Robber Barons in Space

Just a few comments I want to add on top of TangoMan.

First off, if I understand correctly, you want to
state your business plan essentially on repairing
solar panels on satellites on orbit.

First off, with any business plan you first need to
look at need and competition. In this case, this is
very important.

First the competition: DARPA has already given a phase
2 contract (to boeing i think) for the Orbital Express
project which address this very issue and then some.
In fact, there was some pretty intense competition on
the phase 1 aspect of this project and a couple of
plans came out, I am sure with some web searching you
can come up with a couple of hits.

Also on competition: there are actually numerous
subsystem contractors that already provide
space-qualified solar panels. Many of the interfaces
into these are in fact standardized.

Next need: Part of the Orbital Express mission was
defining what in fact were the issues that caused
satellites to end their life. The number one by a
long shot was fuel needed for station keeping. This
is most true in LEO constellation as alot of fuel is
spent to battle the degrading orbits and is also true
in GEO though less so. The second want was to be able
to swap out payloads. Last was more bus related
functions like power (which would include solar
panels) and CPUs.

On the launch costs, I really do not see a significant
saving to launch panels seperately. The fraction of
the total mass associated with jsut the panels is not
great enough that people are looking to reduce weight
there. If your business plan is looking at wanting to
reduce weight, I would concentrate more on material
engineering (finding more lightweight stuff) and most
importantly, FUEL FUEL FUEL. Not only is alot of fuel
needed for station keeping, it is also needed for
orbit raising.

And on a last note, I know that U Mich and Caltech
have both published studies on servicing satellites on
orbit, you should be able to dig around and find those
reports somewhere, as well as other university reports
(a friend of mine who did grad work at U Wash also was
slave labor for a prof there working on this issue
about 3 years ago).

- Ryan Z