Author Topic: NASA Chief Technologist to Visit Tustin's L'Garde Inc. (Read 2613 times)

Blackjax · « **on:** 03/10/2012 02:23 am »

I was reading this article:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nasa-chief-technologist-to-visit-tustins-lgarde-inc-thursday-2012-03-09

and had never heard of the company before so I checked out their website. It is pretty primitive but there are indications that they have at least a few neat ideas. I liked this one:

http://www.lgarde.com/products/itsat2.htm

Seems like if they sell it for a reasonable price it might be pretty useful to the small satellite market. Anyone know if it is being used or if it is just an old project that happened once and got shelved?

john smith 19 · « **Reply #1 on:** 03/12/2012 10:09 am »

IIRC they got their start supplying the decoy ballons for US ICBM's. They also supplied one of the comet deflection concepts that appear in the early part of the movie Armageddon.

I'd wonder if any of their staff date back to the Echo passive communications satellite experiments.

They are probably the first (but necessarily the only) port of call for inflatable stuff for space use.

Blackjax · « **Reply #2 on:** 03/17/2012 12:46 pm »

More on their solar sail project here:

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=36415

A_M_Swallow · « **Reply #3 on:** 03/17/2012 01:09 pm »

If the the curvature is changed a mirror that size can concentrate over 10 mega-watts on a furnace or electrical generator.

oldAtlas_Eguy · « **Reply #4 on:** 03/17/2012 05:16 pm »

To produce 1kw of power would be 10kg (2 500w units). That would give a small sat 100kg size a lot of power. Plus its compactness prior to deployment makes it ideal for the secondary sat market that is required to fit into a constrained volume.

I wonder if they could make an array that has a stowed size of 10cmX10cmX30cm to fit on the side of a form factor 3U or 6U cubesat making them a 6U (3U cubsat + 3U array) or 12U (6U cubesat + 2 3U arrays) ? Something that can produce about 100 watts per array.