I have to disagree in the strongest of terms about disregarding HEOs "for now" which in essence will mean to become forever. Until, or unless, we could come up with something along the lines of a "Cell" system of leos, we are missing one of the major advantages of Satellites and that is almost guaranteed communications for long periods (several hours) at a time... I am in no way denigrating LEOs as they have their place, but in the major schema of things HEOS will and always have rule given the state of communications art...
I understand the desire to "do something" but I suggest that the major thrust should be directed at getting a transponder on the moon (or Mars) or some more KISS type HEOs up... Cubesats can take care of themselves if we do, Heck I would even join in and participate in something like I just mentioned, I just can not get excited about "Contest style" contacts with a 5-12 min window most of the time... I do that on 2 meters scatter all I want,
DE Jack - KD1PE
----- Original Message ----- From: "David - KG4ZLB" [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:09 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Unused sats
All good points but forget the HEO's for now - we just need a good source of regularly launched easy sats in LEO to augment the few working birds we have and replace what we have to as they fall out of the sky or just stop working.