Amsat is living in a brave new world where launches are fully commercialized and nobody gets a free ride anymore. We will either adapt to that paradigm shift or we will cease to exist.
Things were a lot different in the 1960's and 70's. In 1961 an Air Force general had enough authority to allow Oscar 1 to be bolted to the side of his launch vehicle. It is like this in the early days of all new technological ventures. The internet in the early 1990's was a lot more free-wheeling before the "suits" took notice of it and started to regulate it. In today's world the bean counters are fully in charge, and nobody rides for free. When you have commercial companies offering $10 million to place 100 kg in orbit, that becomes the market price, and the only way to lower that price is to expand the supply of launches. This development is especially ironic because Amsat created the entire small satellite industry. There was a time when industry and government experts laughed at us and our little toy satellites. We proved that small satellites are valuable and now everybody wants to launch them. A little company called Surrey Satellite Technology grew out of Amsat endeavors. AO-40 was a once in a lifetime opportunity. ESA offered us a 600 kilogram ride on one of the first Ariane 5 vehicles and we voted to go for it. The reasons for AO-40's failure have been covered before, and further analysis will not add to the discussion. It is not a mistake to throw deep sometimes. If AO-40 had worked as designed, it would have revolutionized amateur radio. We gambled and lost and we will most likely never see another 600 kg launch opportunity. The Eagle project was started about a decade ago in hope of launching a more modest HEO replacement for AO-40, and to be able to do so on a regular basis so that a single satellite failure would not ground the entire program. This effort was overtaken by the tidal wave of cubesats. With every single university on Earth launching a cubesat all of the available launch opportunities are filled with pea-pod launchers and there is no room for Eagle, unless someone writes a check for $10 million. Since cubesats are the only available launches, Amsat has started the Fox program to participate in the cubesat trend. Amsat can help its case by making Fox the best engineered cubesat ever built, which should not be too hard compared to some of the other cubesat designs that I have seen. The university cubesats use amateur radio frequencies as inexpensive data downlinks, but they do not otherwise contribute to the basis and purpose of amateur radio as defined in part 97. Education is mentioned in part 97 but many of these cubesat programs just barely touch on the communications aspects of space flight. I also don't think that most of the student built cubesats are teaching proper engineering techniques, I wonder how many of them have gone through thermal vacuum or radiation testing. Some cubesat groups are still purchasing off the shelf ham HTs and simply removing the plastic case before mounting it in the satellite, because they "don't know how to design an RF system". I doubt that the students are learning the engineering and career skills that they will need to survive in the real world when they get entry level jobs at Boeing or Lockheed Martin after graduation. Nevertheless there is substantial financial support for student built satellites which are perceived to be training and inspiring the next generation of engineers, while ham radio has a public image of being the last century's technology, a hobby of elderly men using Morse code and vacuum tube radios, and nobody with money to donate cares if hams can use a satellite to work rare DX countries. Our link to education is likely to be one of our only ways to secure low cost launches in the future, so we had better find ways to work with and direct the student groups toward building well engineered, long lived satellites with a real communications mission in mind. We can also look around and take notice of what other groups are doing in space. Many different forms of electric propulsion are in development or are now flying, and this technology has the possibility to enable some of the HEO missions that we desire. What if we had been able to propel ARRISSat into a higher orbit instead of helplessly watch it reenter a mere six months after deployment from the ISS? What if we had been able to nudge AO-13 away from its destructive resonance and prevent it from reentering far too early? Another area where Amsat has failed has been in the news media. When Amsat does not receive credit for its accomplishments, others are free to rewrite history and claim that they were the first to accomplish every new thing, sometimes claiming credit for things that Amsat first did three decades ago. The universities have professional public relations staff who know how to plant favorable news stories in the media. When Amsat launched AO-40 some of us tried to get the mainstream news media interested in the story, but not having professional contacts in the media, our efforts fell flat on the floor. The funding follows the publicity, and when Amsat misses out on the publicity, the money goes elsewhere. How is it that we launched AO-40 with barely a mention in the popular press or in space industry publications? Those of you who are lapsed Amsat members and will not rejoin until a HEO is launched really should reconsider. The membership dues are not that high, and we still need your active participation if any of this is to come to fruition. Giving up on Amsat by lapsing your membership pretty well insures that we will never again have a HEO satellite. 73 Dan Schultz N8FGV _______________________________________________ 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
