[amsat-bb] AMSAT-NA solution: DX (HEO) to attract more interest and revenue

[Daniel Schultz]

On July 28, 2019 6:46:20 PM CDT, Ev Tupis via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
wrote:
>What are the top barriers to revisiting highly elliptical and AO-40 type
goals?
>Ev, W2EV

We would all love to have another HEO satellite, however the ecosystem in
which we live today has changed a great deal since AMSAT built AO-10, AO-13
and AO-40 a couple of decades ago:

1. The launch market has become saturated with small satellites. In the
1970's, 80's and 90's, AMSAT was often the only entity that was willing to put
a satellite on top of a new untested launch vehicle. Today every university on
the planet has its own satellite project, along with more and more high
schools and even a few elementary schools. AMSAT is working with some of these
universities to carry ham radio transponders on their satellites, but the
university satellite mission is different from our mission, they just want to
throw together something fast and cheap that can launch before the students
graduate, and they don't need to get to HEO to do that. Long term reliability
is not part of their equation. 

Commercial and Government entities have also discovered the value of small
satellites, and the launch market has reacted to that by charging market-based
prices for launches that AMSAT used to get for free or at highly discounted
rates. We have to compete against commercial enterprises funded by venture
capital, and because of the non-commercial nature of amateur radio, we can't
use the same business model of charging the end users to recover our costs.
NASA can and does launch small Cubesats for educational and scientific
purposes that fit into the NASA mission, but amateur radio communications by
itself does not advance the NASA mission. We need to find partners in the
educational and scientific world to get launches through this program.

Because Cubesats have dominated the satellite market, there are no more
affordable launches for satellites the size of AO-13, let alone AO-40. We are
now faced with the need to cram the functionality of an AO-13 satellite into a
3U (or possibly 6U) Cubesat. We may or we may not be able to do that, there is
a limit to the ability to cram 50 Kg of payload into a 5 Kg box. While Moore's
Law has enabled today's electronics technology to be smaller and lighter than
it was two decades ago, remember that satellites are driven by Shannon's Law,
not by Moore's Law. We need to generate electrical power and we need antenna
gain to carry out a satellite communications mission. AO-13 was a simple
spinning satellite that was big enough to accept the inefficiencies of
off-pointed solar arrays. On a Cubesat we would need to keep the smaller solar
arrays precisely aimed at the Sun and the antennas aimed at the Earth, and
this requires sophisticated three axis control systems.

2. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that came into force
about 20 years ago have placed severe restrictions on our ability to work with
foreign partners. AO-40 was built by a partnership of more than a dozen
countries all contributing parts, subsystems and money to get it done. Today
we are cut off from the rest of the world. Building a wall around the USA has
never made us safe or prosperous.

3. Orbital debris regulations now require satellite builders to prove to the
FCC that the satellite will reenter in 25 years or less. In highly inclined
elliptical orbits such as AO-13 we can possibly exploit solar and lunar
resonances that will bring down the satellite in a decade or two, but in the
lower inclination GTO launches that are more common, we would be dependent on
rocket thrust to provide the delta-V to lower the perigee. If you look at the
NORAD catalog, most of the spent rocket bodies left in GTO remain there for a
long time unless they are deliberately de-orbited.

All of these factors have lined up to make the AMSAT mission much more
difficult than it was 20 years ago. Spaceflight is hard, and if we don't have
the fortitude to meet the new challenges, than we will not be part of it in
the future. I believe that we can and we will have new HEO satellites but we
won't be doing it under the rules that we operated under in the past. If
somebody wanted to write a check for $20 million, we could buy a HEO launch to
whatever orbit we wanted, but in the absence of such support we will have to
use cleverness and guile to get it done. I have constantly reminded the
satellite professionals that it was the hams who created the secondary launch
market that they now enjoy, but I have have so far not seen much interest from
them in reciprocating that favor.

73, Dan Schultz N8FGV