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.
The problem with keeping the system going is that the gateways
and spacecraft tracking and operations both cost substantial money
per month to operate - also the cost of replacing bad satellites is
obviously significant and becomes more of a problem over time. An
incomplete constellation with gaps in coverage at random times would
be less interesting to most users.
I do believe that the US government has looked at the prospect
of buying the system, and decided it wasn't worth it.
> Peter
>
>
--
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
