Bootstrapping your satellite

It’s no secret that developing hardware for space is expensive and requires a lot of investment even for smaller systems like cubesats and pocketqubes. You might not have the budget of NASA or be successful in obtaining funding through grants or investors. Therefore, you will have to self fund you satellite project with another job. Bootstrapping and balancing your time to develop nano or picosatellite hardware poses its own challenges that you will have to overcome. Based on my experience here are some advice I recommend.

Be realistic

Let’s be real, you only have 24 hours a day and you will be using 8-9 hours during the week in a full-time job to fund your project. Add in 8 hours sleep, time for commuting, eating, etc you aren’t going to have a lot of time spare during the week and even if you do work on your satellite on the weekends, working part time is going to be slowdown progress. You must be realistic in what you can achieve not only financially but also your timelines for your project milestones. Keep things simple and understand your limitations when you are bootstrapping.

Focus on MVP

Minimal Viable Product or MVP is a version of your satellite or system with just enough basic functions to perform it’s mission. You should aim to develop and launch your MVP version of your satellite or hardware as it will attract interest to your product. Plus, simplifying your satellite or hardware will result in less things to go wrong and if something does fail in it’s initial launch it will be much easier to find the root cause of the failure. You can also speed up development and save costs of your system as there will be less functions to develop and test. I suggest creating a roadmap on what you want to develop so that you put all your exciting ideas to the side and focus on getting something working that will allow you to work on your satellite full time in future.

Buy cheap, buy twice!

As mentioned earlier even cheaper systems like pocketqubes and cubesats can be expensive to make if you don’t have adequate funding and bootstrapping, is a major balancing act. You are going to have to learn where and when you are going to save money and what you are going to save up on. There is a saying “Buy cheap, buy twice” which means sometimes the cheapest product or solution is of such poor quality that you are going to have to purchase multiple which will result in you paying more than if you just paid for the more expensive (but superior quality) alternative. This is especially for testing as you can cut corners to save money in qualifying your system but if it doesn’t meet the standards of your launch vehicle then you will have to pay extra to redo it properly. If you realise the components for your mission is going to be financially unviable then scale back the scope and just aim for having you first satellite just doing the basics. A basic satellite that performs basic tasks well is much better than a multi functional satellite that can’t do anything properly because you used inadequate parts. This is where cubesats and pocketqubes come in well as you could develop a satellite to qualify and test cheap parts in space and enable other developers who are bootstrapping.

Use off the shelf

I do recommend you using as much off the shelf components as possible as they will help simplify your development. When developing the Claymore 6P I was investigating in developing my own release mechanism and then realised that it would much easier and cheaper in the long run to buy an off the shelf pinpuller as I don’t need to bother in carrying out more testing to ensure that my custom design would work. Wyrm Engineering provides designs for pocketqube test rigs that can be freely downloaded (link to test rigs) so pocketqube developers don’t need to spend time and money developing their own test rigs and having to pay for or rent FEA software.

Be creative

 You can also bring out your inner MacGuyver and make minor modifications to off the shelf components to meet your needs. For example, it might be expensive to make custom parts from scratch but there might be items on Misumi or Digikey that could meet your needs if make adjustments. Having financial restrictions can bring out your creative side and push you to come up with novel ideas. Also look at components from other industries such as automotive, marine, agricultue or aerospace as they might have parts you need.

Look for help

The internet has given us access to almost unlimited resources of information about almost anything. There might be solutions to your problem on websites, forums, Linkedin, literature reviews and podcasts. Also, with sites like Linkedin there is always someone in every field who could give you advice and support for your project.

Network

Networking could help you make contacts who could aid you in acquiring funding or give you advice in gaps in the market that you could resolve with your product.