[amsat-bb] Re: Ride to space

[Tony Langdon]

At 11:40 AM 10/30/2007, Lee McLamb wrote:

>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.

Sounds almost like the wheel has turned full circle and ham payloads 
are able to take advantage of unused launcher and payload space 
again.  Looking forward to seeing how this piggybacking on Intelsat 
works out.  :)


>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.

That sounds promising too.. :)

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