Hi Bob,

I tend to agree that it will be more and more difficult to deploy our own birds in space particularly LEO with strick rules about debris mitigation and deorbit.

However with all the development in space such as these huge commercial constellations being deployed if we may piggy back on same to have some transponders on-board it would be great.

I know that there was some unsuccessful attempts with Starlink to accommodate our payload, I don’t know about Kuiper, OneWeb and others whether we have approached them or not, nor about the planned Chinese planned constellation which may be also a great opportunity.

In a nutshell building and operating a satellite is will become more and more difficult for us in the future but if we are able to put transponders as secondary payload on commercial missions it may just become a commodity and if we can achieve this the future focus should be on interplanetary HAM communications.

Just my thoughts

73

Jean Marc (3B8DU)

On Nov 29, 2024, at 7:15 PM, Bob Hammond via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:

I'm concerned about the future of amateur radio in space with the crowding of LEO with commercial satellites (Starlink and Project Kuiper), the increasing influence of commercial entities in government regarding FCC frequency allocations, the increased cost of amateur satellites due to the need for deorbiting hardware, etcetera.

Have I invested in amateur satellite hardware that is soon to become obsolete?

I think these are valid questions and come from a Life Member of AMSAT.

Bob W7OTJ

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