Slashdot Mirror
The End of The Line for Iridium
slashdoter writes "Motorola said on Wednesday it was finalizing a schedule to
destroy the 66 satellites of Iridium." They have finalized the schedule because they've been unable to find qualified buyers for the satellites. Wow. Billions of dollars coming streaming down into our atmosphere.
Almost everything on the front page is now italicised. Real impressive.
...is all this is, heh. Should we support the entire world? Does it matter that all these people are dying, or just the fact that we are not dying now? Will population kill us all in the end? More people have walked the earth in the last 40 years than all the people who had ever lived before them combined. At present growth rates at least. Amazing...
U.S. $1.00
The thing was an expensive dinosaur, before it's time. Better, cheaper, smaller technology will come around some day. Probably sooner than we think. If this expensive white elephant was filling up the market niche, sucking up all the potential revenue, just because it got there first, this would prevent (or delay) the little guys from marketing a more effecient product.
So it's a bad thing that they wasted all the effort on this project. The technology wasn't quite ready or cost effective. But it's a good thing that it isn't lingering on, choking off potential competitors.
Besides -- if we keep putting more and more up there, without clearing out the old stuff, then eventually we'll have some catastrophic disaster that'll take out an awfully large amount of satellites.
Bear in mind that (unless I'm mistaken), NASA is already thinking about the problem of how to get rid of space debris. Basically, the final act of ANY space project MUST be to clear up like this. Also, in the case of larger objects, where does the liability go if it comes out of orbit and levels somebody's house??
John
John_Chalisque
No, I think you're spot on.
This is another BRILLIANT example of what appears to be a totally fucked up company. (www.fuckedcompany.com)
Was Bill Walker somehow involved in setting up Irridium?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Looks like the Save Iridium organisation couldn't.
Too bad. They had a nice (and noble) idea.
Mot is sued because they put the damn things up in the first place
Actually, international treaties are quite clear -- the national government of the site from which the sat was launched into space has full financial responsibility for any damage the sat inflicts. Not Motorola.
Steven E. Ehrbar
wow! I even included a non existant link? cool...how did I do that when only you see it?
as for the misspellings, you try and type on one of these damn palm based computers with wireless access while on a train, and you'd understand mr anal about spelling... are you an english teacher? because anyone overzealous about spelling in a joke forum like shashdot really has to have some issues...
oh well.. Off to butcher the english language while getting paid obscene amounts of money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They should use this to their advantage... try and get the satellites to burn their brightest on the way in a plunge them in view. Make a statement such as "If we can make the stars fall what do you think we can do for you?"
:)
Will be interesting to see how their PR team can handle this one. Motorola is known for its environmentally friendly techniques that it tries to employ. Wonder if anyone will pull up the "raining garbage" ploy on them.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
Pennies from heaven. =)
Losing the satelites is a waste, but it's also just a "shit happens" waste, not an "oh my gawd we blew it!" waste.
The efficiency of a device is measured in how much of the input energy got converted into the kind of output energy you wanted. An electric motor converts most of its electrical input into mechanical output with a little heat and noise produced. A space heater converts most of its electrical input into heat output with a little noise going to loss.
In this case, a coroporation is a machine for converting "manpower" into "livelyhood". Had the energy devoted to Irridiam been spent somewhere else, more livelyhood might have been produced, but the loss of a few satelites compared to the livelyhood produced by the company is pretty small. Motorola is still a basically successful company, and in a free market that means enough livelyhood is produced to keep their employees happy.
We destroy old buildings to put up new ones. Living things die so that new ones can grow up in their place, and have a chance to do better than their peers (darwinism). In this case, Irridiam tried to fill a role and proved not to be viable. This is the equivalent of a child dying of some disease so the parents can try again without the burden of keeping the child alive. The parents will mourn their loss, but they will also continue to have children who may be better or worse.
As long as no coercian is involved, things can't be too bad. The stockholders take a calculated gamble, the employees are paid either way, and the customers wouldn't buy equipment if the company had a bad rep. There's no reason for anyone to be too upset.
Nah, you can still spend a bill after blowing your nose in it. :-O.
Yeah, and dysprosium just doesn't have the same ring to it does it?
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Yep
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Did they try to auction them on Ebay :-?
