DARPA Funds Development on Modular Satellite Network

coondoggie points out a Networkworld story about plans for modular satellite technology which is intended to replace modern, "monolithic" devices. The project hopes to solve issues of scalability and reliability by separating the typical satellite systems and allowing the different modules to change function when necessary. Quoting: "According to DARPA such a virtual satellite effectively constitutes a "bus in the sky" - wherein customers need only provide and deploy a payload module suited to their immediate mission need, with the supporting features supplied by a global network of infrastructure modules already resident on-orbit and at critical ground locations. In addition, there can be sharing of resources between various "spacecraft" that are within sufficient range for communication. DARPA said ... within the F6 network all subsystems and payloads can be treated like a uniquely addressable computing peripheral or network device. Such an approach can provide a long sought after "plug-n-play" capability, according to the agency."

better analogy

[ILuvRamen]

A bus in the sky? Seriously. Okay everyone erase that from your memory and pretend it said IBM Bladecenter in the sky. That would be way more accurate. If you take the bus analogy any further, you'd be paying to install really nice rims and a new motor and a sweet subwoofer and stereo system in a bus and then you're just an idiot and quite possibly a redneck if you do that.
Btw I have a slightly different opinion. Satellites suck. Well at least data ones do. Weather and imagining and all that makes sense. The lag time is awful, the bandwidth is expensive and narrow, and Anderson Cooper keeps talking over the Iraqi reporters because of the delay and we just can't have that. What we need is to lay down 100x the amount of fiber under the oceans and between countries so we can cut out the satellites. Other than that, hey send a mini shuttle up there to dock onto it and install a national weather serive, Sirius, and GPS module at once when the companies rent it. That's not a bad idea. Next is rental space billboards!

Re:Robustness

[Protonk]

That strikes me as BS. DARPA has been working on ASAT and defenses against ASAT since before it was DARPA. We had to rename all of the ASAt vehicles when Clinton came to office so they didn't sound like purely cold war projects. To think that we have only now come up with this "big sky" approach to defending against ASAT is silly. ASAT is a fact of life when dealing with modern enemies. Hell, we used to worry about russians detonating nuclear weapons in their own satellites just to take ours down. How is a microconstellation going to fix that?

and BTW, I read the article, I just don't feel the need to repeat their stated claim when arguing the negatives, thanks.

Here's my point. In order to hold stationkeeping--in other words, if you give a shit about where your orbit is and how long you can maintain it, each piece of that micro-constellation needs fuel and thrusters. The biggest pieces are still going to be:

Payload
Fuel
solar Panels

Each component is going to need to replicate those, introducing new chances for failure. On top of that, components and satellites are intricately power and heat balanced. Heat dissipation is very tighly controlled and often certain components are paired well with others in order to radiate heat away at a given rate so that the craft doesn't cook itself and that cyclic stresses don't become a problem for long serving craft. This means that each of those components needs to be engineered specifically where only one did before on top of duplicating hardware.

Also, there are still critical components. There will only be one tranceiver (large). That's a critical component. There will be only one payload microsat. There will be (assuming wireless power transmission) only one power generating microsat. All of those are critical to operation. It isn't more secure and robust just because they say it is. Sheesh.

Now instead of one computer to check for bugs and secure against radiation we need 8-10. instead of engineering one satellite we engineer 8-10. If the government wants to spend more money, then be my guest, because that's what this will do.