here was a small niche concept (networked satellite monitoring) in a small niche part (tracking satellites) of an already small subset (RF / Ham) of the hacking community.
I won't see people running out to build these.
Re: (Score:2)
all uses which have less practical use for me than 99% of hackaday posts. which is quite an accomplishment!
and you would think that amateur sats that already have goal of making received data available are already making said data available?
if I were to build one or two of the projects, this one would be the last on the list.
but it's SPACE! and the prize is space! .. I seriously don't get the rationale behind awarding them the first prize.
sure, it's cheap to build, but also the one with least uses.