In article ,
Sander Vesik wrote:
Rad-hard electronics and solar arrays are very hard on the budget (and on
the schedule, because of availability problems).

compared to what? The availability of tethers is rather worse so far and
unlike almost anything else, ramping up rad hard electronics production
is not that hard...

Yeah, but they're not going to *do* that for you unless you're spending
millions, maybe tens of millions, on parts alone. I'm talking about
practice, not theory.

The practical reality is that it's hard to do anything low-cost with parts
that cost several orders of magnitude more than commercial ones (and no,
I'm not kidding about the "several" part), and have acquisition lead times
of many months rather than one UPS package travel time.

...would be to launch Molniya from
Kourou. I don't know if the Soyuz pad there will be fitted for this, but
it might well be.)

The pad is still in construction, no? What it will do, potentialy after
upgrades is thus open. I would be very suprised if its specs hadn't
already changed from what the original was.

Indeed so. Certainly there's a lot more interest in manned operations
there, now, than was heard a year or two ago.

On reflection, I'd expect that Molniya operations *were* part of even the
original plan, given that one reason for wanting to operate from Kourou is
to go to GTO, which basic Soyuz can't do at all. But I could be wrong.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |