We don't have huge, elaborate public sports facilities; we have the freedom to pay thousands of dollars to swim in tiny pools at private clubs. And, of course, we have the freedom not to use public transportation but rather to lead the world in the use of the most thermodynamically inefficient mode of personal transportation ever created, the huge SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle).

OK, you burn a bit of extra fossil fuel and create a bit more greenhouse gas. But you experience a critical facet of The American Dream known as The Freedom of the Open Road. It's just you out there, cowboy, riding the no-speed-limit asphalt ribbon under Montana's Big Sky, and compared to the Grand Tetons, your Lincoln Navigator or even Ford Excursion is but a mere spec.

Go where you want, when you want, as slow or as fast as you want, on back roads or the Interstate. You could even pull a cigarette out of your red and white Marlborough box and cast a steely gaze across the open range (except you are inhibited by a fear of dying of lung cancer). But tobacco or not, you experience the exhilaration of total independence and freedom.

Or rather, the illusion of independence and freedom. Most immediately, particularly in the Excursion, you will need gasoline. Unlike a horse, which can eat stuff that grows out of the ground on your farm (when Americans had farms), people don't distill their own gasoline and don't mostly have oil wells handy--particularly driving the American Northwest or the New Jersey Turnpike.

The freedom of the American road is brought to you by thousands of miles of oil pipeline, distilleries run by some of the world's largest companies, maybe a million gas stations standing by roadsides and fleets of overland trucks delivering between the refineries and the gas stations.

Which is not to mention places to stop for food, tow trucks in case you break down, cell phone towers to stay in touch while you drive and to call that tow truck, police patrolling the roads, and state transportation crews keeping the asphalt smooth, clear and painted.

At the end of the day, you need a campground with a store and hookups, or a hotel with a restaurant nearby. Maybe for a few nights, you could store up enough food to avoid those stops, but by the weekend, you'll be using plenty of infrastructure.

The freedom of the American Road is vestigial of the somewhat more fundamental freedom experienced on horseback on the Western range. While dependent on blacksmiths, saddle makers, gun and ammunition manufacturers and plenty of other support services, most cowboy support was local and low tech, and in desperate straits, one could always hunt with a knife and ride bareback. Cowboys could do what no SUV driver can--travel for weeks, even months, totally on their own.

Microsatellite builders also experience this sort of independence. We don't rely on mil spec parts and all the support systems typical of large space programs. We build these things in student labs and on ping pong tables. Vibration testing can be done by bolting the systems to an SUV bumper and plowing over some rough off-road trails.

But this independence is temporary and, even during that transient period, largely illusory. And nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes time to get into orbit. Dreams of a few backyard rocket builders notwithstanding, while you can build a satellite at home quite successfully, rockets require all kinds of infrastructure.

Fuel, oxidizer, engines, separation and navigation systems, ground-tracking radar and command/destruct capability, a fairing coated with insulting and ablative material, computers and radios all have to work perfectly the first time.

And even if you somehow whipped all that together in the basement, you'd need a launch site, a way of standing the rocket up, of protecting it if it rains or gets windy, of preparing it for launch and protecting the ground from the rocket as it departs. You also need a wide-open space for the rocket parts to fall into, either due to staging or failure of the rocket. And you'll also need support to make sure people don't venture into that drop zone.

Micro and nanosatellite makers experience a brief moment of independence; they float above the aerospace infrastructure as they build a highly capable, innovative spacecraft maybe no bigger than a deck of playing cards. But unlike amateur robot builders, or computer/software hackers, or for that matter, basement rock and roll band members, when that brief creative interval passes, they become highly dependent on the space transportation system.

And a rather rickety system it is. Most rocket companies launch large payloads, and their executives have no interest in gaining a few dollars of marginal revenue from the one-kilogram crowd. Small launch vehicles (LVs) are very similar to the SUV of the rocket world. They cost from three to 10 times the amount per kilogram of larger rockets to put payloads into orbit.

And "small" is a relative term. Many small satellites weigh just a few kg or even less. Small rockets have a payload of a few hundred kilograms, and cost 10 to 1000 times more than those diminutive satellites.

Microsatellites are seldom built because there is no venue to launch them that doesn't cost many times the cost of the satellite. The few that do occur are launched by the courtesy of a large launch vehicle--piggyback with a major payload. Or they have a rich uncle (Sam) who pays for a Pegasus. But those microsatellites, to justify the cost of the Pegasus, are usually quite costly.

