Dan observed: > Amsat can pretty well forget about attracting funding for a > geosynchronous amateur satellite supporting emergency commun- > ications when the capability already exists.
An Amateur Radio Club (of which AMSAT is a unique subset) usually isn't the first-to-market with technical equipment. On the other hand, a lot of amateur radio's innovations have become day-to-day technology haven't they? Nethope at this point has only developed half of what AMSAT proposed - they did a ground terminal to communicate via an existing commercial service. Does that make AMSAT's "hopes" to also fly a payload "someday" plus a revived Namaste ground terminal a redundant proposition? Enough companies make commercial satellite ground terminals that it has become commodity equipment covering a broad spectrum of capability and cost. Of all the automotive suppliers people still choose what fills their needs or wallet. Hams choose what fills our needs or wallet from all the amateur radio gear manufacturers. I guess you're observing that AMSAT's GEO proposal has to fit into the GEO satellite commodity market. I've maintained that a GEO satellite is best suited to link widely deployed sectors of the Incident Command System. A satellite isn't generally useful in the often portrayed emergency communications scenario of the ham-in-a-yellow-vest pointing a 2M HT at a pile of tornado damage. > future satellites that are larger than a Cubesat and in a higher orbit Yeah, at this point we're realizing that having a GEO satellite offer AMSAT 30x30x30cm of room is equivalent to winning the lottery. Perhaps for the next few years AMSAT's contributions to increased cubesat capability is a previously unforeseen intermediate opportunity to get us higher and louder. That seemed to me to be one of the key decisions coming out of the BoD meeting and Symposium discussions. -- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM k9...@amsat.org _______________________________________________ Sent via amsat...@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
