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Trying to Save Iridium 266

Posted by Hemos from the s-o-s dept.
I think about 20 million of you that have written about the Save Iridium Web site. A band of folks have gotten together to try to save the satellites and "Open Source" the network. I'm not sure what uses it will put to, but maybe they should hook up with the Freenet folks.
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Trying to Save Iridium More

Trying to Save Iridium

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  • Give it to the Hams! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why not offer it to the Amateur Radio community? The companies could take their tax write-off and hams would have another resource for providing emergency communications as well as a new toy to tinker with. The possibilities for linking amateur land-based repeater systems are endless..

  • this gets old (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think that the logic of the nick should be changed. It should be that if the words 'First Post' or 'F1RST P0ST' or 'Frost Pist' or just about any variation on that, appear in any of the first thirty posts, the nick should be changed to 'Dickless Pinhead.' Thus:

    FIRST POST MOTHERFUCKER (Score:-1)
    by Dickless Pinhead on Friday March 24, . . . .

    or maybe a randomly generated appelation, like "Clueless Moron" or "Bandwidth Gobbling Idjit" or "Self Important Blithering Imbecile",
    and so on

  • a) you can't park a satellite over any point on the earth's surface (unless you're geostationary over the equator). b) It will cost a lot to add weather monitoring equipment to all these satellites.
  • You know, it's a shame to waste this fine aluminum can that some engineer spent a lot of money designing just to hold a beverage. Rather than trow it in the trash I'll leave it here on the street for other people to marvel at.

    These satalites are too expensive to operate and are thus trash. Just as a RESPONCIBLE person does not litter, a RESPONCIBLE company does not leave its garbage behind.
  • Amateur Radio satellites are perhaps the greatest experiment ever achieved by civilians without recurring to government funding. Currently, there are about 9 OSCAR satellites ('OSCAR' meaning 'Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio') and 15 MicroSats. Most of these got into space by being piggy-backed into some rocket as a secondary payload during the launch of something larger (like a weather satellite), making the cost rather low.

    AMSAT [amsat.org] has a new satellite, the Phase 3D [amsat.org], which is scheduled for launch on an Ariane in July. The funding for the launch came from donations by radio amateurs (making it look like PBS), organisations like the American Radio Relay League [arrl.org], and other sources. Being a larger satellite, the Phase 3D has to be launched individually, raising the cost to what is now considered average. The fact that Phase 3D is going to space this summer should be used as a standard.
  • A correction: Phase 3D will be launched as a secondary payload; AMSAT was required to build a special mounting adaptor to fit the satellite into the Ariane's payload bay along with the primary cargo if AMSAT wanted to pay coach instead of first class.
  • bad timing i suppose. i think the ink on the design was already drying by the time the net really took off. It was always envisioned as a voice system.
  • That doesn't mean they are monitoring communications through that facilicy, they aren't
  • I don't know if it ever has.. but the FBI (among others i'm sure) did have the authority to wiretap a specific phone, assuming it was homed in the US. It isn't a simple 'flip a switch' process though.
  • And they can steer the satellites to re-enter them in the middle of the ocean so there's no hazard even if they did reach ground level.

    Speak for yourself! The Interplanetary Federation of Octopi consider sea-crashing sattelites a majorly life threatening danger. That's why we constructed a thick shell of ice on our home planet of Europa.

  • The idea that some nieve geek consortium can somehow "save" the Iridium network is ridiculous in the extreme. If Craig McCaw passed on it you know it isn't worth much. Besides this will be a benefit to radio astronomers who lost an OH absorption band to Iridium. Now they will get it back!

    The next constellation to rain down on us will be Glabalstar, followed closely by ICO. LEO mobile satellite systems will go down as one of the great failures of the decade!


  • I tried to fill in my name but I got an error at http://saveiridium.com/cgi-bin/data when I hit the "Save Iridium!" button.

    And I tried to locate an email address to report the error, but there was none on the site. I tried to go to the guessbook and all I got was to the top of the webpage. Then I tried the "livechat' and I got a blank.

    Hmmm....

    Can someone please point me to a place where I can actually report the error to SOMEBODY?

    Thank you.

  • the price is too high, but that's something more easily changeable.)

    If you invest $7000M, you'll need to take about $350M per year in interest payments into account for the calculation of your "operating costs".

    If you manage to buy the network of satelites from the bankrupt iridium company for say $7000, you need to factor in about $350 per year in interest payments on that. Suddenly the actual operating costs of the satelites (manning the ground-stations, interconnect to PSTN) overwhelms the costs in operating the thing.

    So, the original owners are looking at a minimum of $350M of operational costs per year, and selling services on that network for "cheap" is simply not an option.

    Roger.

  • At one point Motorola was projecting that a replacement satallite would need to be sent up every 18 months, statistically speaking. So even if they aquire the system as it sits now it will start to degrade badly as satallites fail, with no way to replace them. Those low orbits are a pretty harsh environment for electronics. They may not fall out of the sky but they will become useless.
    --
  • How, exactly, are satelittes "Open Source" - Do we really want access tot he blueprints/source code for the navigation computers? That is what Open Source would mean (AFAIK).


    Now, if Iridium were to be "given" to someone, access would never be free, unless adequate ground crews could be gotten for free, electricity was free for the ground stations, and the phone calls from the ground stations to their ultimate destinations were all made free. Then, maybe.


    Now, since there is this thought of sending data to the sattelite, where would it go? To "free" NAPs with great big pipes to connect to the internet backbone? And how would access be limited? Why wouldn't everyone want to access the satelites at the same time? They only have a certain, finite amount of capacity...


    And how is the Iridium progect going to overcome the loss of their great big tax write-off for the investment? They can write off $100's of millions of dollars of taxes if they dispose of the equipment (remember the landfill full of Apple Lisas?)


    If the network were given to a non-profit organization that could give them a deduction, that would be a good start. Then the non-profit could contract back to the Irridium project for day-to-day management and offer service at price that could ignore the original equipment costs, and instead was focused on meeting on-going costs.


    The uplinks are slow, there are not alot of them, and the ground stations are expensive to man/run.


    But hey, it's Open Source - it's great!

  • McCaw offered to buy Iridium.
    Iridium turned McCaw down. Not enough money for investors.(No, it wasn't broadband)
    Iridium says it cant find any buyers.
    Iridium just doesn't want to sell cheap, rather file for bankruptcy.
    Now they want to burn the business.
    If I invested, Id rather have 1/2 of my money than none.

    The courts/investors bought bankruptcy, lock, stock and barrel.

  • Why do people feel the need to write shit like "WRONG!" in huge capital letters?
    Thank you.
  • If you were going to setup a scam, surely you'd use a popular topic...
  • Um, aren't educational donations classed as a tax-writeoff? What it the satellites where given to research or something?

