Business Chief APAC+ANZ Magazine April 2018 | Page 65

Waitemata Harbour ( Auckland harbour ), provides the main access by sea to the city hopes , will be manufactured at a rate of one unit per week , with launch costs to consumers estimated at $ 5mn per flight .
This would represent a significant decrease in expense for companies hoping to launch small satellites into the atmosphere . Currently , the industry standard Atlas rockets , designed to haul large satellites into space , will cost a company anywhere between $ 30mn and $ 60mn , according to Wired .
Currently , small satellite companies looking to put their cubesats into orbit , whose creations will mostly take pictures of Earth and provide spacebased internet , are being forced to “ pay for expensive tickets on outsized rockets . And they share the ride as second-class citizens , stuffed in among the more substantial payloads those rockets are actually meant for . The substantial stuff determines where the rockets go , and those orbits are often suboptimal for smallsats ”, Wired reports . “ The technology has changed , the size of the spacecraft has shrunk , but the
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