David Corbin Promote Freedom - American Liberty Foundation
Hey, for those of us who don't smoke, can we change that to blowing our noses into a $100 bill?
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Five Billions Dollars of technology and what are you doing with it?
Burning it.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Any chance Motorola would sell these to the military's missle defense program to use as targets? I mean the big problem so far with the missle defense so far is hitting a moving target. When I can't do that, I switch to not moving targets. You know, the whole sitting ducks thing.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
</i>
Thanks.
__________________________________________
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
They can write them off as a major business expense/loss. It may cause a few ruffles in stock prices, but it'll do great things for them when it comes time to post thier earnings and pay appropriate taxes.
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Much more likely considering that they probably WILL get 100x more usage at 1/10 the price. They just introduced coverage in Russia (and they now cover most of the western hemisphere as well as Europe and Australia) - though the people there will still have to work an hour just to talk for a minute on these things (and of course the hardware is prohibitively expensive). Satellite and cellular phones are the best choice for 3rd world countries and those that have terrain that is unsuitable for laying ground wires.
Play the what satellite did they plunge into the pacific today game...
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
Ahhh! The atmosphere...AHHHHH!
Uhhhhh! The atmosphere....Uhhhhhhhh!!!!!
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Check this out: iridium GIF (its german, but you probably can understand it ;)
Samba Information HQ
Oh No! The Atmosphere! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...!
IIRC, Iridium calls routed via satellite cost just 1.75USD/min, no 20.
Mark Duell
If you send $20 to my PayPal account, I'll let you take one of these babies out of orbit. I work for Motorola, so I'll configure your right mouse button to be the fire button just as soon as I get the money.
No comment at this time
Their major function seems to have been to make life difficult for astronomers. (These things are numerous and *bright*.) Their destruction will be a relief.
OOOOOOOOOOOHHH Ben...
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Words to live by.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
3333333.3333333333333333333333333 people for 5 years! (check my math - $30/month)
Good point - if they couldn't get something as trivial as a business plan & sales working properly, what makes us safe from plummeting satelites - just think of the poor martians on mars where they have no atmosphere to burn them up. With my luck, they'll all find the 'window' into our atmosphere and descend at the right angle & speed as not to burn up & land on my car.
If the price to own & use one hadn't been so ungodly, I would have purchased one. Not that I can take advantage of the usefulness driving on the highway in Canada but I live close to the mountains where the cell phones just don't cut it & it'd be nice to have a means of communication with help & family.
Speaking of which:
CANTEL SUCKS!!!! Can'Tel if it's going to work or not.
An co-worker pointed out something interesting (to me) about the whole mars thing: Each satelite that was supposed to re-photograph mars in hi-res has crashed. Only the low-res (Pathfinder) made it. Any conspiracy junkies out there??
--Clay
It's a shame that nobody stepped up and seriously tried to buy the things. They're a pretty impressive infrastructure floating around in space that I'm sure could be used for _something_.
--
Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Indirectly, you have paid even more for this. Mot's efforts added to demand, and so raised all prices marginally. More importantly, all of that money could have been spent on something usefull that you would have been satisfied to purchase. Resourses destroyed don't come back. When supply falls relative to demand, prices rise.
Mot will pay, and so will you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...someone needed it. I have patience.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Or a Libyan presidential palace?
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
They will not always burn fully so it must be ensured that what is left falls somewhere into a safe zone, like the ocean for example. Deorbiting something with a target drop zone in mind is not exactly trivial.
They had initially planned to launch 77 (hence the name Iridiuam, chemical element 77) but they launched 66, the remaining 11 left as spares.
Is there enough propellant left in these things to maybe slingshot the moon and orbit Mars? If so, we could use Iridium to form a cheap communications array for future Moon and Mars missions. We could send about forty of 'em to Mars and 20 to the Moon, and still have a few spares hanging out in Earth orbit..
It seems from the article that this is a all or nothing thing. Why can't Iridium sell the SATs individually, so that they migh be able used for something other than the Iridium network?
As to the waste of resources, it is not such a big deal. A single air carrier represents a much bigger waste. Or what about the proposed $60bn missile defence program?
Isn't that the system that's raining debris all over Europe?
the most INCREDIBLE f*ck-up we've seen in the business sector in the last two centuries?!