    I'm sure the US gov't would be willing to ignore tax if the sats were handed to a useful purpose.

  • What will they do? 'grep' them to death? Send a heard of 'bison' after them?

    I was thinking of something like `kill -9 aliens`.

    Seriously, I didn't have any plans in mind. And I didn't really mean the post to be that funny. I was being serious, actually. I think it would make a good story.

    But as to how the aliens are killed, I don't know. Maybe there's some new signaling protocol between the earth the the satellites that people have been working on. Maybe one of the hacker types figures out he can broadcast something in a weird part of the spectrum that annoys them and makes them want to leave. You know, like one of those deals that drives away squirrels using ultrasound. But only with... uh.. aliens. Maybe the aliens are actually lost-lost relatives of terrestrial squirrels and they've come back to get their cousins. So maybe the same noise annoys them too. Yeah, sure. I can see the book's title now: "So Long, And Thanks For All The Nuts."

    OK, so the alien thing is pretty pathetic... :-)

    -B

  • Nah, compared to a missle target they are sitting ducks.

    But ya'know, I'd pay to see the movie if the Navy or somebody could hit em' with a missile and catch it in on film in all the IMAX technicolor glory they could come up with.

    Now there's an OS Project I'd join -- instead of "Save Iridium" "Roast Iridium -- the OS IMAX adventure... Yeah, that's it -- 66 worldwide teams competing for the best shoot down show.

    Anybody game? ;-)

  • I remember it being mentioned numerous times while Iridium was in phase of launching satelites. One of biggest problems with the system is that about the time they expected to pay off their original debt they were going to have to incur the same debt (probably more) all over again as they started replacing the birds.

  • I vote to save the satellites. If I had to choose between telescopes (radio or otherwise) and (satellite) cellphones, I pick cellphones.
  • I read somewhere that it costs several mu=illion dollars per month to keep all the satellites operational. Where would an open source model of administration raise funds of that magnitude?
  • Why can't we just set their orbital manuvering thrusters to full blast and let them escape the solar system? Then they might run into a super-intelligent race of machines (shades of V'ger) that would give them intelligence, VC funding, and a killer management team, each of which has interviewed for Wired. They'd come back to Earth, launch a killer IPO and make the $6 bil investment back, in spades. They'd probably also merge with Paul Allen and turn into a pure-energy transcendant being.
  • I'm by no means an iridium buff, but i do seem to recall a story about how one of the major costs (after the initial satellite launch) would be the periodic replacement of the satellites that decayed out of orbit and crashed. The reason why you could get a direct link to these satellites was because they were in a pretty low orbit, they need constant adjustment to remain in there low orbit but are eventually doomed to a fiery death. This low orbit was also the reason why they had to have so many satellites to have a global network, the pesky earth would get in the way of line of sight communication. How in the heck is some band of geeks going to figure out how to raise the money to keep the sats that are up in orbit, and get new ones up there every couple of years to maintain the network? They're not, thats how...

    It seems to me that the free market has already proved there is NO demand for some dorky looking handheld satellite uplink thingy--so if you don't need to reach a satellite by some handheld then there is a whole slew of standard satellites you can reach, with a good-old-fashioned satellite dish. I've never done anything like this, but a quick look over at the lair of ham radio geeks seems to indicate a lot of other people are [arrl.org].

  • I like the "AskJeeves" question at the bottom of the page. Click on it and you see an odd assortment of answers -- even odder than usual. I'm still wondering what in the question made it come up with pictures as one subject.
  • Yes, the $600 million per year cost to run the system is a big problem. It would be quite a challenge to replace the ground stations with whatever an "Open" equivalent would be. And although the problem of calculating the orbits is mathematics, managing the proper combination of orbits and orientations is a challenge.
  • My first thought upon hearing that the satellites were going to be burned up was, "What a horrible waste of valuable resources. There must be some alternative."

    Well, unfortunately from the article, it appears that the satellites only support phone service and do not have broadband capabilities. I suppose they could be useful for WAP applications, but how bulky would the receivers have to be? As bulky as the phones currently are, I'm sure.

    The sad truth appears that there just doesn't seem to be much to do with these satellites. They were poorly conceived in the first place.

    Still, I support any effort to save them.
    http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declara tion/declaration.html

  • What will they do? 'grep' them to death? Send a heard of 'bison' after them?
  • Telemetry & control of the vehicles occurs in the K-band which is one of the more useful radio astronomy areas.
  • Unless you can find a use that will recover/save hundreds of millions of dollars every year, it is much better to burn the mofos up.
  • Could the system be modified to receive instead of transmit? Then instead of being a pain in the arse for radio astronomy it could be a usefull tool...a radio interferometor like the VLA in New Mexico only with a diameter the same (actually bigger) than the earth.
  • Give me a reason with proof and I will!

  • I failed spelling through my entire school career.

  • Does this seem a little silly to anybody but me?

    This (very, very anonymous) website claims that they are ("serious") and are working towards aquiring the satellites. Whatever.

    Look at their survey. "Do you have some ideas for what could be done with 66 orbiting satellites, (besides a $7 billion meteor shower)?"

    Seeing as this is under the Space topic, not the Humour one, I think that some critical thinking skills are required on the part of the alleged many submitters and Hemos.

    "It says open-source!! Let's post it!!" is a losing policy.

    ------

  • Seems that lots of folks keep forgetting about the ground stations these things use. Yea, yea, the satellite can communicate directly with your phone or other device that can use the signal. BUT, the system still has ground stations that need to be maintained, that means continuing bills, including a payroll.

  • find / -type alien -exec rm -rf {} \;
  • The Iridium satellites are the source of two major bits of irritation to astronomers: light pollution, in the form of intense bright solar reflections, and radio noise pollution in bands that are used for radio astronomy. Motorola didn't play by the rules which govern deployment of such satellites, and drew the ire (and boycott) of many in the astronomy community.

    Your criticism of the word "leech" isn't wrong, I find that term to be inaccurate. "Useless" is the word the marketplace has found for it. I bid it good riddance, and look forward to 66 fireballs plunging to earth, the cleanup of a bad idea, poorly implemented, by a company that just couldn't stop moving along a well laid out path to disaster.

  • Iridium had only 50k subscribers world wide. They aren't cost effective. Do you want a multi-thousand dollar phone with $6 a minute connect charges? For a phone that doesn't work indoors? Care to imagine how good coverage would be if that money was channeled into adding cell cites? I suspect pretty darned good.


    People are under the totally mistaken impression that any price is worth paying to save a human life. It is a ludicrously romantic notion. Our society decides what the price of human life is, and sometimes it is pretty damned cheap.

