Bob:
While you are looking at the plans for what we need to
accomplish in 2008, I think that in the RF area we should include a physical modeling
of at least the key parts of Tom Clark’s suggested phased array antenna.
We need to prove the principle. We will need the RF amplifiers and distributed
gain aspects of this antenna to meet our orbital RF power and directivity goals.
This then demands the creation of some real hardware – getting us past
the heise luft part of the
design into something that can point us to what the all-up, on-orbit hardware
should look like.
If this line is not examined, we then need to have a
proposal for what we should pursue..... Tom’s proposal seems like a reasonable
starting point. Such an project will require the efforts of a multi-technology
team.
’73,