Satellite project - why?

I am a child of HF. I've been playing on HF since I was young, when the CB craze hit the UK, after Convoy was shown on TV. And when I learned there were other frequencies, and something called sideband, and it was possible for the waves to bounce off the ionosphere, and talk round the world - well, I was hooked.

I DXed from my house (to my mother's annoyance), making frequent contacts to the Europe and the Eastern US. From a car on high ground, at night, I even made contacts to Australia.

Then someone told me about amateur radio, and that there was a radio ham in the local area. So I went and knocked on his door, and he showed me his equipment, and convinced me to go for my RAE, which I did. (Thanks Andy for letting a spotty, enthusiastic kid in, and taking the time to answer all my questions)

Due to the morse code requirement, my class B licence didn't allow me to use frequencies under 30MHz, until Bruce Perens got the rules changed. When HF was on the cards again, I bought some HF gear, and haven't looked back. Due to restrictions in housing/gardens, I have only been able to work mobile until about 2018.

I have done a lot on HF, although there's still a lot left for me to do. But I am also interested in space, and satellites, and that interest has been growing stronger.
I've made a few short contacts on FM satellites, waving a hand-held directional antenna around, but it wasn't easy, and as the satellites time is limited, everything's very quick.

So I've decided to go for satellites in a big way. I'm going to do things properly. Computer-controlled tracking with rotators and elevators. Computer controlled doppler-shift. Multiple element beam antennas. Full duplex transmit and receive. All the stuff.
It's not going to be easy, or cheap, but I need a new project, and I think this could be fun.

So my plan is as follows:
Yaesu G-5500DC rotator and controller
2m and 70cm antennas
Arduino board for controlling the controller
GPredict (because I'm a Linux user)
I'll use my FT817ND for receive and my FT857D for transmit for now

I will document my progress along the way, to keep myself moving forward on it, and to help anyone else who has similar ideas.