I think you're downplaying the benefits of more small-sats bring to multiple industries and giving too much weight to certain negative side-effects.
For starters, let's address some of small-sat applications. In you comment you said "I don't see the point... beyond the minimum necessary to get the job done". What job specifically are you referring to? Navigation aids? Communications? Because "the job" that can be handled by small-sats has near unlimited scope. I'm sure you've already heard about LEO communication constellations (such as Starlink) that are bringing world-wide communication infrastructure. Communications infrastructure is a pre-requisite for industrialization, and can greatly assist with providing education to remote areas. Both of these have the potential to lift many of the global poor out of extreme poverty. Communications infrastructure is something that is very easy to take for granted living in a developed first world nation, but the net benefit it provides to society cannot be understated.
People like to focus on the big extravagant projects popularized by eccentric billionaires, but the CubeSat space is filled with other valuable applications as well. Here are some other industry applications that don’t get as much time in the spotlight:
- Poaching / illegal fishing detection and monitoring
- Data collection for weather / climate models
- Extreme weather forecasting / detection
- Forest fire monitoring / detection
- Space-based astronomy
- Agriculture monitoring
The above list won't directly impact your day-to-day like the smart-phone revolution did, but that list indirectly touches many aspects of our lives. So again, which “job” are you referring to “getting the job done”? The list above alone (even excluding the comms constellations) could easily require 1000s of CubeSats. The interesting thing about the CubeSat revolution is that because it’s so cheap to send something into space, every possible niche is being explored as industry scrambles to carve out their slice. This comment “but I just don't see more passive satellites doing what everything else up there already does” is not one at all shared within the industry. The CubeSat revolution is doing things that have never been done before. And is doing the things that had been done previously cheaper, faster, and better.
Now let’s talk about the downsides. The space junk and Kessler Syndrome problem is typically brought up in the context of the CubeSat revolution, but it is largely misplaced. CubeSat applications typically require low-earth orbit. In low-earth orbit, atmospheric drag is sufficiently high that junked satellites de-orbit naturally in reasonable time-frames. In addition, placing these satellites into such a low orbit does not create large amounts of junk during launch/insertion. In addition, with space now accessible to more than just government agencies, the appropriate regulatory frameworks for managing space traffic / space junk are being drawn up. The commercial benefits of open, accessible space create huge incentives for governments to manage these issues.
I also see you are disappointed that the CubeSat revolution does nothing to advance manned space-flight. I assure you; this is far from true. In the early days of space exploration, space was very expensive. People focus on launch costs, but it’s much more than that. Supply chains didn’t exist. Nothing was mass manufactured. Everything was custom made. This is changing. The space economy of scale is ramping up, and government-led “for the good of mankind” projects are directly benefiting.
I’m all for learning how to do space flight better and getting all the regulations in place and getting experience with space launches. The only thing that worries me is whether we will end up in some situation like we are now with plastics that appear everywhere in our food supply chain and are a problem also because the unknown unknowns.
Will we still be able to operate society when we rely so much on all the services provided by These smaller satellites and there is a solar flare. Indeed, what if some event does trigger the Kessler Syndrome. Just like see radiation from Fukushima show at the us west coast in fish.
Will it be too late to do something with all the knowledge we have gained?
With the CubeSats revolution there aren't a lot of unknown unknowns. The risks are clear, and the benefits far outstrip them. Again, as mentioned above, Kessler Syndrome is of little threat in the low earth orbit which CubeSats operate in.
I don't really understand the argument that coming to rely on CubeSats puts us at risk because they could be damaged by a solar flare. And therefore we shouldn't reap the benefits of this new technology? That line of thinking is like rejecting the advancement of electricity because we will be worse-off in the event of a power outage. Sure, black-out incidents occur, and sometimes (like the recent Texas outage) people are ill-prepared. But how is choosing not to pursue electricity because of black-out risk the better alternative? Surely benefiting from the technology in the far more common scenario of normal operation is better than not having it at all.
I swear people watch one highly dramatized movie and think we're something in imminent danger of running out of space up there. We certainly ain't, and it's not like companies don't consider these issues.
For starters, let's address some of small-sat applications. In you comment you said "I don't see the point... beyond the minimum necessary to get the job done". What job specifically are you referring to? Navigation aids? Communications? Because "the job" that can be handled by small-sats has near unlimited scope. I'm sure you've already heard about LEO communication constellations (such as Starlink) that are bringing world-wide communication infrastructure. Communications infrastructure is a pre-requisite for industrialization, and can greatly assist with providing education to remote areas. Both of these have the potential to lift many of the global poor out of extreme poverty. Communications infrastructure is something that is very easy to take for granted living in a developed first world nation, but the net benefit it provides to society cannot be understated.
People like to focus on the big extravagant projects popularized by eccentric billionaires, but the CubeSat space is filled with other valuable applications as well. Here are some other industry applications that don’t get as much time in the spotlight:
- Resource management / surveying (logging, fishing, mining etc)
- Poaching / illegal fishing detection and monitoring
- Data collection for weather / climate models
- Extreme weather forecasting / detection
- Forest fire monitoring / detection
- Space-based astronomy
- Agriculture monitoring
The above list won't directly impact your day-to-day like the smart-phone revolution did, but that list indirectly touches many aspects of our lives. So again, which “job” are you referring to “getting the job done”? The list above alone (even excluding the comms constellations) could easily require 1000s of CubeSats. The interesting thing about the CubeSat revolution is that because it’s so cheap to send something into space, every possible niche is being explored as industry scrambles to carve out their slice. This comment “but I just don't see more passive satellites doing what everything else up there already does” is not one at all shared within the industry. The CubeSat revolution is doing things that have never been done before. And is doing the things that had been done previously cheaper, faster, and better.
Now let’s talk about the downsides. The space junk and Kessler Syndrome problem is typically brought up in the context of the CubeSat revolution, but it is largely misplaced. CubeSat applications typically require low-earth orbit. In low-earth orbit, atmospheric drag is sufficiently high that junked satellites de-orbit naturally in reasonable time-frames. In addition, placing these satellites into such a low orbit does not create large amounts of junk during launch/insertion. In addition, with space now accessible to more than just government agencies, the appropriate regulatory frameworks for managing space traffic / space junk are being drawn up. The commercial benefits of open, accessible space create huge incentives for governments to manage these issues.
I also see you are disappointed that the CubeSat revolution does nothing to advance manned space-flight. I assure you; this is far from true. In the early days of space exploration, space was very expensive. People focus on launch costs, but it’s much more than that. Supply chains didn’t exist. Nothing was mass manufactured. Everything was custom made. This is changing. The space economy of scale is ramping up, and government-led “for the good of mankind” projects are directly benefiting.