ConkSat

Oh, you thought we just made jokes on the internet? The joke's on you; we make hardware now. Evil hardware, too. Introducing the cheapest-ever strap-on precision guidance kit, powered by the best algorithms we could steal from Stack Overflow. With laser guidance, contract seeking, and optical IFF modes, this seeker is set to revolutionize the future of small dictatorships by bringing precision guidance to the masses.

Stop making all your satellites cube-shaped. In recent years, satellite manufacturers have created the most visually boring and lazy designs possible. With an increasing number of satellites being cuboid or cylindrical (including the "CubeSats"), Earth orbit has never been more boring. If you are making a satellite with a cuboid bus and solar panels slapped onto the sides, quit your job. Engineering is an art and you're painting like a kindergartener. ConkSat is committed to creating fun and visually interesting satellites, just as engineers have in the past (intentionally or otherwise). Our choice of concrete-casted satellite buses allows complete freedom of shape. We’re embracing brutalist architecture in all its forms. Stay tuned for our Klein bottle satellite, brought to you by our Topology Division.

The first credible counter to mutually-assured destruction is here. The tyrannical peace of nuclear weapons is officially no more with the advent of Project Popcorn, ConkSat’s latest-and-greatest defense program. For years, nations have been unable to intercept incoming nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. Project Popcorn brings the ultimate solution to this with a fleet of over 2000 satellites spread across 16 orbital planes, each armed with redundant W87 thermonuclear warheads. When incoming missiles are detected, the push of a button can detonate the entire constellation simultaneously, instantly flooding low Earth orbit with high-intensity radiation. This vaporizes all midcourse ICBMs and temporarily jams radar systems worldwide, snatching victory from the jaws of nuclear annihilation. To avoid the prospect of nuclear space junk, all satellites orbit at the low altitude of under 150km. This means that any failures on-orbit will lead to the satellite reentering in a matter of hours, harmlessly burning up and scattering in the upper atmosphere. Staffed by an expert team of spacecraft operators with a combined 10 years of experience in spaceflight, the Popcorn fleet is always ready to respond. The constellation will be available to all nations willing to fund the program. Starting at a cost of $10bn/yr for the Basic plan, users will be given a keyfob that detonates the constellation with one click. On the Premium plan (call for price), users will also be able to disable the constellation for all users. ConkSat is actively seeking bids for launch services. Please reach out if you’re interested in hosting our satellites, but note that we have unique restrictions on vehicle radio systems due to the risk of inadvertent detonation.

CONKATHON IS ON! By popular demand (dear god, my inbox is full) and thanks to a recent influx of funding (my intern paycheck), we are bringing back the Etsy store. All products now with 30% APR (Applied Price Raise)! Show off to your coworkers how cool you are for mindlessly scrolling LinkedIn every day. Do you really need more aerospace t-shirts? No, but you’re gonna buy another anyway so it might as well be ours. All right here: https://lnkd.in/eh7ZssM6

ConkSat is sad to announce that, as of today, we will be moving our HQ from Long Beach, CA to Pyongyang, North Korea. Trucks containing ConkSat's export-control team rolled across the DMZ at 11:00am UTC yesterday. Casualties have been minimal so far. This move was necessitated by California's radical woke agenda. We at ConkSat can't stand for a tyrannical state government preventing us from the free exercise of our God-given liberties, including the right to environmental contamination and the right to workplace accidents. The DPRK may be the last bastion of liberty in the modern world. We expect to have zero problems with maintaining our hiring rate, thanks to the low housing prices in abundant twenty-story apartment blocks. This move was triggered by the recent congressional investigation into our safety record. From our CEO: "This is the last straw. The only way to fight this evil is angrily posting about it. With any luck, we'll be able to complete the move before Legal finds out."

Due to an ongoing Congressional investigation, ConkSat is being ordered to release documents pertaining to the history of Building J. ConkSat does not wish to put out a public statement at this time.

#OnThisDayInConkSatHistory over 20 years ago, we released a new safety video for our employees. Check it out for a bit of ConkSat history.

