India has been sending up experimental satellites to test their GSLV. I suppose there are other similar LSPs that are willing to launch for free with a greater risk of things landing in the Pacific.
As a regular on QO-100 I highly recommend it. First, it is always on. If you want to work Germany from here (India), this is open 24x7. I am building a small backpackable station now with a 2 feet wide dish (scrapped from a DTH receiver), a 10 GHz downconverter (3 dollars), and a NRF24L01 as a +20dBm CW transmitter (2 dollars). I use a small phone tripod to mount the dish.
For demonstration purposes, it is a winner. There is no FM stomping, none of the wait and watch while the kids are getting impatient. Last convention we streamed our video live to hams in Europe, without touching the telecom infrastructure at all.
If you have to sell something to the grant committees, it is this : Shouldn't the world have a telecom network that is non-profit, globally available to potentially every citizen of the world? Sure, it doesn't stream Youtube, but it is more than capable of getting messages in and out. With the QO-100 covering one part of the globe, a second satellite would complete the loop over the american continents.
- f