  • For the low upstream bandwidth needed by the typical user, and the bursty nature of that uplink, the Iridium system should have plenty of bandwidth for the job (8 Kbps?).

    Since satelite already demands an external dish, adding an Iridium antena to that, and an Iridium transciever to the dish box, shouldn't be all *that* hard to do.

    -BobC
    "They Guy With A Zillion /. Accounts, Who Can't Remember Any Of Them"
  • Well first off if they are going broke a tax writeoff is not important, they are not making any profits, therefore they pay no corprate income tax.

    As for why it takes money, you don't just put a satilite up and forget it, you have to have all sorts of ground support for it. Plus it has to hook into ground based phone systems etc. All that costs a lot of money, Hell if Iridium with VC etc could not make a go of this thing there is no way a bunch of amatures can.

    The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

  • A clarification on Economic bug #2, the satellites can actually be programmed to stop broadcasting when they fly over a given land area in the case where it is prohibited by a government. I remember in the beginning that feature wasn't quite as automatic as needed to be.. and sometimes they wouldn't turn back on. It's quite good now =) Also on the licences.. the politics of those are really tricky. It explains a lot of why the business model was designed like it is.. many independently owned gateways all over the world. The fact that this is a chinese owned gateway is probably the only reason the communists allowed it. (they run the gateway) So it's certainly a very valid point that many of those licences could be in jeopardy depending on who wants to take over.

    Of course as far as I'm concerned, any communist or non-free country can stay in the dark ages. I just wish we'd eliminate our immigration laws so their citizens could come here.
  • Cute, but it will never work. First, these are nothing more than GSM satellite towers ejected into space. That's it. I'm serious; some of the parts have the same model numbers as GSM cell tower stuff. Getting to play with satellites is cool, but you need to play with something that is actually worthwhile. If I could buy the DirecTV satellite, or a spy satellite, now that would be cool. But there are nothing more than expensive, cold radio repeaters. You get about 9600 baud. If you really have your heart set on communicating around the world, save a couple million and buy a packet radio...



    --
  • 1. Iridium just happens to transmit on a radio band that radio telescopes listen to. Whoops.

    2. The satelites are low enough, and have such a profile that sunlight reflecting off of them (even when it's night on the surface, the satelites are still out far enough that they may not be in Earth's shadow) can create bright flashes that can damage or destroy (expensive!) sensitive telescope optics.

    The latter is a problem with other satelites too (to a small extent), but Iridium is by far the most severe.

  • A bunch of satellites fell down one dark and windy day
    The radio astronomers all jumped and said "Hooray!"
    Outdated narrow bandwidth was found to be a flaw
    They're losing too much money, said a fellow named McCaw
    Throw them away, can't save them to-day-ay
    They're Boat Anchors in the Sky
    Boat Anchors i-n-n-n the sky-y-y


    Think I can sell the idea to Weird Al?

  • Waste? (Score:2)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    I don't think ditching the satellites is such a huge waste, and for a lot of reasons they probably should be dumped now.

    If anyone else takes the network over, what assurance do we have that they will deorbit them properly? Most likely, the satellites would fail and be left in their orbits creating a future hazard.

    The Iridium network isn't a huge waste, because the engineers who built them have taken home paychecks and eaten the groceries for years now. As Chris Rock said, any corporate mission statement is equivalent to "all babies must eat." Those babies would have had to eat anyway...
  • they won't beconne space debris, they are LEO sats.

    Low Earth Orbit Sats can't stay in orbit without constant fuel burns to lift the orbit, so within 5 or so years every Iridium sat.will run out of fuel and drop into the atmosphere.

    Better to de-orbit them in a controlled manner than let them run out of fuel and re-enter randomly
  • The site's about Iridium. It may use the term Open Source, but most people (not /.ers) don't even know what the term is. Iridium is not popular, hence the burn.

    I think it's a peice of performance art, like that guy that does hoaxes...

  • Seems to me it could have succeeded in the sense of being useful if it could have supported higher data rates (say ISDN speeds at minimum).

    Any idea why they didn't built that into the system? It seems like a pretty obvious requirement in hindsight.

    D

    ----
  • Very interesting message. I have to admit this whole thing has fascinated me in a morbid sort of way.

    How could they add the data capacity down the road? I thought what capacity existed was dependent on the specific satellites that were already up there. Or were they just planning replacement satellites for the data services?

    D

    ----
  • Ten years may also be the design lifetime. The satellite's components and fuel capacity being designed for a 10-year mission life. At the end of ten years, assuming nothing major has broken, maneuvering fuel is low, solar cell and transmitter output are near the low end of the acceptable operating range, and other components may be degraded or worn out.
  • Come on, this isn't for real. It's a joke.

    Do you think we are crazy? y|n

    Will you help us anyways? y|n
  • Actually, according to the article, Motorola had everything to do with the development and implementation of that system. So I guess you're just completely wrong. Of course you do go to Choate haha.
  • Astronomers are jumping for joy at the death of Iridium. Why? because it broadcasts signals at a critical wavelength interferes with ground-based telescopes. If I remember correctly, Iridium is in some type of geosynchronous orbit, so astronomers have to deal with "Iridium Bursts" or "stars"... I can't remember what exactly they call it. Its the equivalent to having your telescope up the street from a car dealership with 50M watts of electricity flowing through their flood lights. I say let Iridium die a quick painless death and let someone else design a more practical, less pollusive system of satelites.

    My $0.02

  • The problem with Iridium is not the amount of spectrum used. The problem is that the spectrum used is right next door to some frequencies which carry important spectral lines that are used for radio astronomy. This wasn't a problem during the design stages of Iridium, but after they got the birds up there it was discovered that the Iridium signals were bleeding over outside of their assigned frequencies. This made radio astronomy observation much more difficult at those frequencies.

    So the issue is not necessarily the amount of spectrum used, but whether the users of it are "good neighbors". In the case of Iridium, they weren't, and so eventually a compromise was hammered out with the radio astronomy community to turn down the satellites' power for a certain amount of time each day.

  • I'm failing to understand something. Why does it take monay to save iridium? Is there no way we could somehow get the company their tax write-off and have them just open up the network for public use instead of directing them all to suicide?

    Furthermore, The guy who pulled out of buying it--how much bandwidth is actually available on these things? If we're talking 56k or somesuch for uplink, then we need to rethink this. Sure, it could be the absolute cooooolest text-based orbital BBS, but really. Beyond the coolness value, I'm doubting the iridiums have that much to offer. Certainly not security [hackernews.com].

