Space is a place of adventure, promising the world a prosperous 21st century.  This brings tremendous opportunities! Companies wanting to develop this sector must bring shareholder value, promote personal development of its people, and bring new ideas and processes to fruition.  The foundation of our idea, product, and process is  a radical reimagining satellite manufacturing.  In the early 20th century Henry Ford's invention of the production line transformed the world of automobiles, lowering costs, boosting production, leading to a revolution in transportation.  The assembly of satellites in space is no less of a revolution. ---Skycorp Founder Dennis Wingo 

Our product is the Orbital Logistics Vehicle (OLV) shown above in its first incarnation as a communications satellite. We have completely reimagined the design, development, and manufacturing of large spacecraft.   We move the final assembly of spacecraft from the ground, to space, the natural environment for their operation.   Our assembly site is the International Space Station (ISS), built by NASA and its international partners. This new environment allows us to reexamine assumptions regarding spacecraft development, resulting in remarkable improvements.

What benefits does it bring the customer? Simply stated, lower cost of acquisition and lower lifecycle cost. Our estimate is that we will save a typical customer 50% in acquisition costs and up to 80%  total lifecycle cost. To do this, we threw away the box.   

The rendering above illustrates a conventional large communications satellite.  These are boxes with large solar array wings and antennas. More or less all satellites are built as boxes with appendages because they must fit within a rocket's cylindrical payload volume. Additionally, satellites are traditionally built this way in order to survive the severe shakes, rattles, and rolls of a launch vehicle's violent atmospheric ascent on the way to space. Much of a spacecraft's cost relates to designing, building, and testing it for this environment, one that it only sees for a few minutes of its operational life.

On Orbit Assembly changes the rules, allowing us to throw away the box along with other advantages.  Because we send up the parts of our spacecraft within a protective carrier packed in foam, this reduces the magnitude of vibrations the parts feel (like we ship delicate instruments via truck, ship, or plane), resulting in a much lighter vehicle. This design also intrinsically adapted for ease of robotic servicing, extending the utility and life, thus giving a far lower lifecycle cost, as much as 80%.

This fundamental shift in thinking allows us to cost effectively design the worlds first fully reusable spacecraft.  Our first market is for geosynchronous communications, an industry in dire need of lower cost, higher value spacecraft. We are working with marquee operators who are our first customers. What is their value proposition? A major reduction in price as well as the flexibility to reconfigure and "reprovision" their asset as the market and their customer needs evolve.

To find out more  please click the links for On Orbit Assembly, and for the Orbital Logistics Vehicle.  The animation here shows a short clip of the hand off of our payload carrier between the ISS Robotic Arm and the Japanese Robotic Arm.  For proprietary reasons we can't show everything but we can give you snippets for your enjoyment. 

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