Re: [amsat-bb] Right-sizing a sat [was: Antennas on the bird]

["Robert Oler" <cvn65vf94@xxxxxxx>]

>From: Jon Ogden <na9d@mindspring.com>
>To: Robert Oler <cvn65vf94@msn.com>
>CC: <amsat-bb@AMSAT.Org>
>Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Right-sizing a sat [was: Antennas on the bird]
>Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:21:50 -0600
>
>

Our role should be communication not learning how to build spacecraft.  I 
dont know where the engine came from but it surely wasnt an amateur 
affair....My guess is that it was a European engine.  OK someone in the 
amateur community installed it etc but then again I dont really see the need 
to "learn" that skill in terms of sat ops.

Let me be clear.  In the end I really dont care what sort of "skills" are 
left by building the satellite.  AO-40 contributed to the state of the art 
in terms of sat ops not a twit.  OK it has some neat momentuem wheels but 
they would have been tested in other ways and thats true of every component 
on the bird.  We are not creating either an industry or a company.  We 
should figure out how UHF/VHF/microwave comm is improved...not how to build 
better birds.

hence I would support multiple AO-13 type sats on multiple types of freq 
pair combinations.  If we had 5 such birds it would be great.  Imagine 
different transponder pairs available simultaneously.

To my mind AO-40 was simply to big.

Robert Oler WB5MZO Houston TX

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