Comparing apples (going up then down) to oranges (getting into orbit). Pretty awesome to see these guys putting their cash towards this! Hope a rivalry heats up and I can goto Mars for $3.50.
Is there serious intent to reach orbit here, or is it just a Powerpoint P.R. exercise - maybe angling to get some "$$$ to study the idea of..." funding?
“Rapidly approaching Mars are the two smallest and cheapest spacecraft to ever cross between the planets, in the vanguard of what U.S. and European satellite designers hope one day will be swarms of tiny probes prowling the solar system.
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NASA’s two MarCO CubeSats, as the pair nearing Mars are called, are the first CubeSats to attempt an interplanetary journey. Launched this past May, each one is no bigger than a briefcase, is built from off-the-shelf commercial parts, and cost $18.2 million“
This is fantastic news! Hopefully this means that the price of taking things to orbit will fall rapidly (relative to what governments could achieve, at least), allowing all kinds of new developments that couldn't otherwise have happened.
You know, it's funny, I work with one of the competing teams (the best one.) Every time I hear about planet-hunting in the news, I think to my self, "screw startups." :)
this plus the recent Planetary Resources launch, plus the upcoming SpaceX rendezvous with the ISS are all pretty exciting milestones. some folks out there are pushing the human race forward. not just making trivial fadish photo sharing websites, etc.
"They're about to pass the great filter... fire the relativistic impactors!"
Seriously though, this is game changing at even 100X that number or $200M per launch. Even if they don't get close to the aspirational price it's going to make a ton of stuff possible in space that was unaffordable before.
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