On 28.01.2012 01:34, Andrew Glasbrenner wrote:
Back to P3E. I like David's idea. I'd like even more to hear something similar from Peter or Hartmut. I've donated to P3E in the past, and voted as a BOD member to help fund their lab out of the -NA reserves several years ago. I love the project, but until I hear a little more positive about what's currently going on over there, my money will continue to go to Kiwisat, FunCube, and first and foremost, Fox. I am the proud sponsor of a solar cell on Fox, and hope to be able to do more this year.
Have you heard we find out if we (AMSAT-NA and Fox) get one of the NASA launches on Monday?
Hi Drew et all,
indeed all money donated to the P3-E project goes into the P3-E project and we are grateful for all those direct contributions and support in particular from many individual AMSAT-NA members and indeed many other hams from around the world. Due to ITAR, unfortunatly AMSAT-NA had to stop all it's official support (including money, which hurts) for P3-E several years ago, as you wrote.. For example, we had to re-build and continue the IHU hardware and software development on our own resources. The same for the original SDX development, etc. The S/C is still sitting in our clean room in Marburg and waiting to be finalized. Having no firm launch date yet, activities slowed down in some areas, while other activities and groups are highly active and well alive. The biggest problem is indeed having no firm launch date yet.. this is frustration for everyone involved. We all put so much volunteer work and time into it...
When I read "Forget P3-E, build an MEO" (that's how I read it first) I was indeed very concerned.. should we really forget all the hard work, time and money which already went into the project and scrap it??? And what than? No - I'm not giving up...
OK, reading the second time I understood that Dave meant we should put P3-E on VEGA and use it's propulsion to go to MEO...
Unfortunately things are not so easy.. P3-E was designed to go from GTO into HEO. For example, all the magnetic attitude control won't work in MEO anymore, etc.. Thus we were looking for GTO, but would it fit on VEGA? Indeed, we could try an elliptical orbit with a much lower apogee, but than we have to carefully study the effects of orbit resonances which caused AO-13 to burn-up too soon. However, I do sympathize with the idea and we thought about it in the past, but discarded the idea for reasons I have almost forgotten now. So, perhaps we should look again at it.. do some orbit and fuel calculation, study orbit perturbations and orbit stability again and see what the impact will be on the S/C design. Any volunteers for that?
As Nitin wrote, we contacted AMSAT-India to help with contacts to ISRO, we are in contact with SpaceX and I recently had a personal letter exchange with the CEO of Arianespace. If a launch possibility arises, we will be on it. It is not always a matter of money, but also a matter of compatibility to slip in. Ariane-5 for example is a real workhorse now with standard launch configurations. Any change on that costs them a lot of money. If there is an "unusual" configuration were they have to ask industry for a configuration change, than it might also be easier for us to slip in.. That simply means we have to wait for the right moment or finding new qualification flight.. Ariane 5ME is such opportunity we are actively working on, but this will not be before 2018.
In the last several month our work and priority was mostly focused regarding our funding situation and to improve it. Although most people still did not understand it, but the P5-A project is one these opportunity we need. It is well alive and currently heavily discussed within the highest ranks inside of our government organizations. Apart from this, we are currently working on another project to fly an hosted payload on a GEO satellite... A decision is not made yet, but if we get the opportunity it will provide some neat communication capabilities. Our previous heritage and P5 will help here too..
I'm currently having some serious family matters to take care off, so please be patient if I do not reply quickly..
73s Peter DB2OS