Re: [amsat-bb] Re: Discovery Project: Which Mission Next?

["David M. Tipton, PhD" <tiptond@xxxxxxx>]

I tend to concur.  As a relative newcomer, I'm still trying to work the 
kinks out of transponder based birds.  Unfortunately, by the time I figure 
everything out, it is usually out of site.  That's because they are 
leo's.  The nature of the beast I guess.  However, I would also agree that 
we need either Geo Syncronous (Yes, I'm aware of the expense) or High Eart 
Orbit birds with transponders on them.  I mean seriously, why can't we do a 
constellation of Geo birds and tie them together?  Put some transponders on 
them, and use them as a global network??    I'd donate my $1000 for a 
project like that.  Yeah, it would run into the millions, but we have a 
couple thousand hams world wide that would be interested in such a 
venture.  Wouldn't it be cool to work Europe or ZL Land from a 
handheld.  (WITHOUT an Arrow antenna)  Ok, I'm dreaming now, but that's my 
take on it.  Until we get more than 2 functioning FM birds and one brain 
dead High Earth Orbit bird, I think we should concentrate on getting a 
higher quantity of birds up.

Dave

PS -  That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

At 18:54 8/28/00 -0400, Jeffrey Davis wrote:
>James, KD4DLA said:
> > What's the concensus? SHOULD WE OR SHOULDN"T WE?
>
>My own opinion is, "no", I don't think AMSAT should pursue the Discovery
>Project.
>
>We have not begun to exploit earth orbit. By my present count we have
>one satellite in a high orbit that is brain-dead, we have one
>sophisticated bird setting on the ground nearly ready to go, and we have
>a couple of low-earth orbiting single channel FM repeaters buzzing
>overhead. There are a few store and forward digital birds that work like
>e-mail only much slower and at 50000 times the cost of email service.
>
>I hardly think that means:
>
> > We have done plenty with orbiting spacecraft
>
>On a personal level, I want to see more high orbit linear transponders.
>I want to sit in my basement and have a two-hour ragchew with my buddy
>in Germany via a satellite without it inciting a riot on this list about
>me being a "channel hog" :-)
>
>That's just my opinion....
>
>--
>jeff davis, n9avg
>http://n9avg.org/
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