    But it would be cool.
  • Anyone ever read the great book called "Virus"? Not the movie, the book. Depending on how modifications were made to the satalites, open source could be a key protection against what happen in the book Virus (StarWars satalite system gone bad). If one person had the ability to modify code and update the systems, there could be some real security issues. But in any case, if these people save the network I would love to be them now. Make a few billion by doing this.
  • The individual price, however, can indeed be lowered. It called volume.

    The only trick is that you have to manage to increase the volume without falling below your break-even point. This is where break-even analysis using computer-based CVP models comes in.

    Now whether or not Iridium could have lowered their individual price remains to be seen. I don't have sufficient access to their accounting information to determine that.

  • Exactly. Open Source is not the answer to all the world's problems. (I know this may have come as a shock to some of you :)

    Folks, this is capitalism at work here. If you spend $7 billion and only manage to attract 55,000 customers, well, sorry, you lose. Them's the breaks.

    And why is anyone trying to save it? If they only managed to attract 55,000 customers, obviously either A) they really, really suck at marketing, or B) there is simply insufficient demand for their services. (With a possible C) the price is too high, but that's something more easily changeable.) I suspect that the answer is B. And if that's the case, there is no point in trying to save the satellites... (unless there's going to be some big ecological disaster or soemthing ... but I doubt that)

  • Mechanical bug #1: They're not burning the satellites for a tax write-off, they're buring them to keep them from becoming space junk, that
    would present a traffic hazard to future spacecraft. If you leave them up there, they will run into something eventually. Guaranteed. Good citizens deorbit their sats before they run out of fuel.

    Actually it's worse then that. These are LEOs. At some point in the future (less then ten years from now) they would fall out of the sky regardless. Deorbiting them over the Pacific Ocean is definaly preferable to having them deorbit themselves over a major population center. People really have been hit by falling space junk. The odds are low, especialy with small comsats, but it can happen.
  • I believe that Iridium was a low orbit system that slowly fell back to Earth in about 10-12 years. You can put satelites in stable high orbits but the time lag starts getting really bad. I always doubted a system that had such insanely high recurring costs.

    -B
  • Man, they should have the sattelites flame out during the burn at Burning Man [burningman.com].

    Maybe even see if they can impact a few of them around Black Rock - talk about performance art!

  • Count me in!!
  • Economic bug #1: They're not going to get a tax write-off for this. They're losing money, so they don't pay any taxes anyway.

    WRONG! Iridium the company can't get a tax write-off, but everyone that invested in them or lent them money could. In fact, it's possible for the total amount written off to exceed the actual cost of the company, since a lot people bought the stock at prices much higher than the IPO price. Anyone that is still holding stock or debt of the company (or that sold at a loss as the stock plummetted) will get to write the off investment against gains/income from their other investing or lending activity.

    Motorola is like to save a bundle in taxes by writing off this sucker. It shouldn't matter much to them whether they burn the birds or donate them, either way they should be able to get a write-off.

  • Iridium is so entangled in an expensive mesh of settlement and orbital agreements that this effort makes me think that Edmund Blackadder's servant Baldric has just suggested, "I have a cunning plan, m'lord. Let's replace them with really, really big turnips!"

  • You're missing the point. What these guys are saying is that here is an opportunity to tinker with satellites, even junky annoying ones. Sure, their orbits will eventually decay and they will be destroyed. No one wants to replace them. But why can't we keep them up until the end of their useful life? I mean, when is anyone going to have a chance just to work with a satellite? How much would it take just to keep the ground stations running on a shoestring?

    This is the argument I see these guys making: Lets try doing something with these satellites instead of just destroying them. Maybe we can't do anything with them, maybe we can. But don't just wipe em out without looking into it. We may not have another chance like this for a while. It is at least worth looking into.

    Just my .02, Aetius
  • I do not think there would be any widespread support for this, especially since most Astronomers are thankful that Iridium may soon be a thing of the past. The frequency band that the satellites use interferes with the OH maser transition. Most radio observatories vehemently opposed Iridium's use of this frequency, which led to some concessions on their part, however for many astronomers it became impossible to detect faint OH masers once the satellite system became operational.

    On the practical side, though I do not know the details, I imagine that the receivers on the iridium satellites are much less efficient that receivers being used for astronomical research and SETI. Also, it may be cheaper to build a network of small telescopes on the ground then to retask and maintain the Iridium satellite network.

    Personally, as a radio astronomer, I'm happy to see that network fall. I am disheartened by the fact that corporations can essentially buy their way into protected frequencies, and astronomers can do very little to stop them.

    For more information about radio interference please visit the AAS committee on Light Pollution, Radio Interference, and Space Debris homepage [aas.org].

  • I am a Ham radio operator, and to be honest, we already have better satellites. :-)

    Before typing further, I'd like to say I do appreciate the spirit in which the idea was posted.

    Actually, I should clarify: We have small, special purpose units that each do their jobs well and are manageable by our Ham Radio satellite organization, AMSAT [amsat.org]. The link is available at http://www.amsat.org . They manage the sats we have and work internationally to develop new ones. Ironically, here in the U.S. a few years back when Iridium was just a twinkle in the eye, they tried to steal our frequencies for their network. (I am assuming the Little LEO's became Iridium). We all sat back and asked, 'Why in the world would a company want 2400 baud satellite info at 150 Mhz?' Apparently, to lose several billion.

    To be honest, I hate seeing that much cash go bye-bye, and losing several nice working satellites is a real bummer, but I'd rather have their frequencies auctioned off to someone who can use them. That way, Hams do not have to fight off that company to keep the frequencies we already have (and have collectively spent real personal money to buy equipment for).

    Come to think about it, since Hams can contribute to AMSAT's satellites, in work and technology, share the maintenance by helping relay health data from the satellite back to AMSAT, and all Hams worldwide can use them for free once they are orbiting, I guess we also already have an Open Source satellite network. (I know, I don't think the words really apply either, but hey...)

  • To quote from The Princess Bride: "You keep on saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."


    "I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
  • The main Iridium web site [iridium.com] still looks like Iridium is up, running, and taking orders. There's a little "urgent message" box in the upper right corner of the screen, but that's the only indication the whole operation is defunct. Even that indicates they're still looking for new financing. Up until last week, you could still order Iridium phones. Finally, that's been turned off.

    Expensive though it was, it's still cheaper than INMARSAT [inmarsat.org], the only other satellite cellular system up and running. I'm suprised somebody didn't want to keep it up until a better satellite service came on-line. You'd think they could sell enough service at a lowered price to cover the operating costs, writing off the launch costs.

  • There is so much junk out there today that these satellites are quickly going to be a hazard to future navigation in orbit. The new space station is already at risk for such debris. With a life span of only ten years, the Iridium satellites (all 66 of them) would become part of the junkyard in not so many years hence.

