It depends on the specific mission requirements of the observation mission. For instance, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) is launched at a ~35° azimuth. Sun synch orbits are good for collecting information on a daily basis, but if you want longer term climate data at specified intervals, or regualr observation of dynamic climate events you may want a different orbital configuration.
This doesn’t even make sense. Even if overflight of CONUS were permitted, Falcon 9 Stage 1 can’t fly from Pacific to Atlantic, unless they were flying across Panama. And US launch providers are required to get FAA commercial approval even if launching from a foreign site.
I think you’re reading too much into a one-sentence quip, and that his statement doesn’t necessarily exclude a partnership of some kind. The context was just that California can have its own earth science program independent of NASA or the Feds. He didn’t say that it would be launched from California soil, or that it would be literally constructed only by Californians, or that it would be solely funded by California.
Much less than that, as long as it doesn’t do much. Including launch, our first cubesat cost <$250k. Launch was about $85k including ISS deployment. Our second one–which didn’t make orbit–was just a few tens of $k.
The Shtil launcher, which can launch up to 160 kg to 200 km x 79° or 80 kg to 600 km x 79°, albeit with some very high launch dynamic environments that are hard on conventional satellites. It would not be a suitable launcher for a MEO Earth climate surveillance medium satellite.
Not State Department; Federal Aviation Administration licensing for launches by US flag companies even if operating on foriegn launch facilities, the intent being preventing US companies from circumventing safety or liability just by offshoring their launch. That is part of what has kept SpaceX launching from the US rather than a geographically preferable site.
I’m referring to a 6U or larger sats that are capable of carrying and powering larger and more complex scientific instrumentation. Although the cheaper 2U and 3U forms can be developed quickly and inexpensively using the higher risk build-fly-learn approach, the capabilities and lifespan of such systems are pretty limited. They are mostly useful in the context of single function missions or in flock configurations of collecting masses of lower fidelity data and get cheap or free rides as secondary payloads, and aren’t really capable of meeting even the minimum requirements for NOAA type climate and weather surveillance missions.
Ah … makes sense … I don’t think the State Government of California would be able to fly the Panamanian flag … but then again this is what kept SpaceX inside the US, it would also keep California in the US for her launches … she just has to follow the same rules as SpaceX …
Might be cheapest for The Donald to just let California pay for the existing program …
I don’t disagree with any particular point you raise.
But, if Trump tells NASA ‘no climate change research’, and if CA says ‘we’ll do it ourselves and we’ll do it from VAFB’, Trump could say ‘not from my AFB’, and he could make it stick.
I am not claiming I can predict what Trump will do, and think that any one who does is silly.
Yes, CA could build, or cause to be built, a bird, and yes, they could get it into orbit, by a coupla different paths. The only barrier is money, something they don’t have a lot of sitting around waiting for a use. But if, for some reason, they want to do it all in state, Trump can make it a little more expensive.
More to the point, the federal government doesn’t want a state to spend its revenue on wasteful projects and then ask for federal grants to do proper state work.
states therefore tend to focus on the typical state issues on the ground and not go all extraterritorial…
Any one satellite must always be useful to many states and it would not be politic to just go and do something for themselves, they’d have difficulty getting approvals from the feds, and even if they went international, to bypass FAA approval or something, that wouldn’t work, but even if they were simply buying an already launched satellite … there’d be a federal law … quickly… what I mean is the current lack of law is just because states don’t do this. There is no need for a law because it just doesn’t happen. The lack of a law doesn’t mean that the feds wouldn’t create it … they could easily create it if they had a trigger to create it. , satellites being telecommunication and aviation and environmental… fed power… For example, if a state launched its own satellite because the federal service was too expensive… competition ? nope, state you can’t do that !
Do you have a cite for any of this? Plenty of state-funded universities have built satellites, although typically much smaller than what we are talking about here.
