Page 12 - Communications Satellites Global Change Agents

FOREWORD xi

that landmark night in July 1969. Walter Cronkite of CBS had become the ac-
knowledged network guru of space flight, always there for the critical launches
and recoveries. As you learn in the pages that follow, the first moon landing drove
Intelsat to complete full global coverage of its satellite network so that the entire
world could see this event "live via satellite." Several other moon missions fol-
lowed in the early 1970s, including one using a motorized "Rover" vehicle to
cover greater distances. Landings on Mars seemed well within reach.
Yet we were continually reminded of how technically difficult and sometimes
dangerous all this was. In 1986, network reporters broke into scheduled daytime
programs to tell us the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up shortly after
launch, killing the crew of seven aboard. There had been almost no live coverage
of the launch as we had grown accustomed to successful launches being the norm.
The same shuttle system had another jarring setback early in 2003 when the Co-
lumbia came apart on reentry—and we watched contrails of multiple pieces when
only one should have been moving across the sky. Again a crew was lost, and
again scientists and engineers began piecing together information to determine
what happened. Going into space was not without its costs.
The space industry and its satellites are, of course, also affected by what hap-
pens back on earth. The telecommunications industry's dramatic meltdown that
began in 2001 sharply cut investment and thus the number of satellites once
scheduled to be launched. Most mobile satellite projects—once the cutting edge
of the industry—have gone bankrupt or been closed down altogether. As older
satellites reach the end of their useful life, we increasingly lack the valuable re-
dundancy that ensured continuing service. Military leaders are concerned about
the decreasing availability of satellite bandwidth to "deliver the goods" where re-
quired and when. Commercial users of satellites worry when and where the
needed new "birds" are going to originate. Things may be turning around—the
New Iridium and Globalstar/ICO organizations seem to be on the rebound. Direct
broadcast radio satellite systems (Sirius and XM Radio) are expanding, while di-
rect to home (DTH) satellite TV systems continue to add millions of subscribers.
As we approach a half century since the first human-made satellite was placed
into orbit, my university students cannot begin to comprehend how different their
world is, thanks in considerable part to the role satellites play. They take satellite-
delivered news on a 24/7 basis as a given. Live reports from Baghdad as a war be-
gins are nothing new to them. Time zones have been erased. Distance does not
matter. Few have any idea that satellites make possible their many evening enter-
tainment choices, so much wider than those we knew a half century ago. They as-
sume that hundreds of video entertainment channels, delivered nationally and
sometimes worldwide, are a given. Satellites have become such an integral part of
their everyday lives that life without their service is not imaginable. The technol-
ogy has become essential.
The chapters that follow, all written by authorities with extensive experience,
help clarify how essential satellites have become and how integrated they are