    The best thing to do is to order these pieces of junk to crash into the sea someplace. This should reduce the space hazard a little bit (less than 0.1%?) but every little bit helps.

  • Can't Iridium/Moto claim the same tax benefit by donating it to a non-profit organization?

    It seems sad that the government would encourage the destruction of $7B worth of investment over it's re-use.

    Then again, we don't need swarms of unused, orbiting trash. So burning them up IS the right answer if no-one can find a use for them.

  • A small, round satellite may be orbiting the earth.

    NOW THEY WANT IT TO GO TO WASTE!!!

    Okay, you may not realize this, but in 1997 French high-school students built a replica of the original Sputnik satellite [oceanes.fr]. It was put into orbit with the help of Russian Cosmonauts in November of that year, and its battery died late that December.

    As far as I'm aware, it's probably still up there!!!

    So here's my plan. If everyone on Slashdot sends me just a little money (and some of you make a lot, so don't be cheap-asses! ), I may be able to get some Cosmonauts to replace the battery. I took a semester of Russian once, so Russians tend to like me, making this a very plausible plan!

    Alternately, if they can't find the thing, I can definitely reprogram one of the Iridium Satellites to go, "Beep... beep... beep..." And I swear I'll GPL the code. For God's sake, there are 66 of them, the least they can do is let us use one for a good cause!

    Think it over. Why not direct your money towards helping establish the world's first Open-Source imitation Soviet satellite? Anyway, my car needs painted.

  • You may be a King or a litle street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper.
  • i believe during tests, access was more towards the 9600-14k range not exactly surfing, but more like being a drift...

  • Amateur Radio Satellites (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @10:00AM (#1175090) Homepage
    Actually there are satellites up there for non-profit Amateur Radio [amsat.org] use, don't know anything about how much they cost or where the funding comes from - but it would be a neat idea <FANTASY> if the court just turns the whole thing over to public use untill such time as it fails from lack of maintenance - ok, here it is, here's the freq, here's what you need to access it, go for it, but when it fails, it's over</FANTASY>.

  • Re:I say DEATH to Iridium (Score:3)

    by kevlar ( 13509 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @02:32PM (#1175091)
    No offense, but I just had a PhD describe the problem to me last week at Lowell Obeservatory. When I said broadcasting, I meant the Iridium network, regardless of how satelite communication works.

    Yes, it is radio telescopes, I should have been more descriptive, but I felt that it was farely obvious.
    Here's an article [www.nfra.nl] on it, and how Motorola doesn't give a flying fuck. Now go eat my shorts.

  • AMSAT- the real amateur satellite network (since 1 (Score:3)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @11:31AM (#1175092)
    Before chasing the unfeasible, look into AMSAT [amsat.org] These guys have a real amateur satellite system (over 30 satellites, 20 currently operational) going back 30+ years.

    If the S.O.S people excite you, consider contributing your efforts here. They have a strong volunteer/hacker base of regulatory and technical know-how and experience that most of us obviously never believed could exist! If they don't want Iridium, it's not workable; and if they do... they are 501(3)(c) certified, so Iridium could conceivably be donated. AZny way you look at it, they're a lot more qualified to run the network than the SOS guys.

    (from the web page http://amsat.org/amsat/amsat-na/amhist.html)

    The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (as AMSAT is officially known) was formed in 1969 as a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered in the District of Columbia. Its aim is to foster Amateur Radio's participation in space research and communication. Since that time, other like-minded groups throughout the world have formed to pursue the same goals. Many of these groups share the "AMSAT" name. While the affiliations between the various groups are not formal, they do cooperate very closely with one another. For example, international teams of AMSAT volunteers are often formed to help build each other's space hardware, or to help launch and control each other's satellites.

    Since the very first OSCAR satellites (OSCAR stands for Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) were launched in the early 1960s, AMSAT's international volunteers, often working quite literally in their basements and garages, have pioneered a wide variety of new communications technologies that are now taken for granted in the world's satellite marketplace. These breakthroughs have included some of the very first satellite voice transponders as well as highly advanced digital "store-and-forward" messaging transponder techniques. All of these accomplishments have been achieved through close cooperation with international space agencies which often have provided launch opportunities at significantly reduced costs in return for AMSAT's technical assistance in developing new ways to launch paying customers. Spacecraft design, development and construction has also occurred in a fiscal environment of individual AMSAT member donations, thousands of hours of volunteer effort, and the creative use of leftover materials donated from aerospace industries worldwide.


    My new .sig: Join AMSAT [amsat.org]

  • Re:What about SETI? (Score:3)

    by CodeShark ( 17400 ) <ellsworthpc@noSpam.yahoo.com> on Friday March 24, 2000 @10:35AM (#1175093) Homepage
    1. It may not be technically possible... It's Not.
    2. Couldn't they retrofit the satellites... If they were in a higher orbit perhaps. But technically not worth while -- for the cost of the the retrofits, a state of the art network could be put in place (in the right orbital pattern as well) that would use the frequency much more efficiently.
    3. ...and use them as a big SETI array or something? I thought about that too -- I mean, suppose these things could potentially be a globe size radio telescope. But (if I understand the math correctly), the satellites are essentially tone deaf except in their specified frequency rangem, and even if it were a useful frequency for radio telescops, I don't know if there is any way that they could be turned and selectively focused outward. Or that the signal bleed from planet earth wouldn't render them inaccurate anyway.
    So really, though it seems like a huge waste, it's time for them to be brought down safely.
  • You could use these to establish a massive network of weather monitoring stations. Put one station in the center of each 10,000 square mile grid and get constant updates for an array of environmental data:
    temperature, windspeed, CO2 concentration, Ozone level, humidity, precipitation, pH of precipitation, barometric pressure, seismic activity, InfraRed radiation, etc.

    Feed the data collected over the remaining life of the satellites into NOAA's new supercomputer and maybe we could develop a weather model that predicts hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, (maybe even earth quakes and volcanoes) etc. weeks, or even months in advance. This would help prevent the loss of tons of crops and thousands of lives a year. And perhaps indentify potentially harmful longterm trends (like global warming or ozone depletion) in time for corrective action to be taken. The large re-insurance companies like Lloyds of London would likely provide a substantial amount of funding for such a venture.

    All this could be done with very little bandwidth. Just because you can't stream video, or play Quake over an data connection doesn't mean its worthless. NASA is still getting data back from satellites it launched in the 70's that only transmit at around 2400 bps, it doesn't mean they no longer bother to listen.

    ----

    Another idea would be to give free phones to UN and NGO workers (For example, Doctors without Borders (MSF) [doctorswit...orders.org], or Oxfam [oxfam.org]) in isolated locations. They could then request supplies specific to a given crises based on what they find in the field like the need for seeds of a specific crop, or vaccines for a specific disease.

