Author Topic: Lockheed wins $2 billion contract  (Read 1402 times)

Offline Rob in KC

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Offline braddock

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RE: Lockheed wins $2 billion contract
« Reply #1 on: 01/28/2006 04:57 pm »
I continue to be pretty skeptical of this TSAT military communications satellite program.  SO much money going into it, and now instead of bird-to-ground lasers, they are just talking about 1 foot DirecPC-style dishes.

The DirectPC birds are supposed to be costing Hughes $300 million a shot to launch NOW.  Why exactly is the military paying $12 billion+ to launch five birds built by the same company with essentially the same capabilities in 6 years?  1.5 mbps with a one-foot dish has been entirely off-the-shelf DBS technology for years now.

Some of the clever techs in the V Corp in Operation Iraqi Freedom were even using DBS with off-the-shelf phased array receivers for mobile comms on their command vehicles during OIF, all bought commercially and thrown together just months before the invasion, when the Army command realized how screwed they were about to be with their inadequate military communications.

Other thread on TSAT vs Teledesic here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1266&posts=8#M17056

Am I missing the point of this program?

Offline Avron

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RE: Lockheed wins $2 billion contract
« Reply #2 on: 01/28/2006 11:23 pm »
Quote
vanilla - 28/1/2006  1:51 PM

Just goes to show that NASA isn't the only federal institution committed to funneling money to contractors, regardless of the purpose...


I am sure that NASA  funneling money to contractors is quite small, when compared to the other Federal institutions... someone has to make sure the economy keeps on moving..

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