As I see it, Paul's statement is the bottom line when it comes to the future of HEO's. In my mind it's highly conceivable that P3E will be completed and ready to go, yet left languishing in storage somewhere while AMSAT-DL struggles to find a way to launch it. That's why I said the AMSAT NA vision statement seemed all wet . It's midway through 2008 and someone honestly thinks we can "deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012" ??? Reality check folks! Even if you could engineer and build the birds overnight, it seems highly unlikely you would get them in orbit by then. I hope I'm wrong...I really do. Meantime, we'd better hope for more projects like Delfi C-3 and Kiwi-sat and maybe a resurrection of FO-29. Heck, as long as we are being as unrealistic as the vision statement, let's hope for a miraculous ressurection of AO-40 as well! 73, Michael W4HIJ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Williamson" kb5mu@amsat.org To: k7zt@suddenlink.net Cc: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:52 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: AMSAT NA
As screwed up as our development organization is, engineering is NOT the bottleneck on Eagle. Simplifying the engineering task will not speed up Eagle. A launch is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the bottleneck on all HEO missions. The disarray you see is, in part, a result of the organization casting about desperately for a way to solve the launching (i.e., funding) problem. 73 -Paul kb5mu@amsat.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------