Item — HN Reader

"Our telescopes, which we call the Arkyd 100 spacecraft, are cubes half-a-meter on a side and will cost around $1 million each, though the first one, of course, will cost much more."

I seriously find this mind-blowing. $1 million for a telescope launched into space sounds ridiculously cheap to me.

2 comments

At $10k/kg to orbit I'd guess these will have to weigh less than 100 kg. Some articles report they will be 20 kg each: http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/06/20/12326161-aster...

SpaceX can launch it's Falcon 9 for half that cost right now. They can probably get down to $1000 per kilogram with more work and/or the Falcon 9 Heavy.

The Iridium satellites demonstrated that it's possible to build satellites in an assembly line, at enormous cost savings. For a very simple satellite I think $1mil/unit is achievable.