A year-in-the-making ARISS project has a roomful of community members, media, and the students all in attendance - and a world-wide audience watching. It was proper to quickly address that problem for that wide audience.
Our satellite deployment does not have that “immediate” and huge audience. And it also has the “disadvantage” of control operators not being able to access it 24/7 uninterrupted for diagnostics.
I see the responses by responsible parties to these projects has been - from marketing, public relations, and educational perspectives - quite appropriate.
For the satellite: AMSAT has requested that hams world-wide monitor the satellite and make reception reports. Kind of “reasonable,” since seriously interested hams were doing that from the moment of deployment.
For ARISS: A greater audience was educated as to how all this is an experiment - and that the students’ curriculum the past year has included some very exciting STEAM topics.
No unusual delays … no conspiracies of hiding anything from anybody … no “sides” to take. We have two very different projects - each being handled by phenomenal minds who, for the most part, are volunteering their talents for us.
Clint Bradford K6LCS
On Jan 29, 2021, at 5:37 AM, John Brier johnbrier@gmail.com wrote:
This ARISS statement was sent out within hours of the failed school contact, before most people even knew there was a problem.