It's hard to know why people do or don't do the things they do, but if I were to speculate, I would say it seems like some of the AMSAT folks involved with Fox might be sensitive to questions about failures. People naturally want to know why things don't work out, and when their questions aren't answered or aren't answered adequately enough, they become frustrated. When questions come out in a frustrated manner, that makes someone who is sensitive to questions/criticism even less able to answer forthrightly. Now we're at this point where everyone is walking on eggshells and no one is happy. Also, some people are throwing actual insults and attacks. The situation sucks.
The point about information being available vs being usable/valuable is a good point. Reminds me of the open source term RTFM, compared to helping someone who is trying to learn. Here I think something like RTFM is being used not to intimidate or belittle noobs, but to push aside questions people are uncomfortable with. Do the people deploying RTFM like responses even know the answer? I don't think so. But don't we all agree it's hard to know the answer? I think so. There isn't "code" to describe the exact and complete state and functioning of a satellite after it leaves earth. Everyone knows that. People just want to know what we do know so they can come to a conclusion based on that. Probably they will come to the same conclusion that AMSAT leadership/engineering came to.
All that said, it should be pointed out that Drew KO4MA answered a couple questions about this on Twitter. [1] Info/ideas that weren't included in the status update about RadFxSat-2 that Jerry wrote. [2]
Among other info Drew shared, he seemed to suggest that the lack of signal (from RadFxSat-2 and perhaps the other six or seven sats that were also not heard) could be due to the 2.5 year delay in launch.
Good point. I asked a follow up question but I guess Drew went to bed before answering it: "So it was deployed, it was switched on in that process, it should have started TXing 45mins later... I assume the batteries were charged before integration. Could they have completely drained since then (how long was that)? If so could they recharge [from solar power] and it could come alive?"
Note: in Jerry's status update he said 54 minutes is when beacon was supposed to start. Was that a typo that should have been 45? I think I saw another Fox satellite was supposed to start beaconing after 59 minutes. And just now I found a source that says "about 60". [3]
73, John Brier KG4AKV
1) https://twitter.com/glasbrenner/status/1352403957755355137 2) https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/list/amsat-bb@amsat.org/thread/TLCPTS4V... 3) https://www.amsat.org/getting-ready-for-radfxsat-fox-1b/
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 11:15 AM Corey Shields cshields@gmail.com wrote:
To be fair to AMSAT, there is a ton of documentation, papers, schematics, mechanical drawings, and reports that are published through the AMSAT journal and the annual symposium proceedings. Journal archives are available to members and symposium proceeding copies can be bought through the store.
That's not to say what you are looking for specifically is there, or that this is good enough for someone to consider it 'available'. I don't want to reopen the open source debate, but even when source code and hardware designs are "open" that does not mean they are in a usable / valuable format. I say this to highlight that there is a lot of information shared today.
-Corey KB9JHU