DirecTV lost a bird?

Another point that nobody's mentioned is that, to the best of my
knowledge, the shuttle's satellite servicing missions have been to
government-owned satellites. Even if a mission to service a GEO satellite
were technically feasible, DirecTV would have to contract with NASA to do

Well I wonder how much it cost to replace a satellite like DirecTv or Echostar
has. I figure it is at least 100 million dollars if not more- just to let it
fall and burn up in space. I kind of have a business idea. Open a private
investor owned company. Buy 2 or 3 space shuttles (once the problems have been
fixed of course), hire 2 crews to go on missions to capture and launch
commercial satellites. Then, as the satellite nears the end of its life, the
customer fires it into low orbit, we fly up and catch it, bring it back to
earth where it is refuled and any repairs or upgrades needed are done. Then we
fly it back up and relaunch it and, on the same mission, we catch another
satellite and bring it back. The question is, would this cheaper than building
and launching a new satellite. It would effectively double the life of an
existing satellite. I figure that, if it cost 100 million to build and launch a
satellite, if we could capture, refurbish and relaunch it for $75 million, that
saves a customer $25 million and we make money. It might be silly- maybe the
numbers won't work but then again, maybe they will. You would only have to
train the crews really once since every mission would be essentially the same.

"KevinXKitchen" wrote in message
...
All of the geo-synchronous satellites are at 22,500, it is the only place
that they can be geo-synchronous.

Is there any reason they have be geo-sync? Sirrius' satellites are not geo
synch- they fly around in an "8" pattern and it works fine.

Geo-sync satellites fly like that also, but, relative to earth, are in a
small enough patter so as to be seen in the same place. That's just station
keeping.

Once upon a time, KevinXKitchen said:
Well I wonder how much it cost to replace a satellite like DirecTv or Echostar
has. I figure it is at least 100 million dollars if not more- just to let it
fall and burn up in space. I kind of have a business idea. Open a private
investor owned company. Buy 2 or 3 space shuttles (once the problems have been
fixed of course), hire 2 crews to go on missions to capture and launch
commercial satellites.

Satellites can cost a billion dollars. However, shuttles (if you could
go build one) cost over a billion dollars and cost hundreds of millions
of dollars per flight. While that was an envisioned use of the space
shuttle during design, it didn't pan out economically.
--
Chris Adams
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

"KevinXKitchen" wrote in message ...
All of the geo-synchronous satellites are at 22,500, it is the only place
that they can be geo-synchronous.

Is there any reason they have be geo-sync? Sirrius' satellites are not geo
synch- they fly around in an "8" pattern and it works fine.

Satellites delivering signals to stationary 18 inch dishes have to stay
at the same orbit position.

See "Constellation in the sky" near the end of the following page:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/proton/sirius1/

"Chris Adams" wrote in message ...
Once upon a time, KevinXKitchen said:
Well I wonder how much it cost to replace a satellite like DirecTv or Echostar
has. I figure it is at least 100 million dollars if not more- just to let it
fall and burn up in space. I kind of have a business idea. Open a private
investor owned company. Buy 2 or 3 space shuttles (once the problems have been
fixed of course), hire 2 crews to go on missions to capture and launch
commercial satellites.

Satellites can cost a billion dollars. However, shuttles (if you could
go build one) cost over a billion dollars and cost hundreds of millions
of dollars per flight. While that was an envisioned use of the space
shuttle during design, it didn't pan out economically.
--

DirecTV 4S launch costs were not close to a billion dollars.
The following URL indicates the cost at over $200 Million including
satellite, launch and insurance.
http://www.satisfied-mind.com/direct...DirecTV-4S.htm

In article ,
(KevinXKitchen) writes:

Well I wonder how much it cost to replace a satellite like DirecTv or Echostar
has. I figure it is at least 100 million dollars if not more- just to let it
fall and burn up in space. I kind of have a business idea. Open a private
investor owned company. Buy 2 or 3 space shuttles (once the problems have been
fixed of course), hire 2 crews to go on missions to capture and launch
commercial satellites. Then, as the satellite nears the end of its life, the
customer fires it into low orbit, we fly up and catch it, bring it back to
earth where it is refuled and any repairs or upgrades needed are done. Then we
fly it back up and relaunch it and, on the same mission, we catch another
satellite and bring it back. The question is, would this cheaper than building
and launching a new satellite. It would effectively double the life of an
existing satellite. I figure that, if it cost 100 million to build and launch a
satellite, if we could capture, refurbish and relaunch it for $75 million, that
saves a customer $25 million and we make money.

Something like this might eventually be feasible, but not now, and
certainly not with the existing space shuttles. Here are some figures:

From
http://www.durhamregion.com/dr/regio...-2440613c.html,
regarding the cost of launching a commercial satellite:

: The price tag: $600 million for manufacturing, insurance and launch costs.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle, regarding shuttle mission
costs:

: While the shuttle has been a reasonably successful launch vehicle, it had
: been unable to meet its goals of radically reducing flight launch costs,
: as each flight costs on the order of $500 million rather than initial
: projections of $10 to $20 million.

