Re: [amsat-bb] AMSAT-NA solution: DX (HEO) to attract more interest and revenue

29 Jul 2019

      Students all over the Western World can do this...
Just not students in the USA and Canada.
https://amsat-uk.org/2019/07/21/high-school-students-in-brazil-building-qo-1...
Bernard,
KC9SGV
Sent from my iPad
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On Jul 29, 2019, at 10:08 AM, KC9SGV kc9sgv@gmail.com wrote:
Sent from my iPad
Begin forwarded message:
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From: KC9SGV kc9sgv@gmail.com
Date: July 29, 2019 at 10:00:55 AM CDT
To: Zach Leffke zleffke@vt.edu
Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AMSAT-NA solution: DX (HEO) to attract more interest and revenue
Excellent points and thoughts by Dan and Zach.
I might just add that yes, we have ITAR and EAR, but would asking a future South American commercial GEO communications or TV satellite effort to just lend us a standby transponder or two, be a violation of these laws ?
(Existing power, budget, etc.)
We could act naive and just ask.
Sometimes, just asking, is all that is needed.
Especially if STEM is pushed.
Bernard,
KC9SGV
Sent from my iPad
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On Jul 29, 2019, at 9:31 AM, Zach Leffke via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
Good summary Dan.
I have nothing major to add, but would like to make two statements:

through the VT/AMSAT partnership in the past we explored opportunities for both HEO and GEO missions.  The most 'real' of those opportunities involved a possible GEO mission on an Air Force satellite, with VT engineers bridging the military/ham radio sides.  HEO was a briefer opportunity, and sadly neither of the opportunities panned out (though technically GEO is 'on hold indefinitely'.....).  From my work with the Hume Center at VT and the Space@VT group, I will attempt to keep my eyes open for similar opportunities in the future, and if something appears to have 'meat on the bone' as a target of opportunity and potential rideshare/secondary payload, I'll bring it to AMSAT's attention. I would encourage others to do the same if they are in a similar position........it may be we don't pay for a HEO/GEO, but rather an odd confluence of events makes something materialize in our favor....and we should be ready, willing, and able to take advantage of those situations....

I also constantly remind folks (from students to gov't officials when the opportunity presents itself) about Dan's last statement that Ham radio made the secondary launch market. OSCAR-1 launched 4 years and change after Sputnik-1, and I love watching eyes widen when folks realize what that means (especially the gov't types).

-Zach, KJ4QLP
P.S.  LOVE the positive direction of this thread...
-- 
Research Associate
Aerospace Systems Lab
Ted & Karyn Hume Center for National Security & Technology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Work Phone: 540-231-4174
Cell Phone: 540-808-6305
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On 7/29/19 10:08 AM, Daniel Schultz via AMSAT-BB wrote:
On July 28, 2019 6:46:20 PM CDT, Ev Tupis via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org
wrote:
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What are the top barriers to revisiting highly elliptical and AO-40 type
goals?
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Ev, W2EV
We would all love to have another HEO satellite, however the ecosystem in
which we live today has changed a great deal since AMSAT built AO-10, AO-13
and AO-40 a couple of decades ago:

The launch market has become saturated with small satellites. In the

1970's, 80's and 90's, AMSAT was often the only entity that was willing to put
a satellite on top of a new untested launch vehicle. Today every university on
the planet has its own satellite project, along with more and more high
schools and even a few elementary schools. AMSAT is working with some of these
universities to carry ham radio transponders on their satellites, but the
university satellite mission is different from our mission, they just want to
throw together something fast and cheap that can launch before the students
graduate, and they don't need to get to HEO to do that. Long term reliability
is not part of their equation.
Commercial and Government entities have also discovered the value of small
satellites, and the launch market has reacted to that by charging market-based
prices for launches that AMSAT used to get for free or at highly discounted
rates. We have to compete against commercial enterprises funded by venture
capital, and because of the non-commercial nature of amateur radio, we can't
use the same business model of charging the end users to recover our costs.
NASA can and does launch small Cubesats for educational and scientific
purposes that fit into the NASA mission, but amateur radio communications by
itself does not advance the NASA mission. We need to find partners in the
educational and scientific world to get launches through this program.
Because Cubesats have dominated the satellite market, there are no more
affordable launches for satellites the size of AO-13, let alone AO-40. We are
now faced with the need to cram the functionality of an AO-13 satellite into a
3U (or possibly 6U) Cubesat. We may or we may not be able to do that, there is
a limit to the ability to cram 50 Kg of payload into a 5 Kg box. While Moore's
Law has enabled today's electronics technology to be smaller and lighter than
it was two decades ago, remember that satellites are driven by Shannon's Law,
not by Moore's Law. We need to generate electrical power and we need antenna
gain to carry out a satellite communications mission. AO-13 was a simple
spinning satellite that was big enough to accept the inefficiencies of
off-pointed solar arrays. On a Cubesat we would need to keep the smaller solar
arrays precisely aimed at the Sun and the antennas aimed at the Earth, and
this requires sophisticated three axis control systems.

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that came into force

about 20 years ago have placed severe restrictions on our ability to work with
foreign partners. AO-40 was built by a partnership of more than a dozen
countries all contributing parts, subsystems and money to get it done. Today
we are cut off from the rest of the world. Building a wall around the USA has
never made us safe or prosperous.

Orbital debris regulations now require satellite builders to prove to the

FCC that the satellite will reenter in 25 years or less. In highly inclined
elliptical orbits such as AO-13 we can possibly exploit solar and lunar
resonances that will bring down the satellite in a decade or two, but in the
lower inclination GTO launches that are more common, we would be dependent on
rocket thrust to provide the delta-V to lower the perigee. If you look at the
NORAD catalog, most of the spent rocket bodies left in GTO remain there for a
long time unless they are deliberately de-orbited.
All of these factors have lined up to make the AMSAT mission much more
difficult than it was 20 years ago. Spaceflight is hard, and if we don't have
the fortitude to meet the new challenges, than we will not be part of it in
the future. I believe that we can and we will have new HEO satellites but we
won't be doing it under the rules that we operated under in the past. If
somebody wanted to write a check for $20 million, we could buy a HEO launch to
whatever orbit we wanted, but in the absence of such support we will have to
use cleverness and guile to get it done. I have constantly reminded the
satellite professionals that it was the hams who created the secondary launch
market that they now enjoy, but I have have so far not seen much interest from
them in reciprocating that favor.
73, Dan Schultz N8FGV

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