We've announced a lot of our projects in the R&D phase, but it's time to return to our roots. At Concrete Satellite Technologies Corporation (ConkSat), we bring the latest advances in civil engineering to aerospace. As such, we're proud to announce the first line of poured concrete satellite buses: CS-101. Concrete possesses many advantages that manufacturers have failed to take advantage of. First, concrete is cheap and does not require advanced manufacturing methods like CNC or 3D printing for complex shapes. Concrete is also an electrical insulator, decreasing the odds of a stray wire killing a billion-dollar GEO satellite. As a thermal insulator, concrete lowers the amount of multilayer insulation needed for long stays in space. Plus, as a porous material, you can forget about designing venting ports. The first flight article is in the works, and will be equipped with the most advanced technology that can be sourced from Amazon for <$100. We're pioneering out-of-house manufacturing, a unique COTS-focused approach that minimizes manufacturing effort. Equipped with GoPros and a cheap SDR, CS-101 will be the pinnacle of remote sensing, provided we can figure out how you get a license from the FCC. We're currently searching for a partner for this first launch. Is your company designing a launch vehicle, but considers it too risky to fly a commercial payload on the first flight? We've just upgraded our first-flight risk posture to "hold my beer" and would rather not fly on a vehicle that will force us to actually test this thing. Contact us today for the best mass simulator in the business. WE WON'T LIE TO YOU. PATENT IS NOT PENDING. PLEASE DON'T STEAL IT THOUGH.

For years, rocket companies have used performant yet incredibly expensive propellants. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per launch on fuels has become the norm, bogging down "old" space. At ConkSat, we're always looking to raise the bar. That's why we're proud to announce the first hotfire of the first ever rocket engine running on pure Bunker C heavy fuel oil. Using the waste products of petroleum refinement presents numerous benefits. The cost savings are immense - up to 30% cheaper per flight, which is significant for fully reusable launch vehicles. Money saved is payload earned. The cooling properties are another benefit. The residue coating the interior of the engine provides a natural boundary layer protecting your sensitive tubes. For reusable second stages, flowing thick oil over an actively cooled heat shield is even more effective than cryogens, practically forming an ablative heat shield. Bunker fuel's incredibly sticky, tar-like nature makes it easy to flow through an engine. Flow into the combustion chamber is maintained purely through the siphon effect, allowing us to ditch expensive turbopumps and pressure vessels. This is, perhaps, the first engine that needs no stoking. Take that. With the exhaust consisting mostly of tar, launch site damage is no longer a worry. The plume impingement on the pad lays a fresh coat of asphalt over the entire area each time the engines are lit. Have technical questions about the BE-6 (Bunker Engine 6)? Please post all of your thoughts and analysis below, no matter how poorly informed.

DELTA IV HEAVIER - THE NEXT GREAT LEAP Most rocket companies seek out some form of smaller early project to prove their capabilities before they design a truly gigantic vehicle - think Falcon 1, Terran 1, Electron, etc. At ConkSat, we just dream bigger. That's why, as a technical demonstrator and stopgap before we develop our own launch vehicle (TBA), we are requesting to purchase the Delta IV materials from United Launch Alliance and work to develop the new Delta IV Heavier ultra-heavy launch vehicle. With 4 Common Booster Cores as opposed to the standard Delta IV Heavy's 3, the Delta IV Heavier could feature unmatched performance. The extra booster adds thrust, delta-v, and even torque for pitching the vehicle downrange (important: always attach the extra booster to the uprange side). Gravity turn? We're thrust turning. This powered pitch-over maneuver eliminates the need for costly avionics and flight controls, allowing us to demonstrate our company goal of flying the first unguided orbital rocket. The benefits of this approach are numerous. With no flight computers, engine gimbals, or control systems, the only real complexity comes from the engine computers. These can be outsourced to the launch pad and disconnected once engine start-up reaches steady state. This allows us to use our patent-pending SMART (So Many Avionics can Remain on the Tower) strategy to be the first company to reuse our entire avionics system flight-to-flight. We could transform a notoriously costly and complex vehicle into one of the cheapest pathways to orbit available. Furthermore, with the future retirement of Atlas V, a market gap exists in the field of asymmetric rockets. Without this, customers seeking an asymmetric vehicle will be completely out of luck. Government and commercial customers alike have been reliant on the coolness factor of asymmetry in their launch vehicles ever since the days of the Space Shuttle (with which the asymmetry was a major draw), and it's unlikely that the raceways of future launch vehicles will be enough asymmetry to draw them. By occupying this niche, we guarantee commercial success. Tory Bruno, please let us do this to your beloved rocket. We promise we'll take good care of her. We cannot offer money but we can offer all the love in our hearts.