Maurice,
I know you are not being rude, and I do hope that you don't think that I was. Nevertheless, I cannot answer your question to the accuracy you seem to require. I will, however, state again that the satellites are designed to handle a finite amount of phone traffic, and that they do have the power to support that traffic.
Your idea of "CURRENT PRICE IS" would almost certainly increase revenue, but I believe that it probably would require a big overhaul to how the entire system handles calls. A change that big this late in the game would delay service startup, which is a worse scenario than having a flat price structure. I have the same insights on the telephony end of G* as you do. Maybe even less. So my opinion in this area is speculation. Anyhow, the business model, as developed some years ago, is still on track and nothing has deviated from that.
As for your comment that "Photovoltaic panels are cheap enough and light enough that I can't see any good reason for them to be in short supply on a satellite", I must say that thinking of it in this way is just way too simplistic. To really understand what it means to increase power on a satellite you would need about 6~years of university study in Aerospace, plus a couple more years industry experience. To be brief, everything is in proportion: solar array size, batteries, thermal dissipation (waste heat), fuel, and so forth. Also, nothing that is "space rated" quality is cheap. Aerospace engineers have sort of a running joke that goes, "a couple of million here, and another couple of million there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money". Nobody winces when you pay a million dollars for a part that is the rough equivalent of something you might buy over the counter at a hardware store for a couple of hundred bucks. In the US every now and then you hear a news story about a $20,000 hammer that the Air Force bought, or something like that. Well, folks, there are reasons for it. You launch it into space, and you really want it to work. For 15 years. Without a service call.
Regards
Mr. A |
