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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (3966)	4/19/1999 6:14:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29987

Fuel tank size John, I agree, you'd think there would be heaps of gas in the tank to last the expected life, but people who should know, [Mr A.] say that fuel, like wear and tear, is designed to last just the right time and sometimes that isn't enough but sometimes it lasts a lot longer. Depending on station keeping fuel consumption. Incidentally, you'd think that the Satellite Jockey Union would be replaced by autopilots using GPS. A bit like 747s prefer to fly themselves [that way they don't stray, by accident of course, way off course into Russian airspace]. I'm sure the satellite jockeys would rather do something more interesting than steer a few satellites around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around...you get the picture. I guess that will happen one of these days and costs will go down some more. As you say, in 7 years, even with a bent pipe design, the satellites would be heading well into obsolescence. That's the advantage of using a bent pipe so that the main electronic gizzards are on the ground in the gateways and can be updated, several times a year if needed. Iridium has their computers stuck in space. No upgrades available. 7 years from now, there will still be plenty of people wanting voice only, so the satellites won't be obsolete - they'll form part of a bigger network with Constellation2, 3 and 4 maybe up there too. Those later ones will be able to do more tricks. But like IS-95 terrestrial CDMA, I'm sure they'll manage to have some backward compatibility for the older handsets and satellites to still function while the new constellations dominate. Maurice