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.
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
as if the NSA doesn't already have their own sattellites...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
.. 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.
--
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].
--
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.