Seems like a reasonable requirement. My misunderstanding was a result of your earlier statement:
With electronics becoming more and more compact and less massive, there is very little penalty involved with including persistent telemetry with the "mothership."
The amateur radio community (
AMSAT) has been involved for many years with the launch of small "repeater" satellites as "piggy back" passengers on commercial satellite launches. I have never taken much interest in this, mainly because of the difficult requirements for tracking a LEO satellite horizon-to-horizon with a narrow-beam antenna (necessary for a decent signal+noise to noise ratio). Lately that has become almost a "piece of cake" with stepper motors, driven by microprocessors getting
satellite ephemeris data off the Internet controlling an altitude-azimuth (alt-az)
yagi-uda antenna array. I may actually "look into" it now that I am retired and have some "free time" on my hands.
I doubt you are boring anyone here. This is pretty eclectic group of people with lots of different interests, some mainly interested in electronics, some interested in how electronics will aid their
real hobby. For example, at least one of the moderators is an active member of the "maker community" and they get involved with all sorts of projects such as home-built CNC mills and routers, 3D printers, electric go-carts and skateboards... there may even be some budding "rocket scientists" here. On the Alibre Forum (3D CAD) that I belong to there is at least one real rocket scientist who sometimes takes his work home. So, don't assume that just because your project isn't mainstream, and doesn't involve how to control LEDs or motors with PWM circuits, that it is boring. You folks should set up a blog online so we can follow your progress, up to and including launch, and maybe you could invite others to help log the telemetry from the picosatellites after a successful launch and orbit insertion.
BTW, in the very near future, acceleration-hardened picosatellites will be launched from rail guns, not rockets, and a mothership to disperse them will not be necessary. This concept began during WWII when miniature "radar" sets were incorporated as proximity fuses into anti-aircraft artillery projectiles. This was waaay before transistors, much less integrated circuits, were available. It was a definitive "proof-of-concept" that a useful electronics package could be made to survive the accelerations imparted upon it from being fired from a cannon. The technology is sooo much more advanced today in every dimension you can possibly imagine. But good luck on your pocketqube launching bus. That's still "bleeding edge" technology for a few more years.
Hop
73
de AC8NS