Fundamental Problems In SmallSat Concept Development

The standardization of launch opportunities as secondary payloads, coupled with the miniaturization of digital electronics due to Moore’s law, has enabled a new class of space missions at greatly reduced costs – SmallSat missions. Unfortunately, the desires of concept developers are often in conflict with the limited technical budgets afforded within the constraints of a SmallSat mission. Chief amongst these limited technical budgets, ironically, are the limited mass and volume budgets that enable them in the first place.Mass and volume budgets are consumed in closure of the other technical budgets in space systems: science error budgets, delta-v and propellent budgets, power and energy budgets, and thermal budgets, to name a few. Most aspects of these budgets are unaffected by the miniaturization of digital electronics enabled by modern physics, but are instead governed by the laws of classical physics, worked out by Europeans, long since dead.The fundamental laws of classical physics provide the couplings between these budgets, and provide a way to help potential users realize the practical limitations inherent in SmallSat systems. Understanding the fundamental limitations better positions concept developers to find innovative solutions with these systems and not inefficiently pursue infeasible approaches to their needs.