I mean, "PHREEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW!!" - you would dismiss a story with a plot like this as being totally ridiculous.
I feel sorry for the people whose hard work has been wasted on this.
Why not just auction the suckers?
Since they can't seem to auction off the satellites, they should auction off the cool light show when they throw 'em into the atmosphere! How much do you think someone would pay to see a once-in-a-lifetime show above their house/tropical resort/hidden fortress? :)
Maybe they could give them to the us to have some sitting ducks to practice with their new anti-missile failures!
Working for the (other) man
Guess people who are a long way from civilization (and outside cellphone coverage areas) are there for a reason.
A while ago, Wired Magazine had an article about Iridium, yet again their futurist crap about how it was going to change the world (has anyone noticed how often they publish tripe like this?).
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
the atmosphere.... ahhhhhhhhh
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
Look at the Globalstar revenues -- even if they double revenues every quarter, the top line will be $6M this year -- ooof. Kinda hard to pay off billions that way.
I doubt many Universities would like to pay the running costs, whici IIFC are in the order of millions of $ per month.
At a recent conference up here in Hanover, NH, there were reports that a few Iridium satellites will be purchased by the government and retained as a emergency backup in case of a situation where other communications (i.e. cell phones, land lines, etc) go down around major metropolitan areas. I guess counting the number of shooting Iridium stars to see if they all go down would be the best way to start to verify this. Niles
You know, this isn't really a bad idea. Use 'em for target practice. It gets rid of the damn things and lets their death serve a somewhat useful purpose.
Somebody moderate opreagost up, I don't have any point today. This is the best proposal anyone's come up with yet for the disposal of this white elephant.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I reckon they could auction off the pressing of a 'button' to start the descent of a satellite over a certain area.
:)
Wouldnt it be cool to press the button one night and the satellite leaves a nice trail over your town.
I would pay for that...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Iridium failued because Iridium was a bad idea. Satellites are quite in demand, thank you
satelites that work that is. if iridium failed only because of business/management problems, the satelites would probably have new homes by now.
but they don't, which leads me to believe that the technology used in the constellation is crap/inappropriate/worthless. given that it's completely unsuitable for data communications as well, I don't see any technically redeeming qualities...
the cash has been transferred.
...
...
[clicks right rodent button]
hey, nothing happened! I was a refu*&@#$%!NO CARRIER
and even better way to waste money
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
I definitely think the New Year's angle is a good one...
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I'd much rather be able to pay to have them de-orbit them onto someone's house...
"Hey look! A shooting star...oh shit."
I don't like fish. Reverse the fish to e-mail.
And whitey's burning up satellites like they was so much paper...
[pink beam of light]
is this just an elaborate training for their satellite guys?
Read the article. The $50 million offer was retracted.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
These things are like skeet for any nation's antisat weapons, why not sell them as that and get them destroyed that way. The government is aching to waste money on weapons again, why not sell these useless things as TARGETS?
Good idea. I think we should blow up every defective/old satellite and leave the debris orbiting. Any rogue asteroid that threatens to destroy the earth ( a la "Deep Impact" ) will be pulverized before it even gets here.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
No, No, No, you are all wrong! It happened because their IT boys thought that if they could convince the execs to build it, it could double as their own personal dedicated UT Server!
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
This could work out to be the world most expensive fireworks show, provided we can see the chunks burn up in the atmosphere. Maybe they could sell tickets to try to make some of their money back? And they said it was a total loss...
Wait a second there. It's quite a waste, sure. But not in that way. Where do you think those dollars went? Prolly quite a few corps got richer. But this project also gave a lot of people a lot of work, earning them money for themselves and their family. I don't know really much about this project, but with this amount of money they'll prolly did some research on some things too. That research won't come down with the satellites. I often see people assume that when money is spent, it is gone. This might be true for yourself, but not for the thing as a whole. Billons of dollars were lost by some people/compagny's, but also earned by others. And many people get to see a nice, free firework, too (they do take them down when they fly over the dark side of the earth, I hope? :-) So, it's not all that bad. But it's still a pity.
