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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (468)	3/10/1998 9:31:00 AM
From: JMD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29986

Maurice, two comments on your latest rants which I assume are written by candle light as you turn the hand crank on your generator! I don't understand your point about power on the birds. You know very well and good that if nothing else limits a bird's life, its power supply will. The majority of R&D spending is focused on extending useful life by extending power and folks are trying some pretty wild stuff (Boeing and flywheels, for example). So there isn't a "problem" with the G* birds (although there was for a while) it is just that they are the beneficiary of CDMA's variable power usage and will be buzzing around a bit longer in the bargain. What are your worries, mate? Second, Readware recently responded to my concern regarding latency effect when GEO birds are used for telephony. Seems LM has cranked out some technology that gets stuffed into the handset that overcomes the problem. And wouldn't you know it--damned if it won't be ready by the mid/late 99 G* GEO launch. Ah, Bernie--timing is everything. Regards, Mike Doyle

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (468)	3/12/1998 1:32:00 AM
From: Mr. Adrenaline	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29986

Maurice, I think an odd dimension of human nature is that two people can read the same thing, and understand the information in opposite ways. Readware correctly stated that power is finite. This is also true of fuel, battery capacity, and many other items. But no where did he say that there was a "power problem". In the near Earth space environment, there is 1352 watts available for every square meter of surface area. For engineering purposes, that number is fixed. (A physicist would say that it varies over one years time, and also during the 11 year solar cycle, but it is by a very small fraction.) What that means is that if you have a sheet of metal that is square, measuring one meter on a side, and if it was perpendicular to the Sun rays (incoming photons), then it would be absorbing 1352 watts of solar energy. Now if that sheet of metal was a solar array, then a fraction of that solar energy would be converted to electrical energy. So, since the solar panels on any satellite are of a fixed size, it is a given that the power generating capacity is fixed. But the question that you are posing, if I understand correctly, is that G* doesn't have enough capacity to generate power. Meaning that it's solar arrays are too small. I have no idea where you got this concern, because it is completely unfounded. You say that someone told you that a couple of years ago. Well, if you want solid proof, I cannot give it to you. That would entail me publishing documentation that is very much proprietary. But the spacecraft are up there, functioning through solar eclipses as expected, payload testing is on going, and is going exceptional well. What more "proof" could you need? Someone told you that there wasn't enough power. I am telling you that there is. Why should that someone be more credible than me? One thing is for certain. Time well tell. I can tell you that, as with everything else that is of a limited quantity, there is a small marching army watching it jealously. This is not to imply that there isn't enough of it. That is all part of normal satellite operations. The satellite was design to handle a finite amount of phone traffic. There is enough power to support that traffic. I hope this helps, because it is all I can offer. Mr. A BTW, I don't monitor this thread quite as closely as the LOR thread.