  • Slow? Sure, but there are still uses. (Score:3)

    by Lockle ( 61177 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:43AM (#1175095) Homepage
    OK, 9600 Baud is slow, but it could be used for research all over the globe for scientists. This would be good for unmanned stations like weather, seismagraph, ocean level, etc. Things that require realtime data, but only small amounts of it.
    If lighter hardware could be made, it would be good for tracking vehicles or automated drones. Just put a GPS receiver on a high-altitude weather balloon and have your iridium data link that transmits the weather data and current location.
    What about taking a couple thousand BUD (big Ugly Dishes) satellite dishes and setting them up all over the globe and hooking them up to PC's to process data. A sort of automated SETI sniffer. Sniffer stations can use the iridium network to get assignments, and if any interesting results are found, it'll send a signal to the monitoring station through iridium for someone to come by and physically pick up the data.
    The network is already there. Don't throw it away. With some brainstorming, many good uses can come out of it.
  • It costs Iridium LLC $10Million dollars per month to keep the satellites whizzing around the Earth. According to stories like this one [spaceviews.com] it is going to cost $30-50Million for them to even de-orbit the satellites.

    Bottom line: Maintaining a constellation of satellites is VERY VERY VERY expensive. To think that a group of people could raise $10 million a month for basically useless satellites for a non-profit purpose is just pure insanity or idiocy, whichever you prefer.

  • first the whales, then the redwoods, now this (Score:3)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:13AM (#1175097) Homepage
    Have machines finally entered
    into the realm of that which
    can be endangered? I never
    thought I'd see the day...

    Maybe an astronaut activist will
    abandon the shuttle and attach
    him/herself to one of the iridium
    satellites, kind of like those
    activists who climb up redwoods
    and refuse to climb down until
    logging companies consent to stop
    clearcutting forests.

    In the past, outdated technology tended
    to end up in a museum. Space, it seems,
    offers us a new frontier for activism.

    If I owned the satellites, I'd first start
    a cult, and then send satellites into
    the atmosphere whenever I needed a miracle.

  • Re:Internet access (Score:3)

    by xee ( 128376 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @10:13AM (#1175098) Journal
    No offense, but, you're obviously not familiar with radio.

    Usually, with ham radio at least, you'd use a TNC to convert from serial data to RF for a radio to transmit. The faster the data rate, the higher the bandwidth. Why do you think they call cable "High Bandwidth"? 'Cause you can't do 6 megabits over 560kHz (AM Broadcast), you need Higher Bandwidth.

    Ask youreself: What kind of line quality do you need for voice? To answer this, think in terms of an MP3. A radio recording of a talk show only needs Mono/22kHz/8bit/96bps. That is fine for radio, but for data (especially for full-duplex) you're gonna need some serious improvement. You may be asking "But doesn't the audio get digitized first?" Yes (probably) but it still only requires a 14.4-class data rate to transfer.

    References...
    TAPR [tapr.org]: These guys are the IETF of packet radio.
    Guerilla.net [l0pht.com]: An underground alternative to the wired Internet.

    P.S. TNC is a "Terminal Node Controller". Could be described as a radio-modem.

  • It's a scam (Score:4)

    by phil ( 4362 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:33AM (#1175099)
    These guys want you to send money, or get a credit card. There is no way that a bunch of well meaning part time volunteer geeks would be able to get any sort of benefit from the constellation.

    Motorola (or Iridium LLC) still holds the rights to the frequencies, and I would imagine the going price for that would be far greater than what a volunteer group would be able to raise, assuming this is on the level.

    Even if it were possible to put software in the satellites to do something more than 2400baud, the task of keeping the satellites on orbit is emmence! Why do you think the operating costs of the constellation were so high? It is because the vehicles are not smart. Their orbits drift and they must be tracked very carefully then commanded from the ground to be repositioned.

    As much fun as it is to think about giving this "to the people" I would submit that it is better to cut the losses and instead think about running fiber everywhere.

    It is sad to see something as big and complex as this fail, but sometimes it is better to just pull the plug and let the patient die.

    This is clearly one such time.
  • I've woked closely with 2 people who were the top dogs on the Iridium project. They were the archatects of the project from the beginning.

    From the beginning it was a good project. Then managment steped in and caused huge hassels. They left for greener pastures when the environment became hostile to good work. That is when I met them. They told me that this was how it was going to end for 1 simple reason...

    The satalites are in an extremely low orbit, if you can call it an orbit. They are traviling through the upper most parts in the atmosphere in a constatly decaying orbit. There is constant wobble in there flight path due to the friction of the atmosphere. The monitoring/control system used to keep the satalites communicating with the surface and them selves is one huge beast with an extremely high maintenance cost. Whatever benifits that can be gained with the satalights is offset by the monitoring/control system. It is just too expensive to keep going. It will be cheaper to ditch, err... splash the satlights than any money gained from the use of the satalites.

  • Iridium (Score:4)

    by indiadude ( 68109 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:21AM (#1175101)
    This message is merely to remind people of the simple rules of business.

    1. Choose your market:While the idea of iridium is great (and still is) i am afraid that iridium never made up its mind as to who where its customers - the rich jetsetting corporate head honcho or the larger middle market and i think thier advertisements and strategies reflected that.

    2. Technology: Much as the concept of starting with worldwide coverage is attractive it is also very expensive and the choice of higher equatorial orbit satellites didnt help.

    Iridium is a victim of its own decisons and all like all bad businesses it should be allow to die. And if u have kids well show them the $7 Billion fireworks.

  • Worth Saving. (Score:5)

    by quadra ( 2289 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:25AM (#1175102) Homepage
    The main problem with the system is not the phones or even the prices, It's the cost of maintaining and building the system that was impossible to overcome. There was also way too much overhead built into the network. I don't think it could ever sustain all the gateways which exist. Legal issues in other countries do often require some sort of entity to exist in the country in order to sell the service.
    I was extremely impressed with the Motorola 9505 phones. They are relatively compact and come with all the international accessories and cables you should ever need.
    Iridium LLC also never took advantage of the Maritime market. They never dropped their rates for coastal waters to a competative level. Had they done that, it would have certainly captured everything in that realm. Another example, The cruise lines were great customers. They were some of our largest usage customers.
    Also, the paging service never got the backing it needed. The thing that most impressed me about them was that they actually worked while you were flying in an airplane.
    There are lots of reasons why Iridium should have been able to succeed, but too many others why it didn't. I still feel, we all did, that it is a great product which many greate niche markets where it's extraordinarily valuable. I hope someone understands that and saves it before it plunges into the atmosphere.

    btw. I worked at the N. American Gateway as a programmer/analyst and I'm in need of a job. ;)

  • These people really seem to have no clue... (Score:5)

    by MenTaLguY ( 5483 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:51AM (#1175103) Homepage

    ...what they're getting into. (assuming for the moment that they're legit)

    I kind of resent their abuse of the term "open source", too.