I once worked for Motorola (one of the ever-growing legion of people that can say that) and can tell you that Iridium was not a contributing factor to the slowness of development, in any area. Each division stands on its own, just as though it were a separate company and Mama Moto, home of the Batwing, was a Venture Capitalist that required each company to shuffle forth meekly and tell the King how it has spent the King's money and when the King will get its taxes...and how much.
Remember that the mantra at the Semiconductor Product Division of Moto is not unlike that of a particular winery: "We shall sell no wine before its time."
(Unlike competition Intel who seems to go by the mantra "We shall sell no wine before it's paid for.")
Motorola announced today, that it was going to enter the non-profit sector, with the release of their Iridium sattelites to the World Hunger Association. A spokesman for Motorola said that their endeavor was not to actually feed these people, but to allow them to either call out for pizza, or to call someone to let them know how hungry they are.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
By destroying these sattelites, Motorola is giving the clear signal of "failure". Their reputation would be greatly improved by a simple act of generosity. Name one university that wouldn't appreciate being given the chance to own one of these puppies...
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Thanks for the info(about the cost of maintnance), I was wondering why Motorola would sacrifice all that expensive hardware by letting it fall out orbit. I still dont understand why Motorola would turn down a $50 Mil offer. Maybe they feel like the scorned lover "if I cant have it, nobody can" !?! Certainly an odd policy for a publicly held corp dont you think?
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
Skink... as in Carl Hiassen (SP?) ?
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
But, would not the satellites burn up on re-entry in to the Earths's atmosphere? If not, why not?
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
Why don't they sell rights to the mass? If it costs 4K$/lb to get mass into low-earth orbit and you've got 60 satellites w ith, say 300 lbs of usable mass each then isn't that 72 *million* dollars worth of mass? Seems to me that a robot could be designed by now to act as a mass scavenger, dropping by a satellite, cutting off little bits at a time, dropping them into a furnace (solar powered of course) and using a magnetic separator to divide the stuff into component materials, then leave it in place for the creation of gross structures like radiation shielding, extruded beams, etc. Send up three types of little solar powered robots, the cutter-upper, the separator, and the tugs to pull the resulting ingots/beams/whatever into a higher parking orbit.
Once you own the rights to old mass you could just keep sending up ever more little scurrying scavengers and be far further on the way to a non-government space station. Rememeber, you've got plenty of time. If you use a laser torch, then you've got almost no moving parts and the units can just keep working away 24/7 for years, meaning they don't have to be very fast, or big, or even efficient.
So go ahead, tell me why CMU, Caltech, or even Mondo-tronics for that matter, couldn't, with a twenty-million dollar budget and a mandate to use proven tech like simple ion engines, couldn't build this. Then tell me that Beal Aerospace couldn't get 'em up there.
Just my $00.2.
-Rustin the perplexed
I bet that that the NSA would enjoy giving Motorola some money if they can use Iridium for their Echelon =) ...
Actually, we will, just spread out in the atmosphere and in whatever ocean or desert they hit.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Sorry guys, that must be the weather, but this sorry is sad, very sad. You said that this hopefully not your money. But this is our planet. Assembling all those _VERY_ expensive pieces of hardware and putting them in place involved a huge amount of money, but a huger amount of ressources, from mens to ore. Those 5-6 billions of dollars are only the tip of the iceberg of a huge waste. And no, wasting anything ain't no fun. ;-(. But I have childrens.
There must be a way to reuse all that !
Moreover, since all those people have been so marvelous at planning I just hope that someone else, i.e. _REAL_ experts will be assigned the tasks of getting all that hardware down _PROPERLY_, without doing more harm.
And no, I'm no green-freak
[Pruneau
Nimoy: My work is done here...
Bart:"But you didn't doanything!"
Nimoy: Oh didn't I? (Beams out, star trek sound effect)
I like cake
You are correct about intercontinental communication and the internet backbone. But at home i surf the web and do email wireless from my laptop and having used it only for a couple of months, i would never give it up now the same way i would never give up my dsl line.
A sad thing will be that somewhere there's a scientist working for motorolla that will figure out a brilliant use for these satelites a day after the final satelite is destroyed.
Power corrupts... absolute power is kinda neat!
i'm just guessing, but maybe there is some sort of federal/international law that dictates who can and can't ave satellites and no one who qualifies for that wants the damn things.
