NASA's commercial communications satellite program has produced many significant results over the past 35 years. While cases have been made that NASA has overstated its contribution to satellite communications (see Cunniffe), it is still arguable that the program has returned far more to the industry than its cost.
One key to understanding the impact of NASA's program that is often overlooked is the concept of risk in space design. Because of the high cost of launching spacecraft coupled with the current impossibility of repairing hardware in synchronous orbit, the design of space hardware is driven by the risk of failure. Space hardware designs have been very conservative using old technology because of the perceived risk in using anything new. A cost/benefit analysis of a new item is driven by risk. Even if a new item can produce greater capability at lower cost, if it increases the risk of failure, it will not be used. To be the first to fly a new item, the benefit has to be overwhelming. This precludes incremental improvements in space technology and explains why space hardware can lag the state-of-the-art by over a decade.
In the early 1960's, NASA's launch record reflected the state of rocket science at the time, in other words, rockets failed quite often. In addition, the space environment was not well known. This was a critical time for NASA involvement in the development of communications satellites. Without NASA, Hughes' Syncom would never have gotten off the ground and Hughes would not now be the world's largest communications satellite maker. The major impediment to synchronous satellites was the launch. The failure of Syncom I did not help resolve fears that GEO was too far to go with the launch technology of the time. After several successful tries, including Early Bird, Comsat finally decided that it was safe to go to GEO with the Intelsat system.
By the late 1960's, NASA had become an American icon for success. Just the fact that NASA was working on a new piece of flight hardware might have been enough to reduce the perceived risk of a new technology. A side benefit of a program that includes building satellites is that the NASA workforce becomes intimately familiar with the business. It is very difficult to contribute to the development of an industry if you are not actively engaged in the nuts and bolts of it. Without an occasional spacecraft project to provide focus and direction, R&D will tend to go off into esoteric and perhaps impractical areas.
A related impediment to NASA spacecraft projects is that industry does not look kindly upon NASA development of spacecraft or technology which threatens to undermine a competitive advantage. In other words, a NASA spacecraft must develop new technology that all U.S. companies can use while not building a spacecraft that looks like competition to any of them. Hughes benefited greatly from government involvement in the early days of satellite communications. Without government creation of Comsat, AT&T would be building its own medium-altitude satellites. Without NASA programs, the synchronous satellite would have been delayed significantly and Comsat may have developed a medium-altitude system. Today, Hughes is the largest commercial communications satellite builder. In the 1995 Space News Top 50 list of space companies, Hughes was ranked second while Comsat was 14th. [Space News, pg. 8]
In retrospect, it was beneficial to the NASA program that it was canceled in 1973. This forced a complete rethinking of the program. The program had to be justified from scratch to be reinstated in 1978 and the direction changed significantly from becoming a public service demonstration and provider to a technology development program. While the ATS series addressed broader applications, it did contribute to communications as well as make important advances in meteorology and space science. A public service satellite program looks too much like competition to industry even though the services NASA has provided would not have affordable to the public service users and so would not have been otherwise purchased.
Foreign research efforts are continuing today, but the U.S. has been competing successfully for operational satellites. Japan's N-Star was launched August 29, 1995. The spacecraft is over 20 ft. tall with a 90 ft. solar array span. It provides 4 S-band beams from 6 C-band uplinks for mobile services, a Ka-band multibeam payload, Ka-band shaped beams on five channels, and 8 Ku-band channels. The spacecraft was built by Space Systems/Loral. [Av Week]
NASA is currently reorganizing its commercial communications program to prepare for the next generation of research and development following ACTS. At present, it does not look like there is a need for a follow-on satellite project. NASA will work on developing long-term technology improvements as well as working on spectrum management and interoperability issues. An industry advisory committee, the Satellite Industry Task Force chaired by Hughes' Thomas Brackey, has provided much helpful guidance to NASA. The task force presented its findings in a meeting on September 12, 1995 with Vice President Gore in which it expressed support for ACTS, but did not call for another NASA satellite project.