If Eagle dies, so does technoloigy for AMSAT, and the Amateur Radio Community!
What is next? Quenched Arc? Spark? 200 KHz and down?
Art , KC6UQH
Hello Art.
Look, the BOD has a tough job. I spent 6 years as a "volunteer" but have to get elected official (The President of my community association) and it is a thankless job. They have made their decision.....we will see how it works out.
But I would say this about technology.
Neither Technology nor technology development exist in a vacumn. NASA proves that daily with human spaceflight. Had human spaceflight ended after Skylab there is not a single way that The Republic would be different, except the taxpayers would not have funded a flawed agency, and a lot of very good talent would have been put to use doing something useful. Even my home community in Clear Lake City TX would be better off (the home of the Johnson Space Center).
NASA human spaceflight is technology for technologies sake. It has no effect on the rest of The Republic whatsoever. For all the hype NASA hasnt done a spin off in human spaceflight worth the money invested in it, since Apollo.
If AMSAT engineers have a lot of technology skills...good for them. On the other hand if the folks who use the satellites in the amateur community keep going down...what is the point in keeping a few people "up to speed" to do something that is not pumping the numbers of people who use the technology "up"?
Now say that whatever technology is orbited actually increased the amateur satellite community...
is that a good thing?
I think that it is the GOOD THING, the only good thing.
If the technology available makes the community larger I think that is a better thing then if the technology "rocks" but the group using it is smaller.
I close with this thought. Instead of Oscar 40, had the community gotten two more Oscar 13's. Pretty plain jane birds with not a lot of gizmos and Amsat engineers would have had to have been content with reinventing the wheel...but say instead of AO-40 as a pile of junk we had two more Oscar 13's that worked.
Dont you think it would have been a better deal then we got? Do you think that there would have been more or less people involved in HEO communications?
I think more...and I think that is a good thing.
Robert G. Oler WB5MZO/portable Life member AMSAT ARRL and a few other organizatiions.