The time hasn't come yet.
Maori
The people designing and building those cars could have bought new cars too... The bottom line is that write offs destroy value. If Iridium could have been sold, the money could have been used to buy more cars or pay money to people that build new satellites who can then buy new cars etc. etc.
No, not true, the shareholders could have spent their money buying a new car instead, the carmakers lost out. When value is destroyed everyone loses
Weh !
I liked the phones, personally. I took them all over the place, as Alaska is "heavily rural", and has almost no cell coverage. They worked really well after I figured out that you had to hold down the freaking '0' key to make a plus sign in front of dialing the number.
What I can't figure out is whether they were intended as a combination of "background" microwave noise and messaging, or had something else built in. Let's face it, if you use a spread spectrum microwave Tac radio, the opposing side doesn't really need to know what you are sending. All they need to do is fix you long enough put something through your position. A sky full of spread spectrum microwave transmitters pointed at the ground must have looked pretty handy to some folks.
On the other hand, putting a downlink and control station in Quantico, Va. might have made economic sense. After all, real estate is so inexpensive there ;-).
Also, the handheld units are showing up in pawn shops for dirt nothing. Has anybody got a use for the little beggars?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I think that people also want wireless access, but they want it at the price of the cheaper wired access. Personally, I would like to be able to get on the net from my laptop anywhere in the world at a limited bandwidth, but I don't want to pay the extreme costs that come along with it. I think when prices come down a little bit on wireless, that it will become a partner with wired access, not a competitor.
When i heard of iridium and the global satallite system. Fear and wonder went through my mind. I was thinking Global tracking satallite system. HUMANS WILL BE CHIPPED SOON just like animals are. Well thats what my fear was, think about it.. why in the world would their need to be a global cellular system so you can use your cell phone in different countries. There is just no logic in this and the cost for the use or maintaining the system. I still think it will be bought by a government and used for such other uses as tracking or some other FUD i can dream up. cya
I think it is a little bit more complicated than that. Motorola said "Qualified Buyers" meaning someone that would put it to good use. Plus with that sum of money. They would have to give Ebay a huge chunk for the "End of Auction Fee."
Why not drop them all on New Year's Eve, and recoup some money from party organizers? :-)
Because $50M would be burned up in less than a few weeks, these guys go bankrupt for the same reasons this project ain't running leaving these things stranded in a declining LEO til one of the birds fell on Bumfart, Siberia killing someone's pet Raindeer, Mot is sued because they put the damn things up in the first place, and as they are a US Company the venue would most definately be here in the United States of Litegation.
blah
clif
Ebay them!
A nice featured auction with a low starting bid, and no reserve, and Motorola might get enough money to start their own cell phone company. ;)
George Lee
.. and spend all the R&D money they wasted on their outer space ventures on more important things, like faster powerPC chips that actually work at 800-1000 MHz
or maybe the PR battery will make them rethink their arrogance at not cooperating with IBM on the project they are supposed to be partners on.
offtopic? maybe.. so mod me.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Couldn't resist, actually it's sad that this is happening - I wonder if Global Star will survive. Same concept, a little cheaper (~2 bucks a minute vs. ~20).
I swear we have more stories about The End of Iridium than we have about The End of The Internet.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Engineering Machismo
It was a great idea. I'd love to have a phone that worked anywhere ... but not at such exorbitant prices. And not if I have to carry around a briefcase dedicated to that task, either.
The obsticles of technology and the cost of the infrastructure were just too much for such an ambitious plan.
Too much, too early, I guess...
Think about it - how many of us would pay for a lottery ticket for the chance to press the button to fire one of those babies out of orbit? I know I would.
As I understand it, the reason that they were not able to find any buyers for the network is that it is built so specifically for telephone coverage that it cannot be used for anything else. It can't be used for Internet (at least not at decent speeds), it can't be used for any kind of broadcasting, it can't be partially deorbited to only provide partial coverage, etc etc.
So the really amazing thing is not that the business plan they had failed, because most business plans fail, but the fact that they spent billions and billions of dollars putting up a network of sattelites, so sure of their own brilliance that they didn't make it the slightest bit flexible. Apparently Motorola is full of yes-men, and nobody even stopped to say "What if we can't sell phone service?".
