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

[Phil Karn]

On 4/23/18 13:16, Bdale Garbee wrote:

> That seems true for AMSAT-NA, but to me at least, it doesn't map to
> AMSAT-DL's history as well.  Of course, ever since the ITAR fiasco, it's
> been hard for those of us in the US to directly contribute to non -NA
> AMSAT work.  I really miss hanging out and working with our -DL
> friends... 

Me too. I do stay in contact with Karl Meinzer and Mario Lorenz, the
latter mainly about non-ham space activities like STEREO and ISEE-3,
both of which I helped him support at Bochum.

Their Voyager-1 DX shot and especially the Venus radar experiment were
real accomplishments.

> I had this little epiphany as we were walking back to the lab from the
> cafeteria that there were probably hundreds, if not thousands of such
> conversations that had gone on during the P3D / AO-40 development and
> launch campaign, each one of which involved a need for real technical
> expertise and practical experience to get to the right answer.

That's an excellent anecdote. Right on.

> There may not be any "secrets" to successfully building small
> satellites, but if you want to be successful there's a huge pile of
> stuff to comprehend and wrangle.

Yup. The devil is in the details, and the details will bit you. Like red
caps on rocket engine plumbing. Sigh.

Phil

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