guy@anasazi.UUCP (Guy Finney) (11/15/84)
I recently became an owner of a nifty Satellite TV system, and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but live Shuttle TV on Satcom I, xpdr 9! Well, almost live. I presume it's downlinked on their Ku-band antenna, then rebroadcast by NASA on C-band. It's tremendous fun watching the astronauts cavort in space without annoying commentary by "science correspondents". 51-A is especially fun because of the dual satellite rescue. It's got me wondering, though. Why is the C-band signal there at all? Just so the networks can tape it and use 30 seconds of it in the nightly news? Who pays for the transponder time and why?