As I think on this more, this is classic diplomacy in action. We, the ham community are going to need to do a polite dance around issues like roughness, etc.
The answer about refunding is that no one will. If we crab loudly enough, it will not be possible to do more things like this. IF we paid full freight, then yes we'd have more of a 'right', but I'll bet that entities who have experiments done have some sort of clause in their agreement which indemnifies the ISS if things go wrong. The effort for this can't be less than $500,000 if you totaled it up.
Space is still a very experimental workplace. ...How long did the various US astronauts train for Hubble missions? I'm not excusing rough or really careless handing, but things happen.
--STeve Andre' wb8wsf en72
On 08/03/11 17:15, Michael Schulz wrote:
So let me play devils advocate here for a second or three. When I was watching the stream, it sure looked like they didn't really give a rats ass about the satellite. The fact that these spacewalks don't occur every day tells me that there's some effort behind them. So how can it be that the folks responsible did not have their act together and check something truly obvious like .. uhm .. an antenna? I mean it's not like we're talking about a software bug that only could've been uncovered after it was all done. No, we're talking about an external, visible and physical thing.
Now here's the rub. If AMSAT paid for it (to which degree and what percentage doesn't really matter) and the satellite does not have the desired and expected (and paid for) functionality because either it was damaged during the deployment or before (also doesn't really matter) who will refund AMSAT? Even more important what's the follow up to this?
I sure did not get the impression that it was a well coordinated mission. The communication between the two seemed a bit .. well let's say unprofessional.
Cheers, Mike K5TRI
On Aug 3, 2011, at 4:06 PM, Andy Kellner wrote:
No .. Linear .. Transponder !
Thank you very much Alexander Samokutyaev, Sergei Volkov and Roscosmos for a job well done.
VK4FHAW