[amsat-bb] Re: Ride to space

[Lee McLamb]

On Monday 29 October 2007 17:07:53 Tony Langdon wrote:
> At 05:26 AM 10/30/2007, Robert McGwier wrote:
>
> First, I have to say this is fantastic!
>
> >Intelsat offers both!  We are asking for Piggy back for us and will ask
> >for secondary payload should it be required for P3E.
>
> I'm curious why they're going for it.  What's in it for
> Intelsat?  Not being picky, just curious how it looks from their
> perspective.

In addition to the policy issues Bob mentioned, the biggest change is that the 
launch vehicles have gotten significantly larger.  They've grown and 
standardized to the point where the price/kg to orbit is not so much driven 
by mass but by engineering and production costs.  The result is that Intelsat 
can host payloads of our expected mass without having to off load a 
compensating amount of fuel.  Since they can launch fully fueled the impact 
to the spacecraft lifetime and their ability to generate revenue is 
minimized.

During my talk at the Symposium I used the WGS and AEHF satellite programs as 
examples of GTO launches with excess capacity.  They have 1500 lbs and 1000 
lbs respectively and there will be multiple flights of each.  So there are 
also other avenues being explored as well.


73,
Lee-KU4OS