Bill Ress wrote: 
Hi Lou,

Perhaps you can talk Frank into making AMSAT an official 
educational/research division of NASA. Would affiliate status work?

Whoa - could something along those lines happen?? Hey, I'm for trying 
anything that might work. Come to think of it, I'm really not clear how 
the university CubeSats are treated by ITAR. I don't recall any of the 
participants complaining about ITAR. Someone got the answer??
If you look at the ITAR regs, commercial satellites can be exported, under the rules Chuck stated. Since AO-51 was
we elected to have SpaceQuest handle  the all details export to Moscow and thence Kazakhstan.

Most of the CubeSats have been flown by bona fide educational organizations and/or under support of NASA, NSF, DoE and other gov't agencies. Educational organizations have  negotiated away most of the onerous rules. Personally, I have advocated getting a disposition that AMSAT, as a 501c(3) scientific/education organization, is an  educational entity.

It is interesting to note, as an aside, AFAIK a decade ago, the Republican congress wrote the tough ITAR export rules after Loral (previously known as Philco/Ford) told the Chinese why they were having control system problems on their LongMarch rocket. At the time Loral was a major Silicon Valley contributor to the Clintons. Guess what US firm is the probable source for a Geostationary ride is?

73, Tom