Re: [amsat-bb] eagle costs

[Cliff Buttschardt <cbuttsch@xxxxxxxx>]

Assi has attempted to illustrate SOME of the costs relevant to Amateur satellites
but this is only a surface scar!  If the AMSAT members could look over the 
shoulder of the CUBESAT people trying to do a minimal job, every AMSAT member
would be appalled!  I'm having difficulty here as most of you know of a short
temper exhibited by K7RR.  Understand and at least visualize a project in which
five or MORE satellite breadboards are tested in vibration and all fail.
Visualize five more that fail in thermal testing.  Visualize five more that fail
due to the simple fact that government does not have clue what in hell we are
doing and could care less.  Now compound that with the idea that most launches
are NOT in the country (god only knows why we are that stupid!!!) and maybe the
lightbulb just illuminated becomes something the individual can read by.
      Now compound this by the fact that a half a dozen countries are trying
to launch satellites-----yes admittedly this applied to CUBESAT only, but since
fourteen of these are on the pad right now, do NOT tell me it does not apply!!!
      OK, I admit that amateur rocket societies are good people wanting payloads.
We have a group here at Cal Poly.  We support them as it is a good match---we get
testing at 100K feet and they get telemetry.  Do any of you have a CLUE how much
paperwork is involved launching ANYTHING above 100K feet when there are at least
3800 air vehicles in the air over the US at one time?
      Concluding this is difficult.  My short temper is probably well founded.
Do at least TRY and understand something of the laws of physics and politics
when the difficult notion of amateur satellites is illustrated.     Cliff K7RR 



Assi Friedman wrote:
> 
> I do not have access to AMSAT's books but based on cost analysis for other
> missions that I did and can make the following comments:
> 1. Hardware costs would always be rather low as compared to total project
> cost especially if non high-rel or rad hard components are not used.
> 2. Most of the cost of the project goes into:
>         a. Labor (not significantly relevant to AMSAT)
>         b. Facilities
>         c. Consumables (that includes solder and coffee amongst other things
> :-) )
>         c. Licenses for development tools - and yes it costs lots of money!
> (RTOS license, compliers, FPGA design tools, mechanical and electrical CAD,
> analysis packs and so on.)
>         d. Shipping (Some may think that $13 for FedEx isn't much, but all
> these costs add up!)
>         e. Travel
>         f. Phone calls (I don't budget this for professional projects, but I
> have a feeling this may add up to several thousand for AMSAT.)
> BTW, I have no knowledge what Echo or Eagle cost breakdown is and free AMSAT
> labor is highly valuable, but we must not neglect that labor isn't
> everything. BTW, it is my humble opinion that $110k for Echo is dirt cheap
> granted it included everything!
> Assi 4x1kx/kk7kx
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-AMSAT-BB@AMSAT.Org [mailto:owner-AMSAT-BB@AMSAT.Org] On Behalf
> Of Chris N1ZPP
> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 3:49 PM
> To: amsat-bb@AMSAT.Org
> Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] eagle costs
> 
> This is an interesting subject and something I've thought a lot about
> for a while now.
> 
> For those of us that don't understand the all the details involved, why
> exactly does a "cheap" satellite cost $110k?  Unless I'm missing
> something, I'd think one could pull together the right parts for under
> $5k.
> 
> So, where's the cost?  Do those guys in dust suits cost a lot of money?
> Do the vibration tests cost a lot of money?  Does the launch cost a lot
> of money?  If an amateur satellite could fly on a commercial load as
> balast, why does it cost much of anything?
> 
> How about this for cost... What about flying a small sat into orbit atop
> an amateur rocket?  I bet there's an amateur rocket group somewhere out
> there chomping at the idea of being the first amateur group to put a
> satellite in orbit.  So why not team up?  Lets see if an amateur
> satellite could be built for under $10k and launched on an amateur
> rocket for very little cost.  $25k for the whole project, or am I being
> naive?
> 
> --N1ZPP
> //Chris
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