I apologize in advance for my ignorance, but I don't understand why the iridium constellation needs to be deorbited just because of financial failure by the Iridium Corp. It is a sure fact that no potential future earnings can result from de-orbiting the satellites. I heard it will cost about $50 million/yr for two years to de-orbit them. I can't imagine that station-keeping can cost that much. Why not get some speculators together to maintain the constellation on the hope that some market will develop for them in the near future. Besides telecommunications in the commercial sector, I would think that a number of governments might be interested in using the satellites for relaying data, etc. In light of the expense, and potential liability associated with de-orbiting these 60+ satellites, I am amazed that other alternatives are not economically viable (maybe today's investment market is too strong to put big dollars in something like this, with a higher level of risk than some might see in Wall St.). -Lincoln. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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