"AMSAT-NA won't get another opportunity like that."
And your point is?? At least we would have ONE working HEO in my lifetime.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Trevor" m5aka@yahoo.co.uk To: "AMSAT BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 5:38 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Fw: Re: [eu-amsat] AMSAT UK P3E Lecture Available
----- Original Message -----
then why wouldn't we shift ALL funding toward that effort? Following the PE3 launch, if any surplus remains, the surplus could be transferred to the next HEO opportunity (Eagle). If no surplus remains then at least we would have one working HEO deployed.
The drawback is that would kill Phase-IV stone dead and AMSAT-NA won't get another opportunity like that.
There is unfortunately no existing big pot of money in the Amateur Satellite community to fund satellites/launches. Clearly funds have to be raised from collaboration with non-Amateur organisations wherever possible.
Just building an HEO satellite can cost half a million+ dollars. In commercial satellite terms that's really cheap but it's still a struggle for Amateurs to raise particlarly when you consider there may be currently little more than a thousand Active satellite operators world-wide. Off the top of my head I can only think of three AMSAT groups that have more than 100 members, AMSAT-NA, AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-DL. (I really would love to be proved wrong on that).
The half million+ dollars is just to to build the sat, as has been mentioned many times there's the $4+ million for a commercial launch as well.
As an illustration of the funding issues take the 1.2 /2.4 GHz Amateur Antennas that where installed on the Columbus Module of the ISS. Eight months after launch Amateurs still haven't managed to raise the money to pay for it, they are still 22,567 Euros short, see http://www.ariss-eu.org/donations.htm
AMSAT-DL has been trying to raise money for P3E with it's pixel page, see
Get into Orbit with AMSAT-DL's P3E-Satellite http://www.p3e-satellite.org/index.pl?lang=en_EN
From looking at it you can get a rough idea of how much they've raised so far and how much further there is to go.
AMSAT-ZL are trying to raise NZ$12,000, that's 8,454 U.S. dollars, for KiwiSAT to complete the design and construction of the basic unit to flight ready status. I hope they are eventually successfull in managing to raise from Amateurs the $8K dollars they require for that stage of the project, see http://www.kiwisat.org.nz/funding.html
I think we need as many different AMSAT groups as possible to press ahead with their own developments and tap whatever local funding sources may be available in their country.
The more satellites that are built the greater the probability that one or more will successfully make it into orbit. We have to remember even 'reliable' launchers fail sometimes.
73 Trevor M5AKA
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