CB, I guess you must be starting to understand that your concept:
<The closer the distance, the greater the pull. LEO satellites orbit closer to the earth, so to keep from being pulled out of orbit, they are made smaller.>
is wrong. Plain wrong. Big satellites in 1414 km or other low earth orbits do NOT get pulled out of orbit any more than specks of dust or small satellites. Little satellites in geostationary orbits are similarly unaffected and will twirl around the earth at exactly the same speed as the big satellites in the same orbit.
You is wrong. Now, acknowledging you are a lawyer and what's worse, a female lawyer and to make matters even more difficult for you, a minority [of one] lawyer, we need to examine the definition of 'is'. I hasten to add that I'm not lawyerist; heck, some of my best friends is lawyers - eh Pierre!
As we know, lawyers are kind of like crabs and will scuttle sideways verbally when the rock under which they are hiding is lifted and the sun shines in, so we will need to agree the definition of 'is' before you will be able to acknowledge that you didn't quite have the hang of how this gravity stuff works. As an example of what I mean, Bill Clinton, a famous lawyer, did some verbal scuttling sideways when his rock was lifted [depending on your definition of 'did'].
The probability of a female lawyer having any idea at all of how gravity works 'is' near zero.
That's because "how gravity works" is something nobody has a clue about. Even dinkum blokes with Guy-sized Globalstar phones and Male Answer Syndrome winn.com don't really know, though I can tell you I have figured it out and you can buy shares in my patented GSRS [TM] graviton spin reversal system for levitation and easy, fast, safe, transport like a helicopter without the noise. Levity is achieved by making the gravitons adopt a reverse spin polarity. In the atmosphere, Capstone microturbines would provide horizontal propulsion. In space, the nearby gravitational objects would provide the propulsion.
I should really write "what gravity does", which 'is' different from "how gravity works" and 'is' intelligible by watching the effects of gravity on things, such as satellites and apples. We can't be too precise when dealing with lawyerly review of orbital mechanics and what 'is' and what 'isn't'.
Since you have got the basic part wrong, you won't get anything else right and are simply chanting stuff you don't understand.
What you are doing is demonstrating why Globalstar failed. I identified the problem a few years ago but couldn't believe that apparently intelligent people wouldn't respond to reality when it hit them over the head. I think some people are good at learning and remembering things and some are good at thinking. The two functions don't necessarily go together [for example, Google is really, really knowledgeable, but still very stupid, unimaginative and can't think - yet...]. In humans, the two are often confused. 'Learning' is what students do and that's what education systems mostly try to achieve. However, thinking is better [which, of course, can only happen with information to think with].
The dominant cause of Globalstar's failure was that people running Globalstar had the wrong idea about how to sell it and make it a financial success. I spent thousands of dollars and travelled [several times] to see them to discuss Globalstar and see what they think. I explained Wacky Wireless to them. At the time it was called "Current Price Is..." but they were unable to see that they had a bad idea on how to succeed. I was surprised to see how fixed in their ideas they were - not even prepared to consider the concept of starting cheap and selling for what the market would bear. Hubris, arrogance and mindset seemed to rule the day. They were sure they were right but they were wrong.
I am not going to go over the whole thing again ["phew" says Jon] but the same obdurate donkey-like state of mind that you show was their modus operandi. I'm sure you have heard of price-elasticity, especially since I've explained it to you, but you have 10MHz transmit and only a single 1.25MHz channel in the 'receive' department so you probably didn't 'get it'.
I am writing like this [unusually for me] because you have been very rude, vulgar, abusive etc to people who have politely tried to explain how satellites work. They are not all morons and f'ing amateurs. Some of them actually are rocket scientists, not lawyers and can probably drive satellites better than you can drive an SUV.
Anyway, the reason Globalstar failed was because they didn't rapidly adjust to the facts of price-elasticity when hit over the head with it by their customers. You have manifested the same fixity. Their fixity was the cause of the failure.
If they had started in November 1999 at 20c a minute, retail price, fully-terminated [rounded to the nearest second instead of minute] they would have succeeded hugely. It would have been better to start at that price [or maybe as high as 50c a minute] and have a queue of people than do what they did, which was copy the failed Iridium model [which they said they would not do].
They started with huge handset prices and extorquerationate $$$ per minute. When they belatedly realized they were in trouble, they became nervous about cutting prices per minute because that would send the message that they were failing. That would frighten customers and perhaps make them wait until prices dropped more. They got into a spiral downwards and by the time they started trimming prices slightly, it was too late. It had "Iridium" written all over it. Sales were too hard to make with hugely expensive handsets and absurdly expensive minutes. The price cuts were a day late and a dollar short.
I have explained the need for cheap starting prices for years CB, and have explained that to you [but you don't have the attention-span or bandwidth to receive]. There is a demand for satphones and 100 billion minutes per year of them. But not at the price they were charging, which is a qualification you have now slipped into your 'told you so' mantra. The simplistic 'told you so' people [apart from GG] did not identify the metaphysical certitude that they would NOT cut prices in time to generate demand. Apart from GG, they all simplistically said "No demand for satphones" with NO discussion of price-elasticity or evidence of what price-elasticity actually exists. They only became 'told you so' people after Iridium had demonstrated the consequence of high prices. Any fool could do that.
The cause of Globalstar's failure was the same failing that occurs in your brain. Metaphysical certitude.
Yes, Zenit didn't help, exclusive service provider contracts were badly designed, gateways were late and there were many other mistakes and blunders not to mention outright flim-flam. But 80% of the failure was greedy service providers and excessive charges per minute combined with metaphysical certitude. My failure* was to not accept that people can be so fixed, obdurate, pig-headed, bloody-minded and myopic. You have shown that they can be.
Well, that was fun!
Mqurice
* my own metaphysical certitude. |
