On 3/3/2015 06:58, Paul Stoetzer wrote:
"Maybe food for thought stateside, how something similar could be negotiated with the NA space industry ?"
I believe there was an offer some years back from Intelsat to fly an amateur payload on one of their geostationary satellites, but the ongoing costs were too high for AMSAT-NA to finance.
Unfortunately, no public corporation in the United States is going to donate extremely valuable surplus space and power on a geostationary satellite to the amateur radio community. In a country like Qatar, things like this may be done as a way of promoting national prestige, but to do something similar here, we'll have to figure out how to pay the bills.
Not to say that we aren't always looking and trying. Suggestions are always welcome! The AMSAT-NA leadership and some members and former directors/officers spend a lot of time trying to find ways for us to get to orbit be it Tony petitioning NASA to allow non-profits to participate in CSLI/ELaNa, Drew coming up with the Spaceflight launch opportunity, myself discussing disposal orbits with the launch folks at the Fox-1 MRR. And I know there are more that are going on but usually nothing is said to the team unless someone gets a nibble, and then not to the public until we have something on the hook because nobody likes vaporware. So like much of our engineering stuff, silence does not imply that nothing is happening.
Jerry Buxton, NØJY