[Ground-station] Call for discussion: ORI satellite program

[Robert McGwier]

There is nothing like a launch to focus your activity and fund raise.  To
that end,  ORI along with any partners it wishes to engage, should propose
a NASA ELANA mission as a way to start.  ORI, like all others, will find
the worst hurdle of all, after getting a launch is regulatory.

You cannot get a license to operate on almost any frequency in the world
without stepping on a landmine.  This is the reason people constantly
pressuring and walking up to the edge of legal in using the amateur
satellite service.  When ITU/IARU started turning satellites down  for
their official blessing (Coordination) the FCC started implementing
scientific licenses and getting them as close as possible to the amateur
radio bands in the amateur satellite service.

Like Phil, I strongly urge that you work with an entity that has space
flight experience,  and is civic minded,  doesn't want a fortune to work on
the spacecraft and is experienced in getting ELANA launches.

Bob


On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 10:00 PM, Bruce Perens via Ground-Station <
ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:

> ORI can and should have a satellite program. There are a lot of things our
> volunteers are interested in that are not on AMSAT's road map, and won't be
> in the near future. We can fly them. I would like to start soliciting
> grants and otherwise raising money. There is one problem:
>
> I don't know anything about satellites. I am trying to rectify that issue
> as fast as possible, but although I am a competent systems programmer and
> evangelist and have run grant projects for ARPA and the Government of
> Norway, I am not an engineer. So, I won't ever be the principal
> investigator of this sort of project. But I can sell a grant where someone
> else is the PI. Besides, administration and fundraising for ORI is going to
> be a big enough job.
>
> So, we are going to need some technical leadership to step up. But maybe
> first, we should start discussing what we want to do.
>
> I have some ideas that might be naive, don't be afraid to tell me so. But
> hopefully these will start discussion.
>
> One thing that has struck me about AMSAT is that they have so far operated
> with only NASA as their launch partner, and they've always built a
> satellite only after there was a clear launch opportunity. Today, we have
> commercial launch providers as well as the government ones, we have
> relationships with them that we *could *start to use, and they have a
> good deal of experimental and below-capacity launches going on. For
> example, TESS (a NASA mission launched by SpaceX) was quite tiny and even
> with the orbit they targeted there was lots of capacity left in the rocket.
>
> So, my idea was to run an "Opportunistic" satellite program, in which we
> would construct cubesats and P-pods without a clear launch opportunity in
> advance, and then approach commercial launch providers (and others) with
> ready-to-fly equipment in hand when opportunities come up.
>
> We can also make better academic partnerships. Fully 50% of academic
> cubesats fail, due to lack of experience, poor component choice and
> engineering decisions, and because they don't understand radio well. There
> is also the issue that University projects aren't well equipped to continue
> to control the satellite over a period of years, and that FCC doesn't want
> paid employees as satellite licensees or operators if they're licensed in
> the Amateur service.
>
> So, my thought was to partner with universities and to provide them with
> finished cubesats with room for their experiment, using Karn's modem rather
> than the poor AX.25 implementations they usually use, and operating the
> satellite for them after launch. They would get the launch and run their
> experiment. The satellite would be a hamsat during or after the experiment.
>
> What do we want to fly? Well, obviously our digital communications system.
> What else?
>
>     Thanks
>
>     Bruce
>
> --
> Bruce Perens K6BP - Standards committee chair, license review committee
> member, Open Source Initiative
> President, Open Research Institute
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Ground-Station at lists.openresearch.institute
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>
>


-- 
Bob McGwier
Founder, Federated Wireless, Inc
Founder and Technical Advisor, HawkEye 360, Inc
Research Professor Virginia Tech
Chief Scientist:  The Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and
Technology
Senior Member IEEE, Facebook: N4HYBob, ARS: N4HY
Faculty Advisor Virginia Tech Amateur Radio Assn, Trustee K4KDJ
Member of PVRC (Roanoke-Blacksburg), TAPR,  life member of ARRL and AMSAT,
NRVR.ORG (Rocketry)
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