'I estimate that out of maybe thirty-to-fifty regular contributors to HABITABLEZONE.COM forums only a handful
"put their money were their mouth is [or typing fingers are]" '

About 6 month ago I bought about $1000 worth of SpaceDev stock. I guess that qualifies me as one of the handful. I'm also thinking of buying other "normal stocks" such as Dell and I'm planning on buying more of Spacedev.
Since I've declared my interest in this company, I will take this opportunity to point out that SpaceDev has successfully built a low cost satellite and it's currently in orbit.
Lastest Email:
"The SpaceDev-built Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer satellite (CHIPSat) has continued to perform exceptionally well since its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on January 12. CHIPSat's primary mission is to examine the interstellar medium, the gas that fills the space between stars.

Since our last update, the CHIPS instrument was placed fully into its operating configuration and CHIPSat has commenced the nominal science mission. CHIPSat has collected, downloaded, processed and analyzed seven weeks worth of science data. The target duty cycle for system data collection of 92.5% has been achieved.

In addition to the observation of nominal deep-space targets, the CHIPS instrument has observed the full moon in a sequence of eight twenty-minute observations. The CHIPS instrument is calibrated by observing ultraviolet light from the sun that is reflected off the lunar surface. This maneuver will be performed every full moon for the duration of the mission. The successful lunar calibration has also provided further verification of the solid performance and knowledge of the attitude control system.

With two months of nominal operations complete, enough CHIPSat housekeeping data has been collected to perform preliminary trending analyses of system performance. Thus far, all indications show expected, consistent bus performance trends. Pointing accuracy has been found to be better than the design requirement: less than 1/2 a degree in sunlight and less than three degrees in eclipse.

Mission operations are being conducted via the Internet at SpaceDev's corporate headquarters in Poway, California. Instrument commanding and science operations are being conducted at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) with command validation through the SpaceDev site.

In addition to monitoring real-time CHIPSat passes, the main responsibilities of the CHIPSat Flight Operations Team include: analyzing spacecraft housekeeping data; processing bi-weekly updates to the science observation schedule as provided by UCB; supporting additional science observations such as the lunar calibrations; and coordinating continuing support through the three mission ground stations.

The nominal operation phase has also demonstrated the operation of SpaceDev's fully automated spacecraft monitoring system. While manual operation of each pass occurs during normal business hours, other passes are monitored only by the automated telemetry processing system. Any discrepancies from nominal behavior cause e-mail and pager notifications to be sent to the Flight Operations Team. To date, this system has performed fully as expected.

SpaceDev is now actively marketing the subsystem components highlighted in the left-hand column of this newsletter. "