Orbital Economy

> Building and assembling a satellite is damn
> complicated and really pushes the limits of our
> technology. That is why you see that an aerospace
> company employing a large number of phds and masters.

Is this so because failure is such an expensive option that the
testing phase and even the design phase has to "prevent failure at
all costs?"

If launch failure and operational failure were not "bankrupting
events" without insurance, do you think the satellites could be
designed and built cheaper, even on an assembly line, so that a
number are launched (because it's cheap) and once in orbit they are
tested for surviving the launch process, then those that made it are
deployed either into operation or parking orbits to be called on
when the lower standards catch up with the satellites after a few
years and it fails.

>
> That being said, each government *does* want to insure
> that it has people who know how to make these
> complicated objects.

Let's just look at communications satellites because each satellite,
I'm sure, is complicated in its own way. Aren't communications
satellites only as complicated as telephone or internet switching
devices or are they is there something more to it? Other than the
receiving and transmitting components.

TangoMan