At 05:26 AM 10/30/2007, Robert McGwier wrote:
First, I have to say this is fantastic!
Intelsat offers both! We are asking for Piggy back for us and will ask for secondary payload should it be required for P3E.
I'm curious why they're going for it. What's in it for Intelsat? Not being picky, just curious how it looks from their perspective.
We just have to face some very very hard realities. There has not been a high earth orbit bird from us for years because of the lack of launches available to us. We have to be creative to get them launched. We are attempting to do exactly that. In our case, what makes us attractive to funding is piggyback.
A fantastic effort from all involved no doubt. I'm certainly looking forward to these sats seeing the light of day. And as for linking, I agree that Earth -> Sat -> Earth -> Sat -> Earth (as opposed to Earth -> Sat -> Sat -> Earth) is going to be easier to manage in the longer run. keep the complicated bits on the ground where they can be serviced. :) Also means we don't need another set of antennas pointing out into space.
73 de VK3JED http://vkradio.com