It is like orbiting Playstations when they should have put up Linux loaded PCs.
Well, theres that and the whole "let's give missile technology to dictatorial China so they can launch our sattelites (which we will then burn up)" thing too. I'm not even going to say "conspiracy"...
That also includes a link on what to do if you have an Iridium phone. Apparently a school is taking Iridium phone donations so they can use them in electronics lab about satellite stuff.
Don't you want to be able to set up a data connection anywhere in the world? Sure, sometimes you want to be alone, but for people that are working on projects in rugged terrain, it probably comes in handy.
Not that I don't want high-speed too. :)
sixty six satellites!
One by one, burned out of the atmosphere
Which satellite will be the sole survivor?
Stay tuned!
Hell yeah sure, those ABM clowns, they'd have orbit after orbit to get locked in on the damn things, and there are powerful radio transmitters on board the Iridium satellites to which the ABMs can home in. That way, the $50-billion ABM fraud^H^H^H^H^Hproject can maybe enjoy a second "success," which, like the first, requires cheating - the use of a transponder on the target. Which, gee, a "rogue state" isn't too likely to install on their ICBM.
Anyway, any "rogue state" Hell-bent on committing national suicide by nuking a city in the U.S.A. would probably not use an ICBM to deliver the bomb, but would instead transport their warhead (most likely bought, incidentally, from America's good free-market friends in the formerly socialist and now thoroughly kleptocratic Russia) on a boat or a commercial plane. (A couple fun facts! there are some nuclear bombs which weigh as little as 60 lbs.! and drug dealers smuggled over two hundred and fifty tons of cocaine into the U.S.A. last year!) Then once they got the weapon over the border, they'd simply drive it to its target in the U.S.A. via a Ryder truck...
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Expensive bulky phones that didn't work indoors? What I'm curious about is how the company ever got the money together to *put* all those damn satellites in orbit. Either, the people putting the money up were dumb (which seems unlikely), or Iridium had some good arguments. Does anyone know what they were?
I would have thought that in a bizarre way those people might be really employable now! "Hey I'm the guy that convinved all those rich people to give us billions of dollars to make that failed phone network! Now look deeply into my eyes and give me your bank account details..."
Mike
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
The wasteful bit was building them in the first place. Now that they are up there, the best thing that can be done is to take them down. Their intended purpose is better served by other technology, mostly already in place. They are like a treatment for a disease already cured using a different treatment with fewer adverse side effects. The best thing that can be done is to stop administering the treatment.
Falling on my head like a NATO bomb
Falling from the sky like a Canadian Sea King
I want to walk in the particle stream
I want to dance like astronomers do
I want to dive into your bunker
It is raining bits on you
So baby laugh with me
Like competitors do
Walk with me
Like investors do
Talk to me
Like PCS users do
Here comes Iridium
Billions burning, what a tragedy
Tearing Motorola apart like the DOJ
Oooouch
I want to walk in the particle stream
I want to dance like astronomers do
I want to dive into your bunker
It is raining bits on you
So baby laugh with me
Like competitors do
Here comes Iridium
Falling on my head like a NATO bomb
Falling from the sky like a Canadian Sea King
(Here comes another, here comes another)
I want to walk in the particle stream
I want to dance like astronomers do
I want to dive into your bunker
It is raining bits on you
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
In the end, all that was really wasted was the raw resources (which we won't get back) and the energy that went into the construction (and peoples' time of course but they were going to use that anyway).
Consumption is important to a healthy economy, waste allows consumption to be higher than it would be in an efficient system. To see this taken to it's extreme conclusion, check out "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (available in the Gutenberg project I believe) where the citizenry is encouraged to constantly purchase new playthings to keep consumption up. Then take a moment to consider how much that seems like the way things are today.
Of course, the problem is that resources are not infinite. Then again, the current mass-purchase items (music CDs and games) do not take that much resources to produce (especially in relation to their monetary cost)
Rich
The buyer would either have to shell out the money to keep the satellites up there, or to do away with them in a way such that the remains don't pose a danger (i.e. don't crash down to Earth and reach it, and don't litter the orbit). Apparently, no-one who could ensure this is willing to pay money for the things.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
At last the long awaited moment for all the astronomers of the world!!! The Iridium satellites were the largest polluter of the radio frequencies close to the 21cm hydrogen lines. Cheers!
