I may be pummeled for suggesting this to an enthusiastic community with many opinions. But if there are US and international hams able to cobble at least a million USD in the bank, they should consider buying test flights from any nanolauncher company where their payload would be the primary (and possibly the only payload) to orbit (Caveat Emptor, if it fails you dont get money back but you may get launch insurance coverage to recover damages). 

After any sich launch,  SmallSat EP can be engaged to gradually raise the orbit. A paper analysis that was developed using analytical geometry tools and Aerospace Corporation KnowledgeBase based upon the then hypothetical VAT thrusters being designed at GWU MpNL might be of interest, which I believe now was also covered by  Jan King VK6GEY in a previous 2014 AMSAT HEO mission proposal. Many developments have happened since this paper was published, including space missions and even dual stage integrated EP VAT thruster configuration development. 

Haque, Samudra E., Michael Keidar, and Taeyoung Lee. "Low-thrust orbital maneuver analysis for cubesat spacecraft with a micro-cathode arc thruster subsystem." 33rd International Electric Propulsion Conference. 2013.

Online free to read: http://electricrocket.org/IEPC/ujed2guj.pdf

 BtW, to date several nanolauncher efforts have started and are "plodding" along the tech maturation stages of rocket flight. 

One outfit I was associated with a decade ago was www.interorbitalsystems.com which at least has functional rockets systems being matured at a slow and steady pace. 

They might not be everybody's cup of tea so others could also be contacted, I believe Scottish outfits are well on the way up up amd away, or at least the pictures indicate so. 


Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G, an AT&T 5G smartphone
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From: Daniel Schultz <n8fgv@usa.net>
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2022 9:42:37 AM
To: amsat-bb@amsat.org <amsat-bb@amsat.org>
Subject: [AMSAT-BB] Re: Phase IV satellite
 
Rocket Lab's definition of "sensible cost" is $10 million. That is indeed a
bargain price for a dedicated HEO mission. Do we think that AMSAT could raise
that amount of money in a sensible amount of time?

Dan N8FGV

------ Original Message ------
Received: Thu, 11 Aug 2022 10:28:36 PM EDT
From: Wendy and Terry Osborne <wandtosborne@gmail.com>
To: amsat-bb@amsat.org
Subject: [AMSAT-BB] Re: Phase IV satellite

> With the recent success of Capstone and the Rocket Lab Photon
> spacecraft, it may be possible to put a transponder on a Photon mission
> to GEO at a sensible cost.


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