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From: paulf@Jessica.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: gratuitous anthrophobia (was Re: Shuttle computer reprogramming)
Message-ID: <3946@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 16 Oct 88 18:28:05 GMT
References: <6689@nsc.nsc.com> <6980@ihlpl.ATT.COM> <1938@kalliope.rice.edu> <1988Oct8.234146.11950@utzoo.uucp> <1348@thumper.bellcore.com> <1988Oct11.212620.2071@utzoo.uucp>
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Reply-To: paulf@Jessica.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty)
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In article <1988Oct11.212620.2071@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>AMSAT has had its share of high-tech failures, as I recall.

Please elaborate.

I'm only personally familiar with the Phase III satellites (Phil can probably
vouch for AMSAT *much* farther back than that), of which there have been
three.  The first was dumped in the drink by ArianeSpace.  The second was
impacted by the carrier bus just after separation; as a result, it never
achieved the intended orbit, which had a number of degrading impacts on
OSCAR 10 (including a far larger rad flux than was designed for).  Despite
this, it was a very useful spacecraft, and was used for a number of
"high tech" community access experiments that were quite successful.

Phase IIIc (now OSCAR 13) (no triscadecaphobia at AMSAT) was the first
textbook launch we've gotten from ArianeSpace, and the satellite is performing
flawlessly, at least from the last telemetry I saw (about a month ago).

-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX      |  "Engineer: A machine for converting beer
->paulf@shasta.Stanford.EDU |   into blueprints."