On 8/5/11 2:14 PM, Nigel A. Gunn, W8IFF/G8IFF wrote: > As many have said before. > Perhaps we should get away from the American system of allocating Oscar > numbers and use the real world name that the builders and launch > agencies use.
It's longstanding tradition to give a spacecraft a pre-launch name and then assign it another once it successfully reaches orbit. To minimize the confusion, the pre-launch name usually ends with a letter from a sequence while the orbital name ends with a sequential number. This tradition dates from the days when launch vehicles were rather unreliable and many spacecraft didn't make it to space. Thus holes in the numerical sequence were avoided. E.g., the weather satellite NOAA-E became NOAA-8 when launched in 1983. Phase 3-B became AMSAT-Oscar-10 when it was launched in 1983. Phase 3-D became AMSAT-Oscar-40, and so on. But Phase 3-A, which was lost in the launch failure of Ariane L-02 in 1980, never received an Oscar number because it did not reach orbit. We do seem to have a lot of names for this one. So far we have: ARISSat-1 [i.e., Amateur Radio on the International Space station, Satellite #1] RadioSKAF-B (РАДИО СКАФ-B) Cedar (Кедр) Does anyone know if it'll also get an Oscar number? 73, Phil, KA9Q _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@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
