Excellent post brother.
However aren't satellites are getting smaller and smaller due to microelectronics?
I thought the size shrinking constraint was only due to batteries and size of unfurled solar arrays.
Well, Yes and No both.
Massive populations globally(in billions) are becoming relatively more developed (notably Asia and Africa) which is leading to a massive demand on satellites (everything from television to mobile communication to things like gmaps).
A lot of components are being shrunk however the savings on the size is more than cancelled out by adding greater capacity in the same volume as the older sats.
Till a decade back you could put in a decent comm sat in under 4 tons. Today for a decent capacity comm sat you need atleast 5-8 tons sat. So the main market has moved there.
Which is why even we are happy to pay the Europeans to launch our most important comm sats as they are around 4 tons in capacity.
Off topic but relevant with regard to India:
The above gives us 2 straight inferences:
1. India is still technically limited to producing 4-5 ton sats on our own. We should soon be able to build our own 6-7 ton sats which would greatly meet the emerging demands(particularly our DTH operators!). This will happen before 2020.
2. Our launch capacity is still under 2 tons...while the major market is in the 5-10 ton capacity.
In another 1.5 years (by 2018), we will have achieved commercial 4 ton capability as it has already been proved experimentally.
But that would still mean we are short on requisite launch capability even by 2020. Which means we would continue to be dependent on global commercial launch services after 2020.
