As the meager prospects for funding a Google Lunar X Prize effort sink in, and even funding for early space tests and demonstrations seems out of reach, I ponder the question “How small can a useful space system be?” As mentioned earlier, critical systems development and validation can be carried out in suborbital or LEO flight. LEO flight can cost as little as $40,000 with a CubeSat launch. But this requires that sophisticated spacecraft systems be implemented with 100 or even 10 gram mass.

As I ponder this question, answers appear. I see ways to downsize even our small propulsion systems without loosing their performance. The electronic options are even more impressive. The “Computers” (Microprocessors) I have been using most mass a fraction of a gram. The ones I use when pushed for board space mass only 60 milligrams! The smallest I have considered using mass only 6 milligrams. That is a pretty small computer! A 160 unit parallel processing array would still total only one gram. More realistically, hundreds of electronic components, sensors and a few microprocessors, would weigh only one gram all together. One square inch of thin printed circuit board could add 1/2 gram of mass, but that is tolerable. Even the HDTV camera required for the Google prize seems attainable at less than one gram mass!

I am actively working in this direction. It seems possible to reach space with a useful suborbital test system weighing only a few grams and costing much less than even a CubeSat launch. Until the funding picture improves, that is how we will test our space systems. Our hope is that success with small, modest cost test flights in space will break the “Unbelief” that blocks GLXP funding and spark realization that with modern technology, affordable efforts in space can succeed! Those with the audacity to believe that affordable development work can be done in space can join those who believed that affordable Graphic Computer Systems (now called Video Games), and Digital Communications Networks (called Cell Phones) were possible – and become very rich!