Robber Barons in Space

To add more to this discussion a few points:

- Sorry Tango, arianne 4 are no more, but your point
is still valid.

- To me, a larger market then the GEO commsats (which
is definitely a good market) would be more towards
vehicles in LEO. LEO requires much more station
keeping and hence a lot more fuel loss. Looking at a
typical LEO bird (either remote sensing or telecom
like globalstar) the lifespan due to fuel is around 5
years or so. Now you could probably also extend to
service Russian comm birds which are in a Molnya (sp?)
orbit while not burning alot of fuel to reach them.

- Another point here, since the satellites used for
refueling are attaching with another satellite to
deliver fuel, there is no reason why they can also be
used to help boost satellites. Now if something like
this was in place, you would have been able to save
the Astra 1k fiasco that recently happened. This
brings in a potential investor, space insurance
companies. I believe there is currently one company
looking into this but I cannot remember their name
right away, if interested I am sure others on this
list would remember who they are. I *think* it was a
company who was also looking into orbital debris.

-Ryan Z

p.s. on the whole hydrazine vs steam talk, the
original orbit express was hydrazine based. Another
thing to look at though is perhaps competition from
Ion thrusters. While their ISP are not high, their
fuel comsuption is awesome. Alot of money is being
poured into using them for station keeping, which
could have adverse effects on your business plan.