I was imagining comsat builders salivating over how many transponders they
could fit on a Battlestar Galactica geostationary satellite, but as John
Stoffel noted in a different thread, GSO slots are an issue. With that kind
of mass available, you could also put on a lot of stationkeeping
propellant, proximity radars, etc., and really squeeze those suckers up
there. I guess there are RF interference issues but that's what we have EEs
for!
On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 8:30 AM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Wed, 7 Feb 2018, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
It will take time for a substantial heavylift market to develop.
Time, or a high-volume government customer. Say, a serious human
deep-space exploration program that actually wanted to accomplish something
interesting for the ~$4G/year that's the likely max politically-practical
funding.
Even that will take time to materialize to the point that it's actually
spending money on launches. It has the strength that because it's a
command economy, it can (in principle) make fast decisions, so at least you
know the business is coming; it has the compensating weakness that it can
also change its mind quickly later.
Henry