    It's not as if you can just buy the birds so the old owners won't crash them. There's a lot of maintainence work that has to go on... continuously...

    You then have to deal with them when they break (either write the affected satelite off, or see if you can engineer a workaround from the ground).

    You have to keep them out of trouble.

    You have to turn and shut them down at critical moments so the delicate bits won't get fried by solar flares, hit by flying bits of space junk (which you have to track relative to your birds and figure out if you need to worry about a particular item), or damaged by any other number of interesting astronomical "events".

    You have to nudge them back into their orbits periodically to keep them from reentering and burning up early, screwing up other satelites, and just generally not being where they need to be to do their job.

    It's a lot like taking care of a herd of 66 insanely expensive flying metal sheep, really. Remotely.

    Ever since they've been launched, the Iridium satelites have been royally fucking up earth-based astronomy, too.

    So, it's a lot like having a huge herd of 66 insanely expensive flying metal sheep that poop on everyone's lawn, so everyone hates them.

    Oh, and they're in a low-earth orbit, too, which means their orbit isn't going to last that much longer anyway (five, ten years? ...the original plan was to keep launching satelites as the old ones expired... I don't think these "saveIridum" folks are prepared to do that). I hope these "open source Iridium" people (I really dislike their abuse of the moniker) are capable of deorbiting them safely, and in a controlled fashion, when the time does come.

    (and when they come down they very likely might come down over major population centers if you don't know what you're doing ... the current owners at least know what they are doing)

    (although I should note for the sake of the /. alarmists, that they'd probably just burn up in the atmosphere ... you still don't want to take those kind of chances, though!)

    So, really, it's a lot like having no experience, buying a herd of 66 insanely expensive flying metal sheep that everyone hates because they poop on their lawn, and which are going to die soon anyway ... with the potential of severe (but spectacular) property damage ... and then calling it "open source".

    Fortunately, looking at their page, it looks like they have about as many financial backers as they do clues... so, in conclusion, I'm very thankful that this "open source Iridium" thing is unlikely to succeed, if nothing else for the sake of the "open source" reputation.

  • Scam? (Score:5)

    by jlv ( 5619 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:21AM (#1175104)
    Looking at the site, it appears to only be a way to harvest email and snailmail addresses. In fact, they'd just appear to prefer you sign up for a "Next Card" credit card.

    Come up with a cool (but irrational) sounding scheme ("open source satellite network" WTF?) and get it published on /. then harvest addresses and collect credit card referrals. Ah, why work for a living.

  • Re:No Broadband Service? (Score:5)

    by jimhill ( 7277 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:49AM (#1175105) Homepage
    "The sad truth appears that there just doesn't seem to be much to do with these satellites. They were poorly conceived in the first place."

    Absolutely. No argument.

    "Still, I support any effort to save them."

    This is where the phrase "Throwing good money after bad" comes into play.

    Yes, there are 66 satellites up there going around and around, and yes, billions of dollars were spent in getting them there. BUT: they can't cover their own costs. Suppose this multimillion-dollar fundraiser succeeds and they stay up there a bit longer. Then what? The cash is spent and we need to de-orbit these moneypits. Are you now going to hold another "Save Iridium" campaign? You should, because now you've got an even greater investment in the satellites (where investment is defined as money pissed down the rathole and never coming back). And then again? And again?

    There comes a time when you have to cut your losses. Iridium was a bad idea, poorly conceived and technologically inferior. The features and capabilities that the satellites can deliver are unfit for any purpose that will generate revenues sufficient to offset operational costs. To pour money into this failed idea because the satellites are up there is as foolish as putting them up there in the first place. Every dollar spent on a "Save Iridium" campaign is a dollar _not_ spent on something that might work. Consider that.

  • How is this Open Source? (Score:5)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:14AM (#1175106)

    Short answer: it's not.

    Why does every geek cause have to use an open source rallying cry? This is equivalent to politicians pleading us to pass a law "for the children." Are you for or against Open? Are you for or against Children?

    I don't get it. If someone / some group / some consortium acquires the satellites, does that mean service will be Open (what?) ? Free can mean whatever you want it to mean, but services can't be Open Source without being free. So if I want to bounce a Jungle Porn website off Iridium deep from the nether areas of the Congo, that's OK? It is the "world's first orbiting Open Source public network."

    This is a load of crap.

  • Sounds like a good Sci-Fi storyline (Score:5)

    by Wee ( 17189 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:32AM (#1175107)
    Think about it: An expensive, globe-encircling network of satellites becomes abandoned, and a loose-knit group of hackers take possession of it. This group turns the network inside out, and severly tweaks everything from the software to the hardware (via privately launched Arianne rockets, maybe?). Suddenly, the network bears little resemblance to its former self.

    And because everyone can contribute to the creation of the new "entity", the network grows and mutates into something like a cross between Stephenson's Metaverse and Gibson's Bay Bridge. Everyone's particular skills wind up making something that it much more than the sum of its parts. It's so big and weird, nobody understands all of it, much less the extent of its existence.

    Then, mayhem. This new network becomes really important (since people can use it freely, they come to rely on it). Now, you add whatever second-act scenario you want:

    1. Middle Eastern terrorists (or whatever other group suits you) on a jihad against technology takes control. Oh no, Luddites in the wire! Suddenly, they have the world's gonverment's by the short hairs. Something must be done, and the call to the OSS community goes out.
    2. The network links many computers all over the place. It's got distributed.net-ish tendrils all over the place: banks, schools, the Federal Reserve, etc. Then it starts to think (or act) on its own. Something has to be done. It's Big Government vs. Open Source.
    3. The governments of the world fear the hacker group's satellite network (maybe it's used for cracking large military ciphers or some such). They send Delta Force spacemen up to physically sieze control of the satellites. But some ex-Livemore Labs guys have installed discarded Reagan-era Star Wars lasers (or whatever defense system you like: railguns, particale beams, etc) and fortified the network. Battle ensues.
    4. The SETI people, hurting for cash, use the network for finding aliens. They find the aliens, and these aren't the E.T., pull-my-finger kind of little green men. They're pissed. The aliens think the network is some cybernetic organism, and they feel threatened. They attack, and Open Source comes to the rescue (plenty of good ways to do this, hopefully using GNU tools of some sort).

