No. I offspring, in his aspirations to stay at school seemingly forever, is doing a doctorate in space engineering.
Current project has been an eye opener for me. He's working with an agri business to design a tube satellite for them. Each satellite is only about 30cm long, and fits into a small tube. The size is measured bizarrely in litres, and this is a 3 litre satellite. It is propelled into space in a cluster of 25-30 tubes and everything deploys automatically (fold out solar or whatever). They last about 6 years and then burn to dust on re-entry.
It costs around Euros 400,000 to design and make the satellite (in this case it will analyse crop growth and characteristics across vast areas) and 250,000 per tube to launch.
Most large satellites are apparently quite old tech (computer processors from 10-20 years ago, as they must be made to withstand radiation damage. However, these very small ones use current chips similar to phones, as they are in effect “disposable” and are simply replaced every 5 years.
We are being watched by satellites the size of a rolling pin.