Here’s a rather interesting way to launch your own personal satellite into orbit using Interorbital System’s TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit. For a price of $8,000, you get a basketball-sized tube and launch to 192 miles above earth into “low orbit”. You could easily do space imaginary of earth, videos, and anything you can fit in the TubeSat. They won’t stay in orbit for more than couple months and will burn up (due to the lower earth orbit) but still, this could be a fun way to test your space technology.
For one, I can see myself equippin