When you run your SUV out of gas and are left stranded somewhere along the aforementioned ribbon of asphalt gleaming under the sun hanging in the big sky, it is not because of lack of infrastructure, but rather your lack of skill in accessing it. For instance, you neglected to check the gas gauge before zooming past the last gas station.

Small satellites are stranded by the side of the road to space for the same reason. Large, efficient rockets launch somewhere in the world almost every week. The cost of adding the odd micro or nanosatellite to that launch is negligible--the rockets carry more ballast than the mass of the little satellites.

The problem is that more than 90 percent of major launches go to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), the first of a two-step maneuver for placing major geosynch satellites into their orbit. And almost all microsatellites want to be in circular low earth orbits (LEO). We are sitting in the middle of a very busy airport, say Atlanta, trying to get to Tallahassee, but all the flights are leaving for LA.

The solution to the dilemma lies in a new approach. After utilizing a launch vehicle (LV) to deliver a payload into GTO, an orbital transfer vehicle may then transfer the satellite to its desired LEO orbit.

And since there is a major LV launch almost every week, the small payload can reserve a flight virtually whenever it wants to. And if there is an acceleration or slip in the small satellite development schedule, there are a large number of flights it can switch to.

Few would enjoy tackling the open road in their SUV without the support infrastructure that makes driving a pleasure--gas stations, availability of repair parts and support personnel, places to stop for refreshment. This new method achieves the same freedom of the open road to those of us needing a highway from earth to LEO. And in the same way--by enjoying and taking advantage of the sophisticated and relatively efficient infrastructure already in place for the trip.

Sidebar: AeroAstro's Experience and New Approach AeroAstro had for ten years been trying to institute direct LEO launches, to help build our own microsatellite business and to benefit the industry . We created a partner company, PacAstro, to build a small, low-cost launch vehicle.

PacAstro built an engine big enough to launch several micro and nanosatellites to LEO, and cheap enough to do it for a few million dollars. But we didn't raise the many millions of dollars needed to finish building the rocket vehicle.

And we now believe that even if we had, the cost of building the rest of the infrastructure, coupled with the physical inefficiencies of lofting small payloads to orbit, would for a long time plague the developers of small, low-cost launch vehicles. The only launch vehicle more expensive per kilogram than Pegasus, is the even smaller Japanese N2.

Since 1997, AeroAstro has taken a different tact to navigate the smallest satellites into orbit. Rather than replicate the existing launch infrastructure, an approach which has proven more expensive and less reliable than launch vehicles like Delta and Ariane, we are now building the technology to allow small payloads to take advantage of the rich, existing launch infrastructure.

AeroAstro's SPORT, Small Payload ORbit Transfer module, fits between the large launch vehicle and the small payload, and they ride together to GTO. SPORT then uses its own on-board propulsion and drag devices to transition from GTO to LEO. Once at the desired LEO orbit, SPORT separates from the small satellite, leaving it in orbit, and de-orbits itself.

SPORT uses atmospheric drag--aerobraking--to provide most of the energy change needed for the orbit-transfer maneuver. By thus minimizing propulsion requirements, SPORT uses a safe, environmentally compatible propellant that is low cost to buy and cheap to load at the launch site.

These innovations, combined with SPORT's use of AeroAstro's nanospacecraft kernel, Bitsy--to manage navigation, communication and control of SPORT and its small satellite payload--add up to a very low-cost, highly-reliable orbit transfer system. The piggyback ride plus SPORT cost much less than any small launch vehicle.

And in addition to SPORT's enormous cost advantage over a dedicated LV, SPORT is operationally preferable. SPORT lets the small payload enjoy the higher launch reliability and more gentle ride to orbit offered by the largest LVs.

Dr. Rick Fleeter founded the premier microsatellite technology company, AeroAstro, in 1988 after prior experience at Defense Systems, Inc., TRW Space and Technology Group and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech. He was also a Vice President at AMSAT, the world's most experienced small satelllite organization. Rick received engineering PhD and AB degrees from Brown University and the MSc from Stanford.

AeroAstro, a pioneer of micro and nanospacecraft applications in science, remote sensing, and communications, is a leader in innovative small satellite applications. AeroAstro has designed, constructed, tested and supported the launch of several small satellites, including its highly successful ALEXIS satellite begun in 1988 and currently in its seventh year operating on-orbit. NASA, the Air Force, and commercial and university customers have all employed AeroAstro throughout its 11-year history.