Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Assembly line spacecraft production

Some satellites have been mass produced...

at least in satellite terms. For example, over 60 Iridium satellites were built and launched in a few years. That's high volume by satellite standards. There are some simplier satellites that were launched in relatively high volume, such as the old Russian MPCS-1 (multiple payload communications satellite) that were launched 8 at a time. At the height of the old Soviet Union, they'd keep a constellation of a couple dozen or so active at all times, and they only lasted a year or two.

Low volume does limit the ability to achieve much in the way of volume savings. Hughes (now apparently part of Boeing) built a lot of communications satellites built on standard vehicle buses, such as the HS-601 series. The 601 bus has been used for standard communications satellites, DirectTV type commsats, Navy UHF Follow On (UFO) and GBS satellites, and the next generation TDRSS satellites for NASA, to name a few. The satellite bus is essentially the same but the communications payload is tailored to the mission.

Hughes/Boeing has been doing this for well over 20 years. Standard buses allow for savings in R&D costs for things like the structure, electrical power, TT&C, thermal control, and the like. Often, the primary payload benefited from standardization, too.

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