You can't handle the truth.
The Register's coverage states that it's costing several millions of dollars per month to maintain the network - who _could_ afford to take it over?
I know Castle Harlan offerd $50million for it, and several Linux fans were going to use them as an open source datacomms network - but does anyone know what happened to those offers?
Richy C.
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people want to be wired (use fiber optics) and not be wireless (use satellite), which is nonsense and not a reason why they failed
people don't want to be wired, they have to be - upstream bandwith is hopeless on mobile devices, and if it sucks for data, I don't want it.
What are you talking about? Why does an already bankrupt and kaput company need a tax shelter? Everything they have is losses. The banckrupcy court mandated that Iridium maintain the satelites and then destroy them safely. Every other dime went to their creditors. That's what banckrupcy means.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
And how many countries have more mobiles than landlines? How many more African villages have GSM mobile coverage than landline coverage?
As for Britain, there are more people with digital TV coming into their house wireless (either terrestrial or satellite) than with digital cable.
Oh, and I can get wireless xDSL (WipLL, actually, gets cool acronym points) faster and cheaper than wired here. (2.4Mb/s symetrical vs. 2Mb/s downstream and 256k up)
Ambrose
Soon ago, we were debating about Using the Sky as a huge advertising screen. :-)
Motorola doesn't seem they have understood this concept as nobody would by a product which advertising campaign would be such [expensive|catastrophic].
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
You'll still get to see 77 cool flashes as they plummet through the atmosphere... (And yes, it's 77, not 66 - they had 11 spares, a lot of which are already dead.)
Mr. Ska
... for real this time!
We have been having a big laugh over this, my company had the contract to do their billing system. Although the bean counters are upset they lost a customer, many on the tech staff are amused at the absurdity of the whole situation. It is always interesting to read about one of your customers in Dilbert.
I found an article a while back about some explorers who were out in the wilds when the network went down. They had mixed feelings about losing their telephone connection to the civilized world, but they were very happy they could dump the large clunky handset.
I saw a sign on a telephone pole the other day that said "We Buy Satellites!" I thought about calling them up and suggesting they contact Motorola...
I'm not too sure most people might understand why it failed. I used to work for Bell Mobility, which was partnered with Iridium and we were given a small presentation on the product and their goals. First of all the cell itself was the same size as a cell from 2-3 years ago. And it worked the same as a regular cell until it was attached to the "satellite transmission piece", then it became big clumsy piece of technology. The service for it was expensive, but you have to look at how Iridium was trying to market their product. They weren't trying to sell their service to everybody, they were trying to attract a corporate clientele that had the money and need to use such a service. I think where they went wrong was that they limited themselves to only offering phone services. Someone wrote that they failed because people want to be wired (use fiber optics) and not be wireless (use satellite), which is nonsense and not a reason why they failed. Both type of transmission offer different benefits. What Iridium should have done is also offer other services such as internet connectivity which is one of the only way to obtain broadband wireless connectivity.
Buyaka
I attended an ionospheric modification conference some time ago ('94?) before Iridium was operational. At the conference one of the execs gave a presentation on Iridium where he very openly (for an exec) admitted problems with the business model and technical difficulties with their implementation of the system. I believe he concluded his talk with a statement to the effect of "Sure we'll have stiff competition for a very limited marketshare--three systems are planned and only one will survive. We hope to win by getting there first."
There's a metaphor here somewhere.
to use as target practice for the ABM system. ;-)
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
At least ignorance can be fixed.
Satellite use and profits have never been higher. Believe it or not, you communicate all the time by satellite without even realizing it. Pagers and gas stations are two good examples.
You mentioned cost, and that is just wrong. It may be cheaper to connect San Francisco and Tokyo by fiber in the long run. Connecting the entire continent of Africa is a gnu of a different color. Systems exist that allow, quite literally, you to fly over a site and drop by parachute a solar powered fixed station that would be ready to use the instant it hit the ground (and only that late because of the inconvenience of using it while still in the air.)
Satellites require antennas to connect, but no direct connection of copper or fiber. This is a big thing when running through areas so poor that locals dig up wires to sell as scrap just as fast as companies/governments can put them in.
