[amsat-bb] Re: Don't Fly SuitSat2 to ISS (rebuttal)

[John P. Toscano]

Rocky Jones wrote:

> As for AO-40.  It failed for the same reason that suitsat 1 did, and for the same reason that a lot of people who build their own airplane kill themselves every year trying to "test fly it"....the project got to big for the organization that was building it...ie their technical competence was insufficient for the task at hand.
> 
> But in your view (at least as best as I understand it) that evaluation should not be made because "at least they tried".
> 
> sorry I dont buy that logic
> 
> Robert WB5MZO

I'm not quite sure who is quoting whom, i.e. if the quote above is by 
Rocky, who sent the email, or Dan, who is mentioned above the quotation 
that I excerpted, or by Robert, who seems to have signed it.

In any case, irrespective of who wrote it, the gist of it is getting 
under my skin...

"As for AO-40. It failed..." (because) "...the project got to (sic) big 
for the organization that was building it...ie (sic) their technical 
competence was insufficient for the task at hand"

Spelling and grammar aside (or maybe small details REALLY ARE important? 
-- just a random thought), it is hard to disagree logically with the 
fundamental principle. In less inflammatory terms, a bunch of amateurs 
who were not really rocket scientists tried to build a satellite, and 
they weren't able to pull it off 100% successfully because they tried to 
do more than they were qualified to do.

Nevertheless, does this mean that we should:
   a) never try to do something harder than what we KNOW in advance that
      we are capable of accomplishing?

   b) never make mistakes, even though the only way to guarantee that
      you will never do anything WRONG is by DOING NOTHING AT ALL?

   c) LEARN from our mistakes and try again?

Personally, I vote for number 3. Note that choice #3 doesn't say "keep 
repeating our mistakes", it says "LEARN from them" and implies that when 
we try again, we do so in a manner wherein we are better prepared than 
we were the time before.

OK. I am mad as hell that someone failed to notice the bright red (or 
was it yellow) flag attached to a port cap that clearly said "REMOVE 
BEFORE FLIGHT", and caused the AO-40 propulsion system to self-destruct 
when activated. But dang it all, people should stop carping about the 
number, complexity, and even frequencies of the transponders that were 
placed aboard AO-40, because NONE of that had ANYTHING to do with the 
reason it failed. In fact, as I've said before, and has fallen on deaf 
ears before (or maybe it's on blind eyes), the COMPLEXITY of AO-40 is 
what SAVED it at all, made it usable at all, for the short time we had 
her around to enjoy. One transponder is blown up, switch over to a 
different one. Etc.

Call the AMSAT builders "incompetent" as many times as you want, it does 
not change one ugly fact. If you want a high earth orbit satellite (and 
I most certainly DO), IT MUST BE A COMPLEX DEVICE. ROCKET PROPULSION 
SYSTEMS ARE COMPLEX, BEST UNDERSTOOD BY ROCKET SCIENTISTS, AND YOU WILL 
NEVER GET TO H.E.O. WITHOUT ONE.

So, either stop whining that you want an H.E.O. satellite, or stop 
whining about wanting a satellite that is not complex. We either get the 
training/education/experience that allows us to "get it right", or we 
abandon the task and take up knitting. Or we keep stumbling around in 
the dark making lots of expensive mistakes. But as Scottie told Captain 
Kirk, "I'm sorry captain! I canna change the laws of physics!" A 
satellite in high earth orbit is a complex device.

And talk about having their heads inserted into their anal orifices, we 
have people saying, in essence, "you people are too stupid to make a 
complex high-earth-orbit satellite work", and at the same time, "you 
people are foolish to invest any energy into educating students about 
satellite technology", or even worse, "you are foolish to try to take 
students who are already interested in satellite technology and get them 
excited about the possibility of using that technology for 
non-commercial (i.e., AMATEUR) radio communications". Give me a break. 
Maybe one of those folks, a REAL rocket scientist, will someday be the 
person who leads us amateurs to success.

It all boils down to this. There is a nearly infinite number of 
non-productive choices that do not further the cause of progress. There 
are three fundamental choices that DO lead to progress:
   1) LEAD
   2) FOLLOW
   3) GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY AND LET SOMEONE ELSE DO IT

73 de WØJT