If you accept premise of unlimited budget and outsourcing, sending something to space is about as difficult as saying “Hey Elon, I want this thing to go to space.”
The point here is that college students are able to pull this off with a small budget and lots of DIY.
From the article. It's not that it is super hard to do nowadays if you have a near endless supply of resources and money, but for students in a science project it is a big deal.