[amsat-bb] Re: Fw: Re: [eu-amsat] AMSAT UK P3E Lecture Available

[Joe Westbrook]

"AMSAT-NA won't get another opportunity like that."

And your point is??  At least we would have ONE working HEO in my lifetime.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Trevor" <m5aka at yahoo.co.uk>
To: "AMSAT BB" <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 5:38 PM
Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Fw: Re: [eu-amsat] AMSAT UK P3E Lecture Available


> ----- Original Message -----
>> then why wouldn't we shift ALL
>> funding toward that effort?    Following the PE3 launch, if  any surplus
>> remains, the surplus could be transferred to the next HEO opportunity
>> (Eagle).  If no surplus remains then at least we would have one working
>> HEO deployed.
>
> The drawback is that would kill Phase-IV stone dead and AMSAT-NA won't get 
> another opportunity like that.
>
> There is unfortunately no existing big pot of money in the Amateur 
> Satellite community to fund satellites/launches. Clearly funds have to be 
> raised from collaboration with non-Amateur organisations wherever 
> possible.
>
> Just building an HEO satellite can cost half a million+ dollars. In 
> commercial satellite terms that's really cheap but it's still a struggle 
> for Amateurs to raise particlarly when you consider there may be currently 
> little more than a thousand Active satellite operators world-wide. Off the 
> top of my head I can only think of three AMSAT groups that have more than 
> 100 members, AMSAT-NA, AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-DL. (I really would love to be 
> proved wrong on that).
>
> The half million+ dollars is just to to build the sat, as has been 
> mentioned many times there's the $4+ million for a commercial launch as 
> well.
>
> As an illustration of the funding issues take the 1.2 /2.4 GHz Amateur 
> Antennas that where installed on the Columbus Module of the ISS. Eight 
> months after launch Amateurs still haven't managed to raise the money to 
> pay for it, they are still 22,567 Euros short, see 
> http://www.ariss-eu.org/donations.htm
>
> AMSAT-DL has been trying to raise money for P3E with it's pixel page, see
>
> Get into Orbit with AMSAT-DL's P3E-Satellite
> http://www.p3e-satellite.org/index.pl?lang=en_EN
>
>>From looking at it you can get a rough idea of how much they've raised so 
>>far and how much further there is to go.
>
> AMSAT-ZL are trying to raise NZ$12,000, that's 8,454 U.S. dollars, for 
> KiwiSAT to complete the design and construction of the basic unit to 
> flight ready status. I hope they are eventually successfull in managing to 
> raise from Amateurs the $8K dollars they require for that stage of the 
> project, see http://www.kiwisat.org.nz/funding.html
>
> I think we need as many different AMSAT groups as possible to press ahead 
> with their own developments and tap whatever local funding sources may be 
> available in their country.
>
> The more satellites that are built the greater the probability that one or 
> more will successfully make it into orbit. We have to remember even 
> 'reliable' launchers fail sometimes.
>
> 73 Trevor M5AKA
>
>
>
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