In article ,
says...

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 4:12:21 PM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 12:49:24 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:

And can put up a whopping 4kg payload. That's around 0.007% of the
payload of a Falcon Heavy. In other words, you could stick tens of
thousands of such payloads on a single Falcon Heavy.


But with miniaturization of electronics today, isn't that 4 kg payload
very effective for many applications?


For very selective definitions of "very effective" and "many
applications". But you're missing the point. A Falcon Heavy launch
costs just under $100 million. So if your sounding rocket costs more
than $10 thousand or so per launch (and it most certainly does) it is
cheaper to launch 10,000 of the tiny payloads on Falcon Heavy than it
is to launch them on a tiny launcher.

That would depend on how many payloads need to be launched and to where.
How often would 10,000 small payloads need to be launched at the same
and to the same place?

One small payload to one particular place might be effective to launch
on one small rocket.

While true, the more obvious scenario is the opportunity for smallsats
to be launched as secondary payloads on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy
flights. Falcon Heavy, in particular, ought to be able to offer a lot
of these.

Unfortunately, Falcon Heavy is likely to be constrained by the size of
its fairing. It's the same size as Falcon 9. So while you could
theoretically launch a crap ton of satellites on it, you'll likely max
out the available (safe) payload volume in the fairing long before
maxing out the payload capacity in terms of payload mass.

Jeff
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