MetroNaps started business in 2004 with a boutique in NYC’s Empire State Building, selling 20 minute naps for $14 bucks. The company has slowly been opening franchises around the world, but MetroNaps co-founder Arshad Chowdhury says overwhelming interest from office folks who wanted to install the pods on-site as an employee perk. So the company redesigned the pods to fit through the smaller doors common to office environments (trust me, retail doors are big), and has started selling direct.

Now the company is targeting universities, claiming that “90% of all US college students get inadequate sleep. As a result, students nap in class, in computer labs, and in busy common spaces. With a MetroNaps Pod installation, you can provide an appropriate place for resting.” Indeed, for about $10,000 each (I got a quote, it’s a real number), you can put pods in your campus center or library.

Who’s tried these things? Do they live up to the buzz? Who will be first with one (or more) in their library?

libraries, library, metronaps, metronaps pod, nap, pod, pods, public services, rest, sleep

CubeSat is Cal Poly’s plan to make space accessible to the rest of us. That is, they want to make it easy and cheap enough to launch satellites that even high schools can get a chance at it. Engadget says they call it “the Apple II of space exploration” (link added). Here, read this:

The CubeSat Project is a international collaboration of over 40 universities, high schools, and private firms developing picosatellites containing scientific, private, and government payloads. A CubeSat is a 10 cm cube with a mass of up to 1 kg.

…we provide a standard, reliable, and flight proven deployment system. The Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer, or P-POD, is a tubular, spring loaded mechanism taking up very little space. It can be integrated into any launch vehicle and protects primary payloads from the CubeSats and vise-vera. By repeatedly flight proving the P-POD design, we hope to instill confidence in launch providers, primary payloads, and organizations interested in flying experiments on CubeSats. We envision a day when P-PODs can manifested into a mission with minimal per launch integration time and engineering costs.

Launch costs are said to be about $40,000, while Engadget figures construction costs will run another $40,000. CubSatKit.com offers parts (price list) that they say fully conform to the design specification (oversized drawing).

The next launch is scheduled January 2005 with 14 satellites from 11 entities, including a private CubeSat from The Aerospace Corporation.

tags: calpoly, cubesat, cubesat project, diy, diy satellite, launch vehicle, microsatellite, pod, pods, satellite, space, space exploration, space race