Smallsat Conf Day 3

Dear Colleagues,

Day 3 in Logan, UT was mainly listening to presentations about new smallsat
missions in work or proposed. One of the conference organizers, Robert Meurer
of AeroAstro, made a pointed comment that, in the "Future Missions" session,
where people reported on innovative missions in the development stages, ALL
papers were from outside the US (France, Japan, Malaysia, etc.)

There was a general consensus on the part of American microsat developers that
US restrictions on export of microsats and use of foreign launchers, combined
with the high cost of the only domestic small launchers and the near-absence of
secondary payload opportunities, was strangling the microsat industry that the
US pioneered, as well as making hands-on opportunities for the next generation
of engineers very scarce.

One fellow commented that one thing that's not well-documented yet is how much
the lack of a low-cost dedicated microsat launcher affects costs by causing
stretchouts in programs waiting years for launch. I told him we'd cited that
as a factor in our paper this year but did not have timeyet to quantify it.





Matt Bille
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