Of all the junk mail I’ve received recently, most interesting is the Connect, the newsletter of the European Space Agency’s Telecommunications Department. Whatever motivated them to add me to their subscription list, I can’t imagine. Their introductory letter starts:
Dear Madam/SirYes, it’s those darned old potentially high barriers to entry that have kept me from owning my own satellite.
You may never have considered extending your range of products and services to include satellite communications. Alternatively you might have been discouraged by the complexity of the field and the potentially high barriers to entry…
Comments
It’s exiting that’s expensive. Orbiting and re-entry are free. And I don’t see why they focus on the high barrier of the ionosphere either, since even if your satellite avoids the possibility of combustion up high on entry, there’s the inevitable lower barrier of the ground below. I would write these folks back and ask them if they’ve ever played with satellites before. The whole thing sounds fishy.