actually its at the 4th or 5th, be another 9 hours till the next seperation.
Yea it turned a satellite worth 285 million (life left) into basically space junk. Basically having a orbital spare is useless the orbital lifespan is still ticking away weather it is active or not, space is a harsh area to be in reguardless.
trippingthespeculatingpos, of course it did the new one also has a 15 year orbital lifespan. The problem is it cut the useful life span of one down to basically zero. I dont know but I dont think this company can afford to keep tossing out money in the sums of 285 million. The satellites system is the most costly to the company and that is without them wasting it.
John, Ill give you a free pass to speculate a conspiracy theory with no bashing allowed...
It is a curious situation in my mind too, but I love upgrades, so i hope this has something on it that makes the listening experience better...or, it contains some technology from one of those patents we have been reading about that allows dormant radios to be turned on with advertising support...
or, soon we will get some PR from the Autos and this new satellite supports a new function in the cars
pure speculation above, but for sure the coverage of the signal will be much improved from what i have read, geostationary is the better sat.
i hate to mention it but the am amount of compression seems too high, hopefully this will allow them to lighten it up a bit.
All I am saying is when Tyler, Homer, and somer others were talking about this a few years ago. The only thing Tyler could tell me was at least it will seperate the cost if they start to launch one now so they wont have a huge one at the end of 2014. This was one of the reasons I said to homer SIRI was in a better position then XMSR. That while XMSR has to launch these new ones (because of tech problems) at a huge cost to them, SIRI does not need to.
So when will this new satellite be operational?
thanks, i was hoping we would get to be one of the featured apps, everytime i opened it it was a bit hard to find the sirius app, hence the reason its so critical to stay in the top apps, more visibility (ala charles who is correct there)
John,
sometimes I feel like this has something up its sleeve with the seemingly stupid moves they make. This one had "buyout" all over it a while back a way to clean house, I know the tax write off so no need to discuss that.
But someone mentioned capital write off too. They can start the depreciation of this satellite faster...and in 10-15 years (maybe sooner) they may plan to abandon the satellite (i doubt this but you never know what wifi and cell phone tech can help the distribution)
So, knowing the changing delivery forms, it may benefit them to get the best current subscriber experience while they can. Being this is an improvement in that experience, ill support it.