Lol Ok just throw common sense out the window and there you have it? No,
I don't think so!
Nothing that makes progress on low cost access to space is a waste of
time IMO.
What a blow hard! lol
If you can't see the sense in what I've said I can't force you to give
it ground.
It is what it is and time will tell who's right and who's wrong.
I will stand my ground as long as there is breath in me or I get proven
wrong. Oh I admit there is not much ground for me to stand on at the
moment. But I have faith in my fellow rocketeers and in myself that we
can overcome that small ground if we work together.
Just seems like such a waste of good talent that could be otherwise
useful and supportive IMO.
What a grinch!
There are no contradictions it's actually very simple and straight
forward.
Rockets need infrastructure and purpose to become reality.
If people are interested in small launchers these are facts that need to
be dealt with.
What's wrong is building rockets that serve only the ego of one builder.
Space has to be a collaboration to be successful and if amateurs are
going to have a place in this progress that needs to be addressed!
First!
That starts with proving to the powers that be that we can and do have
the right stuff to achieve these lofty goals. It's not all about the
rocket or the satellite. Which is where we all seem to be putting the
cart before the horse! Most of the time.
I WANT to see someone succeed at orbit with amateur status. I don't want
to see them fail. Arocket is an amateur list trying to bridge the gap!
(which it is a very large gap today)
Putting down ideas that would really be truly helpful to amateurs is
blasphemy!
Amateurs will need an infrastructure all their own to accomplish real
goals is all I've said and we need to get together on something along
these lines to be successful.
If you cant handle that I don't know what else I can say.
But you can not silence me. No way.
Monroe
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AR] Re: "infrastructure" (was Re: Amateur solid rockets for
...)
From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, December 10, 2017 5:06 pm
To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Sun, 10 Dec 2017, Monroe L. King Jr. wrote:
So you think tracking satellites is OT for Arocket? I disagree!
It's got nothing at all to do with rocketry except *perhaps* to increase
the market for a type of rocketry -- low-cost orbital -- that is still
rather speculative at the moment. (Even the current crop of cubesat
launchers in development are not going to be down in that price bracket.)
So the connection is pretty tenuous.
It is true you can only track one sat at a time but with a big enough
network more satellites can be tracked...
Higher bands and higher data rates are NOT needed with this type of
tracking network. THAT IS the reason for this type of network...
We need to bring space access CLOSER to the people in order to achieve
that goal of low cost access.
I'm sorry, but there seem to be me to be deep contradictions in this.
You say the goal is "getting access to satellites to the people", but then
you propose a communications infrastructure that couldn't possibly scale
to the point of being useful for that -- not with VHF/UHF and a thin
scattering of one-bird-at-a-time ground stations. There is no meaningful
"access for the people" if the answer to "when can I get some network time
for the satellite I'm building and want to launch next year?" is "well, we
can pencil you in for two days in March 2021...".
If your idea of "the people" is "me and my friends", it would kinda work.
But how will your network handle 75% of the universities and 10% of the
high schools in the US building their own satellites and flying them, all
in the same year? The answer is "um, well, it can't", so you're not
really talking about providing access to everyone, just to the lucky few
who get in early or have the right friends.
As I said before it could advance and develop over time as well.
Sure, you need to start somewhere, but you need to know where you're going
too. Vague handwaving about "it could advance" is not going to deliver
"access to the people" -- the growth plan needs to be there at the start,
and you need to avoid picking technologies that inherently impose severe
limits. Nobody's going to make plans based on using your network if it's
clearly going to be bursting at the seams by the time they fly. Is it
just a proof of principle? For what?
How will it scale to handle 1000 satellites? If you can't answer that
today, with numbers, you're not serious about providing "access to the
people", because that's just the beginning. The numbers don't match the
rhetoric; when you talk about VHF/UHF and a network of 64 ground stations,
it sure looks like you're thinking of "the people" as meaning "me and my
friends".
(How to credibly do 1000 satellites? One thought: consider exploiting an
existing global network that's already set up to handle thousands of
simultaneous users -- build a cubesat-priced 0.5U Iridium transceiver.
Maybe not easy, and not a great solution in several ways, but it *will*
scale to those numbers and beyond.)
Anyway, I've wasted enough time on this...
Henry
