On 07/22/2014 06:49 AM, Clayton Coleman wrote: > Hi Phil, > > The new era I speak of is AMSAT-NA's foray into CubeSats.
Well, I guess I could read that as "when all you have is lemons, make lemonade". AMSAT used to make spacecraft that, while small by commercial/military/scientific standards, dwarfed a cubesat. So I don't see cubesats as an advance. Although miniaturization of electronics and improvements in solar cell efficiency do help us cram everything into the tiny form factor, the fact remains that we are now forced to pay far more to launch far less than we used to. I guess that's a "new era" in the same way that the Arab Oil Embargoes of 1973 and 1979 launched a glorious new era in automobile transportation... Sure, this is a fact of life that we can't do anything about, despite the supreme irony of AMSAT pioneering small satellites so well that we created a whole new industry with which we must now fiercely compete for launches. Economics says that when demand outstrips supply, prices go up. So they have. A lot. Like it or not, we have to adapt to changing realities. We used to get launches for free or at nominal rates, so our main investment in each satellite was just the volunteer engineers' time and the cost of those components we could not beg, borrow or steal. But now that the launch cost dominates the budget of everything we fly, it's time to take a very serious look at what we get from each one. Said another way, it's time to look at how much MORE we could get from our very substantial investment in each launch. Every launch of a FM cubesat depletes a very large chunk of AMSAT funds that cannot be spent on launching something else. In other words, I'm encouraging people to look at the *opportunity cost* of every additional analog FM satellite we launch. People don't yet realize just how huge it is because they only know 1960s analog technology. They simply don't realize how much more could be done with 21st century technology. That's what I'm trying to change, so far without much success. --Phil _______________________________________________ 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