These figures may not be directly comparable, too. I know that shuttle
launch cost estimates vary wildly depending on how they're computed. In
any event, if you take these figures at face value, your proposal might
have some merit, even with current technology; however, there are other
hurdles that would increase costs of the shuttle mission or otherwise
make it impractical. Most notably, you'd need to have some way to get the
shuttle and satellite to rendezvous. Because the current shuttle can't
get to geosynchronous orbit, that means you'd need to bring the satellite
down to a lower orbit. The current satellites just aren't designed to do
that. I'm not an expert on orbital mechanics, but they might just lack
the fuel to do it. If so, you'd need to launch new satellites with bigger
fuel reserves so they can eventually rendezvous for servicing, and that'd
drive up the initial launch costs. Even if current satellites could
rendezvous with a shuttle, they might not fit in the shuttle's cargo bay,
so they might need to be cut up or serviced in orbit rather than brought
back down. (In-orbit servicing would probably have other advantages, too,
like reduced costs for launching the satellite again -- it takes a LOT of
fuel to lob each pound into orbit.) Then there's the fact that you'd be
risking lives on every such venture. As a private enterprise, a disaster
might be less of a PR problem than a disaster when NASA loses a crew, but
it'd still be ugly, and of course you'd have those lost lives on your
conscience. Then there's the fact that there are only three US shuttles
left (four if you count Enterprise, which as I understand it is too heavy
to reach orbit), and NASA's not likely to sell them for years at most,
and will probably put them in museums when they're retired rather than
sell them. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one of the
remaining shuttles cannibalized for parts to keep two more working. There
is no shuttle assembly line, so you can't buy a new one, and if you
managed to buy one from NASA, it'd be very near the end of its useful
life. You might have more luck buying a Russian Buran, but they're also
not in production, and they're even less well-tested than the US shuttles
(they've had just one unmanned flight). They've been rusting away,
sitting in storage or converted to restaurants (really), so I doubt if
any of them is even remotely flight-worthy. Of course, buying a US or
Russian shuttle would cost a lot, and you'd need to build, or at least
lease, launch pad facilities, ground control, etc. All of these factors
combined would raise the costs, which would probably wipe out that $100
million difference between new-satellite launch and shuttle mission cost.

In sum, I think this plan isn't workable without the development of a new
and vastly improved launch vehicle and/or in-space infrastructure (say, a
space station with satellite servicing facilities). It may well happen
some day, but to start on it today, you'd need an excellent business plan
and absolutely top-notch engineers to pull it off.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

Once upon a time, Jack Ak said:
Satellites can cost a billion dollars.
DirecTV 4S launch costs were not close to a billion dollars.

I said _can_ cost, trying to make the point that even at the higher end
of satellite prices, they still aren't worth trying to work on.
--
Chris Adams
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

KevinXKitchen wrote:

Another point that nobody's mentioned is that, to the best of my
knowledge, the shuttle's satellite servicing missions have been to
government-owned satellites. Even if a mission to service a GEO satellite
were technically feasible, DirecTV would have to contract with NASA to do

Well I wonder how much it cost to replace a satellite like DirecTv or Echostar
has. I figure it is at least 100 million dollars if not more- just to let it
fall and burn up in space. I kind of have a business idea. Open a private
investor owned company. Buy 2 or 3 space shuttles (once the problems have been
fixed of course), hire 2 crews to go on missions to capture and launch
commercial satellites. Then, as the satellite nears the end of its life, the
customer fires it into low orbit, we fly up and catch it, bring it back to
earth where it is refuled and any repairs or upgrades needed are done. Then we
fly it back up and relaunch it and, on the same mission, we catch another
satellite and bring it back. The question is, would this cheaper than building
and launching a new satellite. It would effectively double the life of an
existing satellite. I figure that, if it cost 100 million to build and launch a
satellite, if we could capture, refurbish and relaunch it for $75 million, that
saves a customer $25 million and we make money. It might be silly- maybe the
numbers won't work but then again, maybe they will. You would only have to
train the crews really once since every mission would be essentially the same.

By the time most satellites fail their technology is outdated.


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In sum, I think this plan isn't workable without the development of a new
and vastly improved launch vehicle and/or in-space infrastructure (say, a

I can see that it is not workable right now but, if we could cut the price of a
mission down to the $30 million range and buy a shuttle like vehicle, it might
be in the future. Of course I am the same person who looked at the Bering Stait
between Alaska and Russia and said "why not build a bridge there?". I had this
idea about being able to drive from Argentina to South Africa. But then I
figured out that the bridge just would not work there!

In article ,
(KevinXKitchen) writes:

Of course I am the same person who looked at the Bering Stait
between Alaska and Russia and said "why not build a bridge there?". I had this
idea about being able to drive from Argentina to South Africa. But then I
figured out that the bridge just would not work there!

Actually, you're not alone. I saw something on TV recently about a plan
to build a bridge there. It'd be a massive record-breaker, and useable
only part of each year. Support for building it is lackluster at the
moment.

My own thought when I saw the program is that, given recent improvements
in tunneling technology, a tunnel might be more practical. At the very
least, it wouldn't have the problems with being useable for only part of
the year, they wouldn't need to worry about ice or wind stresses, etc.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking