SMASH THE SMAD

2026

  • Orbital Mechanics
  • RF/SDR
  • GNU Radio
  • Python
  • Hardware
  • Security

SMAD — Space Mission Analysis and Design — is the canonical reference for how space missions get built. It’s dense, rigorous, and largely written for people who already have a program, a budget, and a team. SMASH THE SMAD is my attempt to take that body of knowledge apart and rebuild it as something a motivated person can actually work through on a bench: build-first, hands-on, and security-aware from the ground up.

The premise is that you understand mission design best when you’ve had to make the tradeoffs yourself — link budgets that don’t close, power margins that disappear, ground passes that are too short, and threat models that nobody drew on the original whiteboard. So instead of reading about it, you build toward it: FlatSat-style hardware, real RF and SDR work, orbital mechanics you can compute and verify, and an adversarial lens on every subsystem.

What it covers (in progress):

  • Mission analysis fundamentals rebuilt as runnable, verifiable exercises
  • Link budgets, RF, and SDR — with real hardware and real captures
  • Ground-segment and protocol security woven through, not bolted on
  • The attacker’s view of each subsystem alongside the designer’s

This is the flagship of the work happening on this site, and it’s actively under construction — the curriculum, the labs, and the write-ups are being built and published in the open. Follow along through the blog and the RSS feed as modules ship.