Very nice (strokes fluffy white cat)
Sat here in my dug out volcano, I have to say this is interesting. And while two weeks may seem little, it is really more than enough time to threaten the UN with my ray gun for....... One million dollars!!!!!
Interorbital Systems is offering your own orbiting satellite for only $8,000, including launch, though evil geniuses might balk at the expected 2-week lifespan before a fiery re-entry. The plan is to launch 32 of the diminutive TubeSats into low earth orbit, around 310Km up, using a single Neptune 30 launcher (under …
Just purchase 4 tubes (allowed), use the electronics module in one, and the rest of the bird for your evil genius payload (0.5*3 +0,2*4 ) = 2.3kg max payload.
Install a ion engine in one and 2 x 700gr metal lumps in the other two, and you can attack 2 targets, whenever you want.
With the ion engine you can use the solar power to displace the bird & get to upper orbits without a lot of fuel mass, and if velocity is high enough, you could deploy a ramscoop, because of the lot of matter that will be floating so near to earth. Energy will be chaep with the solar panels, albeit with a limited power.
Of course you can just leave the metal lumps out and pack more fuel and/or welectronics, and drive ti to the moon/mars/the sun/wherever you want.
AC just in case someone does it.
Don't Interorbital Systems realise that there's a couple of dozen amateur radio satellites up there already - and are staying up there for a while yet (the shuttle dropped off another 4 on July 30th)?
BTW the 'Amateur Radio on the International Space Station' (ARISS) frequences are 145.80 MHz down & 145.20 MHz uplink (in Europe).
A small potato weighs about 200g.
Small suitcase nuke? EMP? With 200g of fissile material? What is that, about a thimble full?
Looks to me like the canisters are sealed, so ion propulsion or anything else that needs access to the outside is probably a no go. If you can make a small potato sized thing open the can and then head for the moon you are better than an evil genius.
If you use two cans, then you're up to nearly a kilo of payload, but (obviously) that'll cost you $16K and your gadget will still have to cut itself out.
At least two of the 4 satellites "dropped off" by the Shuttle carry beacons only, rather than transponders. A lot of these satellites just "use" Amateur Radio frequencies and beacon their data and telemetry down, rather than serve as a transponder that you can communicate thru
There aren't actually all that many Amateur Radio *transponder* (or FM repeater) satellites up there and operational these days: AO-7, AO-51, FO-29, and VO-52 come to mind. Most are in Low Earth Orbit, thus have fairly short passes, and relatively small footprints (AO-7 being the exception)
To be honest, unless some micro propulsion could be added to one of these tubesats to raise the orbit, and keep it in space more than "a few weeks", I don't see that much use for them from an Amateur Radio perspective.