On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 03:45:42PM -0500, Tim May wrote:
> At 2:34 PM -0500 3/16/00, Dave Emery wrote:
> >On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 11:00:54AM -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
> >>
> >> It may be bankrupt as a commercial entity, but there are other well-heeled
> >> groups who may take it over.
> >>
> >
> >> I suspect those satellites may well be active for a long time to come, even
> >> if not available for the non-elite.
> >>
> >
> > There has been talk, perhaps not grounded in reality, of
> >actually using the deorbit capability built into the satellites to
> >remove the constellation by forcing the birds to reenter and burn up. It
> >has been claimed that this might be necessary in order to get maximum
> >tax writeoff for the loss. It is certainly in general true that
> >companies in the USA seem to need to physically destroy obselete or
> >unneeded equipment in order to satisfy the US tax code and get maximum
> >writeof, apparently if there is any question of residual value things
> >get sticky.
>
> Look, sorry to sound grumpy, but you are just speculating about what
> has been widely, widely reported in the news. Read Yahoo or Lycos or
> any other such source. It's frustraing watching people just
> speculating and reporting what they they have heard as "talk."
If you are complaining about what I wrote, let me say I chose my
words carefully. I had indeed seen the press reports on the net about
the intent to deorbit the system, but had not seen any official
statement to that effect by Motorola or the Bankruptcy court. Perhaps
I was being overly cautious, but in the absence of a solid primary
source (that I had seen) it seemed prudent to report the whole thing as
as "talk" as the notion of deorbiting a 4 billion dollar satellite
constellation as a tax manuever strikes me as a pretty drastic action
and something I would want to have seen primary source material on
before I stated it as fact. If there have been such statements by
the principals in the matter, I missed them and am sorry to have
engaged in "just speculating", though there is certainly plenty of
that on the cypherpunks list.
I stand behind my original point (which is why why I opened my
mouth in the first place) which is that the Motorala patents regarding
law enforcement access to communications are primarily relevent to
IRIDIUM alone and don't happen to apply to the other LEO and GEO sat
phone systems which use bent pipe repeaters and ground processing
of the signals.
>
> The plan to deorbit the 66 satellites will go into effect soon.
> Tomorrow night at 11:59 the phone service will be turned off, unless
> a buyer is found (or some other last minute funding arrives).
>
> Deorbiting is essentially necessary to get rid of the the junk in
> orbit. Keeping the satellites on station requires money (for ground
> controllers, etc.), and replacements would have to be launched as
> needed to keep the system viable. It is simply _not_ the case that
> they can just be left in orbit with no costs and used as needed.
>
This is a (perhaps slightly clearer) restatement of the point
I was making in my post. Peter Trie, not I, was the one who was
speculating about continued use of "those satellites".
> --Tim May
>
>
>
> --
> ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
> Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
> ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
> W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
> "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
>
--
Dave Emery N1PRE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass.
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