    Pop in a wrap-up about how OSS (and "hackers" -- the White Hat kind) saved the world (or made it a better place to live; pick your grandiosity level) and you've got a story.

    Sounds like a fun read. Maybe if we can't Open Source the satellites, we could write an OS book about it?

    -B

  • The need for a clue stick (Score:5)

    by Kaa ( 21510 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:17AM (#1175108) Homepage
    I don't think these guys realize just how much money and effort, mostly money, it takes to maintain a satellite-based network. This is NOT something that could be done by a bunch of poor (by corporation standards) amateurs. Besides they need to consider the difference between the world of bit and the world of physical objects. Open Source works well for bits, but I don't really see how it will help with maintaining a large amount of very complicated hardware (including launching new satellites on as-needed basis, etc.)

    In other words, this is a fun idea to play with, but it does not come even close to passing a reality check.

    Kaa

  • Here's what you have to do to run Iridim (Score:5)

    by tyresias ( 31737 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @12:17PM (#1175109)
    I was an engineer on the ground station software for Iridium. Here are the kinds of things someone would have to do on a constant basis to use the satellites:

    1) Run and maintain at least 2 ground stations devoted to telemetry, tracking, and control of the vehicles. The vehicles have a basic understanding of how to stay in orbit, but essentially this knowledge needs to be constantly tracked and maintained by multiple ground station contacts a day to obtain proper tracking data that gets fed to the orbital tracking services system.

    2) Run and maintain a very complicated orbital tracking services system. This system constantly predicts where the vehicles are in relation to each other and to the various ground stations (the telemetry and control stations as well as the telephony gateways). The vehicles themselves have no understanding of their geometry in relation to each other or where they are in relation to the ground stations.

    3) Run and maintain a very complicated scheduling system that precomputes the routing of EVERY packet destination that could take place in a 48 hour time span. You would think that the vehicles are smart and can figure out routes in the satellite constellation themselves, but that isn't the case. The constellation / ground station topology changes roughly every 3 seconds, creating about 18,000 topology change events that must be managed during the scheduling process. These form routing tables that are uploaded to the vehicles roughly once a day.

    4) Run, maintain and staff a complicated real time satellite command center. The vehicles need pretty much constant baby sitting and attention from the ground (by well trained satellite operators, I might add) in order to function properly. This system coordinates all of the real time communication between the ground and the vehicles, uploading new routing tables, making tracking contacts, supervising vehicle burns, etc.

    Basically, the Iridium network of satellites is a constellation of blind and dumb vehicles, that don't really know about each other or the ground. The whole "intelligence" of the system is in the various ground systems that I outlined above. These ground systems are constantly running and updating the constellation. Iridium was never designed as a "fire and forget" type of system, where once launched, the vehicles operated autonomously. The whole system requires constant attention to remain functioning.

    I haven't even really addressed that the whole system doesn't really understand data networking. It only handles voice packets and barely handles pager traffic. The bandwidth available is also extremely low, in the vew thousand bps.

    Once profitable, there were plans to put more digital traffic capability in the system, but that hasn't happened.

    So, anyone who thinks they can throw an informal band of volunteers to run the system in an "open source" manner, clearly has no knowledge of how Iridium really works.
  • From the web site:
    Iridium, unable to find other suitors, asked the bankruptcy court to approve a plan that would crash the Iridium satellites into the atmosphere and let them burn up, potentially causing a rain of molten metal across the globe and one heck of a tax write off for all involved.
    Anybody that could write this paragraph isn't competent to run a satellite network (not that many of us are, but most of us aren't claiming we can.) They don't know much about either the economics or the mechanics of the business.

    Economic bug #1: They're not going to get a tax write-off for this. They're losing money, so they don't pay any taxes anyway. The problem is that they owe more money than they can pay, and a Judge has commanded them to stop running up more debts, and pay the ones they have already. They'll probably end up paying pennies on the dollar.

    Economic bug #2: Iridium spent years getting permission to broadcast in 167 separate countries. Are all those foriegn telecommunications agencies going to be happy about handing those permissions to a bunch of geeks that advertises itself as "beyond the reach of any govt"? Fat chance. And without the approval of the local governments, the network won't be allowed to operate.

    Mechanical bug #1: They're not burning the satellites for a tax write-off, they're buring them to keep them from becoming space junk, that would present a traffic hazard to future spacecraft. If you leave them up there, they will run into something eventually. Guaranteed. Good citizens deorbit their sats before they run out of fuel.

    Mechanical bug #2: And they won't come down as a rain of molten metal. There isn't anything in a communication satellite solid enough to survive re-entry. That takes hefty chunks of metal or ceramic. Remember how the only chunk of Skylab that came down in one piece was the lead-lined film safe? And they can steer the satellites to re-enter them in the middle of the ocean so there's no hazard even if they did reach ground level.

    None of this is rocket science (well, some of it is-- how about "None of this is brain surgery"). I'm not even in the satellite business, and even I can tell these people are making it up as they go along.

  • Lifespan (Score:5)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:17AM (#1175111) Homepage Journal
    If I recall correctly, these satellites only have a lifespan of about ten years. Just getting the deal through and putting together some useful application is going to put you in the second half of this lifespan. After that, to keep going, you've got to start launching new ones. Seems to me that anyone trying to make money would find it easier just to start from scratch. (And anyone not doing it for money is simply not going to have the cash to continue after that point.)

  • Insanity (Score:5)

    by MaximumBob ( 97339 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @09:10AM (#1175112)
    I'm sorry, but these people are insane. Why are they saving Iridium? Basically, because it's there. It's had 7 billion spent on it, and they figure, "Well, it'd be a shame to see all that money go to waste. We'll spend another $650 on it." It seemed like a good idea when the project was started, but it's already obsolete over a huge chunk of the globe. I'm not alone in the fact that I'll probably never go anywhere where my only option for internet access is a 9600 baud satellite hookup.

    And another thing. "Open Source." What the heck does that mean applied to this? I mean, I understand what they're trying to do, but unless I really don't understand the concept of open source, what they want to do is a parallel concept, at best. IT sounds like they're just trying to throw around buzzwords to get recognition from sites like /. (kinda like Wizards of the Coast's "Open Gaming License," for that matter)

  • Ownership of saveiridium.com (Score:5)

    by AllegroCEO ( 153431 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @11:22AM (#1175113)
    Some Interesting Facts:

    A quick whois shows that the site is registered to Mike Emke or Emke and Associates. A quick search of the Net picked up an article (www.trancenet.org/heavensgate/news/409.shtml) attributing Mike Emke or Emke and Associates (alias Varak) as one of the authors of the "Heavens Gate" spoof site highersource.org.

    It would seem at the very least this man has a knack for getting noticed.

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