In part … it was more a general policy of intense McGovernik/commie/hippy liberalism … one of Moonbeam’s campaign planks when he ran for his third term was the promise to do everything opposite of what he did during his first two terms …
ETA: Does the link in the OP reflect the first salvo of the 2020 Presidential campaign? Obviously this kind of rhetoric is a winning strategy, and Moonbeam is just the man to exploit this …
I don’t know of any satellites completely build by a university in California, but the University of California system currently has its hands in the instrumentation/data processing/analysis on several satellites:
One could imagine that if NASA lost interest in launching Earth observation missions in the future, SSL might do a similar kind of partnership with ESA to what it currently has with NASA, and it’s hard to imagine Congress delving into contract law to prevent the state from signing this type of contract - that might have unforeseen consequences on all sorts of contracts that are unrelated to the issue.
The idea that California might completely build and launch its own satellite is a little silly. On the other hand, the idea that California might partner with foreign space science agencies like ESA or JAXA to do the type of science NASA might lose interest in doing is plausible, depending on the cost of contribution.
No matter what super-duper techno-business endeavors can be postulated, OP question comes up against its truly limiting answer, of course, and there are non-hypothetical answers currently on the books, despite what any voted-for referendum claims.
As mentioned above, the final hammer comes from federal-state law. I clipped the quote from Stranger where, I believe, the strongest current national legal answer is presented.
A single state acting “for its own purposes” has been slapped down throughout US history. I wonder what Constitutional issues could be brought to bear if it reaches the Supreme Court.
I’m sure you’re right–or maybe you just made a bunch of wild assumptions about what Brown’s intentions are. He literally just said “we’ll launch our own damn satellite.” All kinds of non-U.S. government entities put satellites in space all the time.
I don’t remember where Brown said “we’re going to just launch it from California”, I don’t remember where he said “we’re going to make our own space agency and design one ourselves” or any of that. $100m is peanuts, literally peanuts, for a State the size of California. Considering that Republicans love public-private partnerships, and even under Democrats NASA has been pushing more towards that, I very seriously doubt if a State is willing to give $100m to some entity (maybe even some governmental one) to build out and launch a satellite that the Republicans are going to care. Especially if some private contractor gets to make money on the deal. Republicans would also be loathe to take such a big stand against state autonomy.
For frame of reference cities regularly pay for $400m sports venues, cities. California is a state of 39m people with a $2.5 trillion GDP.
I see no reason to assume Governor Brown is proposing all kinds of crazy nonsense like doing all of it alone, assuming he was serious at all, California would cut a check and it’d be done.
There’s literally nothing in American history that would suggest the Federal government has problems with state-lead initiatives, even ones that mirror Federal ones. The opposite, in fact, the Feds often push states to mirror Federal initiatives. For example all the states have some state level equivalent to the EPA, and they do a lot of the actual grunt work of enforcing environmental laws (and to get Federal grants, they even make sure that Federal laws are enforced, because they craft state regulations to comply with Federal laws and then enforce said regulations), many states would like to not even have such agencies, but there are carrot/stick methods the Federal government has used to cajole them into existence.
If a state wanted to try and do some of the stuff NASA currently does in regard to earth or climate science it’s basically unimaginable the Federal government would take much of a position on it at all–particularly one ran by Republicans who love Federalism.
Excuse me? “Federal government doesn’t want a state to spend its revenue on wasteful projects.” I’ve never seen any such evidence. Further, we have a constitution, it entitles the States to largely do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t violate specific prohibitions in the U.S. Constitution, and as long as it doesn’t attempt to do something specifically reserved for the Federal government in the constitution (like conduct foreign policy, declare war, mint coins or etc.)
On top of all that, we have a 240 year history in which States have often engaged in extremely wasteful endeavors, the only time the Feds have legitimate legal action in such cases is if State agencies are misspending Federal grant money, or doing things that put them out of compliance with laws that require compliance to receive Federal monies. Otherwise waste in State government isn’t the bailiwick of anyone in the Federal government, period.