Don’t want to belittle the achievement but they launched it as in „had it launched by the commercial launch provider SpaceX“, not on a self-developed rocket as it sounds like on the first read.
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Edit (rather than reply and make the comment chain long): It's fine that you read it that way. I figure that if the article were about a launch vehicle then it would have been the rocket's name in the title, and if the article were about the satellite then it would have the satellite's name (BOTSAT-1). If Botswana had developed both an orbital launch vehicle and their first satellite then I'd bet the headline would have been sensational.
It’s more a case of does it make economic or strategic sense to do so. For most countries it wouldn’t.
I would remove the last three words from that.
Launch vehicles are hard. Satellites are easy. This is a cubesat, even.
The notability is that they have a satellite up for their purposes; they're not trying to claim that they did the launch themselves.
If this were some random corporation, none of you wouldn't have blinked an eyelid at a title like "Megacorp successfully launches first satellite" when all but 3-4 companies in the world rely on someone else to do the launch.
There's more hair-splitting going on here than in a hair salon.
Sure, developing a single satellite isn't something that makes a lot of sense in a first order economic assessment. They are definitely not going to be able to sell the data they collect for the millions of dollars they spent on the program. And they definitely spent more on the satellite than they would have spent buying equivalent imagery from commercial providers for the next few years. There is almost no chance that they will have a satellite with competitive technical specs.
But nobody is comparing Botswana to NZ. This is their first satellite. Having a satellite program at the national university is a point of national pride. It will inspire their young people and encourage them to study STEM. It gives valuable practical experience to their people, some of whom might go on to start a space systems company and bring high tech business opportunities to their country. This is a step toward moving part of their economy from being based on natural resources (diamonds, the value of which are subject to the whims of a cartel that they don't control), to being based on knowledge.
Sorry to go meta here, but this is just rude, both to OP and to other readers.
For OP, you're effectively pre-empting what they say with your own counterargument, and even more so you're removing the ability for them to counter your counter. You're essentially using the edit feature to end the conversation and ensure you have the final word.
For other readers, you're introducing confusing non-linear flow.
Just reply. It's not hard, and as you can see below you didn't actually prevent a subthread from forming.
I've noticed this more and more, especially on more controversial topics (which this is certainly not).
Adam makes a statement, Betty responds. Adam responds, and Betty edits her initial response and conversation ends, likely because Adam didn't see the edit.
It's technically true but makes the second one sound a lot harder than it really is. A hobbyist can make a cubesat, and if they do something clever they might even find a grant to pay for the launch.
Adam makes a statement, but the responses show the statement was unclear and/or leads into tangential arguments. An edit can clarify the initial statement for future readers without getting the original poster stuck in the back-and-forth necessary to escape whatever quagmire the unedited version created.
I personally think that in a no-holds-barred debate, you don't bother trying to convince your interlocutor of anything. You focus on persuading everyone else in the room. But it's rude to treat every polite conversation as a smackdown debate. Such a strategy can also backfire by turning off your intended audience, as evidenced here.
You could skip the disparaging characterizations and make your case for why you think it would be a good guideline. Ie, because it is confusing and non-linear, not because of a bunch of motivations you've inferred about a stranger.
But what it's contingent on is what's actually manifest rather than some speculative hypothetical that seems a contrivance to nullify the applicability of any etiquette anywhere.
FWIW, the previous commenter's points that adding edits to an existing post in order to reply to comments further downstream is confusing and impolite behavior. It's useful on Reddit in response to malicious use of the ill-advised 'block' feature, but doesn't fit on HN.
> These included BOTSAT-1, 26 satellites as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission, and a trio of CubeSats for NASA’s Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission; Arvaker 1, the first microsatellite for Kongsberg NanoAvionics’ N3X constellation.
It is not our only space venture. Our universities are churning out aerospace engineers. It annoys STEM academics that the space industries keeps "poaching" the best grad students.
To the best of my knowledge, the company is not a strategic priority for New Zealand, we do not absolutely need to launch our own satellites. It is purely a commercial venture. They had no choice but to make it a joint effort.
If it was not a joint effort they would have far fewer customers and a extremely limited supply chain.
Quite a while ago when I met an MP who seemed interested in space. I asked if anything could be done to keep/inceltivize future space ventures fully on-shore. They shrugged their shoulders and said no.
3U is a cubesat size, the most common one.
You can tell it's a cubesat from the picture in the article, and even better from the picture linked at "collaboration with EnduroSat". https://www.endurosat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BotSat-...
You're not in a crowded restaurant chatting with someone. You're in an online forum broadcasting messages to the vast nothingness.
Even if you weren't, you should still act as if you were in a crowded restaurant. Without agreeing to conventions for how a conversation should be conducted, you can't have any productive conversation at all. So what would be the point? If you ever sense that you're in an online forum broadcasting messages to the vast nothingness then you are truly only wasting your own time. (Which is why this is the only site I ever post on). At that point, just stop, put it down, walk outside and engage in any kind of real interaction you can find.
Just remember that the best place the EU came up with is in south America. Places like mainland Netherlands probably qualify for the worst places to launch orbital rockets from.
You're trying to make a storm in a teacup. OP literally edited his post to clearly state its fine if anyone interprete something differently. This is hardly outrage bait.
Try to direct your energy to something worth your time. Loudly complaining about vague subjective notions of netiquette in a moderated forum is certainly not it.
Maybe try not to tell other people what is important for them? That is part of the same debate, how we communicate and to me it also matters a lot.
It seems like the system working as designed, to be honest.
so entire accounts can get brigaded in an opaque system that we never know is updated or not
It is not an automated system. I was punished years after creating my account, and after accumulating strong positive karma. It only took like one flagged comment for the punishment to be put in place, imo it was not a significantly out there comment or set of comments either, and it is now years old and it's pretty obvious these punishments have no automatic expiry or re-evaluating date.
This is despite plenty of other members of the community posting about 10x the amount I was at the time with zero repercussions, and despite the fact that I've gotten only a couple gentle warnings in particularly heated topics, which I demonstrably took to heart.
There is no justice or fairness inherent in HNs systems, and assuming so by default is less than great. The team is tiny, the rules are most likely set in stone from the early 2000s, the tooling is basically just whatever they can cobble together, the rules are purposely opaque, and Dang is a mere mortal full of his own biases and experiences that are impossible to fully prevent from affecting his decisions. I think he puts genuine effort into his work, and despite the occasional complaint I'd give him probably a B+ or better, but there are probably hundreds of HN commentators who were given a punishment, hopefully for good reason but don't take that for granted, literally reformed or just changed over time, and nobody even informed them they were punished or COULD have that punishment removed.
I have not emailed dang to get the punishment lifted because sometimes the limit is helpful to limit how distracted I am at work. Other times it completely prevents me from doing the exact kind of useful and productive conversation that HN insists it wants.
1. Good atmospheric conditions. 2. Low air traffic. 3. Low/flexible/favourable regulations. 4. Good locations for ground infrastructure (in part because of 1. and also because everywhere is by the sea). 5. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, tertiary education geared to support the industry.
Also, and I don't know for sure this is a factor, but we have a number of specialised industries such as building large things from carbon composite (yachts) and radio communications for example.
I think option 3. is a big one. The govt. attitude is usually "give it a go", rather than a default "no".
