Something special in short - interesting?

I mentioned AMSAT under "Financial Barriers" earlier.

The AMSAT Mars probe will be communicating at amateur radio frequencies - radio amateurs all over the world will be able and allowed to receive all the data directly. Noone has to wait for NASA reports or anything else but can listen to the Mars probe P5A directly.

It will be launched between 2007 and 2009.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Well that's pretty cool
Course, I don't own a ham radio. What's that like?

I looked for the numbers of the frequencies but didn't find them yet - we will have to look for them elsewhere.

But there is another point that seems to be interesting - AMSAT offers to carry payloads from scientists. One payload probably will be Mars Societie's (Germany) Mars Balloon, others could be nanosats or real landers.

(Not far from private manned Mars mission???)



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Unfortunately, probably farther than we'd like. Building a planetary probe is fairly easy -- the challenge lies in installing and protecting your instruments and payload. If that payload is human, then your problems grow almost exponentially -- the vast majority of the mass of a manned space vehicle is taken up by life support. Remember, we're trying to put humans into an environment that they were never intended for.

Yes, I know that - I was asking under the organizational and the funding aspect. A private organization providing a craft only but leaving the payloads to others is doing good service for these others. As far as I know AMSAT doesn't claim to be payed for using its vehicle.

Now if an organization similar to AMSAT would provide a spacecraft significant larger than P5A and able in principle to carry a manned payload - could it be a solution if someone else who can conduct a secure and safe manned travel to Mars would use that vehicle and add a crew module only?

It's a modular mission design not only technically but organizational too. Could that be applied to manned Mars missions too?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Amateur radio operators have been interested in space for a long time. I personally made contacts through the OSCAR (Orbiting Spacecraft Carrying Amateur Radio) in the early 1970s. Hams have been at the forefront of communications technology since Marconi .

--Ralph
WA4NUO

The Mars-Site of the german AMSAT-section is mentioning OSCAR I which according to the site firstly was contactable 12th of December 1961. The "P" in P5A only seems to be indicating the phase of the OSCAR-project(s). P3D (AMSAT-OSCAR 40) has been the first basis to be able to leave the earthian orbit because of its high efficiency of engine and variability of the structure of its chassy (according to the Mars-Site).

I'm sorry - I cannot find an english version of this Mars-Site of AMSAT-DL.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

First one point needs to be corrected - AMSAT plans to launch in 2018.

Next according to the german section of the Mars Society as well as according to the german section of AMSAT there is a contract with DLR to do a joint study.

The title of that study is very interesting - it's talking about a lunar mission.

And last but not least the german AMSAT-section successfully sent a signal from their Deep Space antenna in Bocum (Germany) to Venus and received the echo from Venus. This took place at the end of March 2009. That's the farthest distance ever managed by ham radio.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

wow....nice post.....
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