Re: [amsat-bb] Going back to the moon in 2015

[Daniel Schultz <n8fgv@xxxxxxx>]

Bruce provides a good summary of the issues involved in placing ham radio gear
on the Moon. I would add one more to the list:

The Moon is very very far away, approximately ten times the distance of a
geostationary satellite. The path loss scales as distance squared, in both
directions (uplink and downlink), so the transmitter power and antenna
requirements will make it difficult for any but very well equipped amateurs to
work a moon-based repeater. Amsat's limited resources are best used to build
satellites that are high enough to see one hemisphere of the Earth, and no
higher. Once you get far enough away to see half the Earth there is nothing to
be gained and a big price to pay for going farther out. 

If NASA or some other country's space program decides to return astronauts to
the moon, we hams will certainly want to talk to them, and I hope that there
will be ham gear onboard any future lunar mission. But communicating with
astronaut-hams on the moon will be restricted to the most elite radio amateurs
with EME class stations. Going to the Moon in order to relay communications
from one ham on the ground to another ham on the ground makes no sense at all
and is not the best use of our resources. 

Dan Schultz N8FGV
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Bruce Bostwick wrote:

>Many previous discussions on this thread on this list, some of which 
>may be archived.

>The condensed version .. Any ham radio payload on the moon will have to 
>contend with three major problems:
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