[amsat-bb] OSCAR on amateur rocket

["William Leijenaar" <pe1rah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi AMSATs,

I just read on AMSAT-BB some interresting idea I also have been 
investigating a while ago :o)

>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

The problem is that you need a quiet large rocket compaired to the rockets 
of the amateur rocketeers. (I believe some will have them, but its like EME 
on 24GHz for hams what is also not available for all hams)

Second problem is that such a rocket is not cheap to build. Then this rocket 
needs also to be "smart" controlled to get it in the right orbit, and not 
that the satellite will finally come back to earth. Smart controlling means 
that you need to know altitude, speed, direction etc...
At least you will need a kind of radar tracking, you also need to make 
this...
Then its still not dure if the rocket is going like planned, you need to 
test it as well...

Another problem is the political problem. Not every country would like to 
see people launching rockets in the air... Therefor more urban areas like 
USA , Asia and Europe are already impossible as launch place.  But there are 
many more places on earth, like less urban areas what might be no problem, 
and where rocket failures don't make any vitums. I think about Australian 
desert, or maybe south Argentina, otherwise in the middle of the sea from a 
ship on international waters....

What about launching a satellite with on-board rocket into LEO and then let 
it slowly fly to a higher orbit. The americans also did it this way to get 
to the moon. They went from LEO directly to the moon. Just an idea...

73 de PE1RAH, William
---

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