Look at the roof of a gas staion, and you'll probably spot a small dish-like antenna. This is how those pumps communicate to verify your plastic. Yesterday I was buying power strips, and the company had a dialup verification system. It took noticably longer than do the pumps. How many times have we been delayed by long verification times at the pump? I can't think of any time it happened to me.
Satellites and satellite bandwidth are in more demand now than at any time in history. There are currently over 600 birds in geosynchronous orbit, most of them communications specific. Don't confuse a lousy business execution with a nonexistant market.
The worst thing about the failure of Iridium, which failed for business reasons, is that it poisoned an entire sector in many people's minds. Iridium failued because Iridium was a bad idea. Satellites are quite in demand, thank you.
P.S. I make my living in the comm sat industry.
No, an example of the marginal fallacy. The price of Motorola chips and beepers is set according to what the market will bear; they do not decide on a level of investment spend plus profits and then set prices in order to achieve that. The original poster is right to say that the loss was entirely borne by Motorola shareholders, and occurred some time ago when the sueless things were actually built.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Maybe people like it that there are some places on earth they can't be reached by phone.
As I see it, this is basically the kingsize version of lighting your cigarette with a $100 bill. I doubt that other companies will be able to top this anytime soon. A shame that stock buyers can't appreciate such displays of financial prowess...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Well, it sad to see Iridium go. I've followed is progress over the last several years and thought the concept really had a chance. Unfortunately, market tides and marketing foulups shifted under Iridum's feet, and they fell on their face. Let me tackle a few of the questions here.
The time hasn't come yet.
The time came five years ago even more than now. Iridium could have been used to bootstrap phone networks up in developing countries until regular cellular towers were available. One of the concepts was also a form of "village phone" that was basicly a phone booth with a sat antenna on top.
Expensive bulky phones that didn't work indoors?
The phones did have problems indoors. They really needed a line of site in order to connect up to the sats. It would have worked fine for a roof mounted antenna on a truck, ship, or plane. For some reason, the marketing brain power at Iridium decided to target mobile executives rather than commercial industry. Instead of trying to get a Fortune 500 CEO to carry one in a briefcase, they could have targeted trucking companies who do cross country runs, shipping that is in the middle of the ocean, and airlines who could use a cost effective replacement for those "Airphones" they try and charge $3/minute for. Iridium failed to target the tech to the market is was sufficient for.
Why not just auction the suckers?
Won't work. First, there is a lot of ground support involved. I believe the cost is at somewhere around $1M/day to operate the sats. Next, you have to send up replacements too often. This is not a geosync sat that just hangs out. This is five dozen plus sats in low orbit experiencing constant drag. Within a few years, the first generation sats will start coming home on their own. With a controlled deorbit, you can at least make sure they all end up in the ocean instead of having chunks of metal land in New York and Tokyo.
Iridium completely missed the boat on data service. The system is designed around voice and low-bandwidth pager data. This was a major design flaw with the move to an information society over the last few years. If Teledesic gets off the ground, maybe my faith in these sat clusters will be renewed, but it will take a lot.
The failure of these first generation sat clusters has hurt more than just the sat companies themselves. Several companies were developing new low cost launching technologies intended to support this market. You can write off Rotary Rocket and serverl other companies because they saw their potential customer go away before they were even out the door.
Such is life...
World Beach List, my latest project.
Billions of dollars coming streaming down into our atmosphere.
Remember folks, this is a *good* thing. Radio astronomers all over the world are rejoicing. Yes, it's a huge waste of money. But none of it was your money, so relax (unless you have stock in Mot). It's just another product that didn't work out. Think of them as Edsels in space.
I *will* miss the cool flashes of light as they pass overhead, though. I saw a couple of them in broad daylight - probably mag. -6 or -7.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
The Fall of Iridium (coming soon to a sky near you) is vindication of the view that people don't want WIRELESS, they want WIRED, as in max bandwidth. Undersea and underground fiber optic cables, not satellites, are the backbone of the worldwide internet - cheaper to install with much higher capacity. For years communications satellites have been the (sole) monemaker for space activities and provided the spur for further space development. Now that isn't true anymore - and I fear ALL space development will suffer as a result.