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The Almighty Buck Science

Iridium Saved By the US Dept of Defense 131

Posted by Hemos from the the-boys-with-the-/big/-bucks dept.
mccready was one of quite a bunch of people to send us the news trinket from CNNfn . It seems that the on-again, off-again Iridium system has at least another two years. The US Department of Defense has stepped in with $72 million, while another buyer is found. The reason? To avoid 'triggering possible "widespread anxiety" on re-entry.'
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Iridium Saved By the US Dept of Defense More

Iridium Saved By the US Dept of Defense

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  • These satellites refuse to accept their fate.

  • Some of the things that aren't very well pointed out in the CNNfn blurb might be relevant.

    The first is that the satellites are not being bought by the government (as some people here have claimed).

    The second is that Iridium/the bankruptcy court ended up selling their assets to a newly formed company called Iridium Satellite for the bargain price of around $25 million.

    Iridium Satellite has determined that the only way that the satellite network will be feasible is to sell services to governments. Let's face it, the idea that even the above-average consumer would need a satellite phone is pretty crazy.

    The US DOD already has a a couple thousand Iridium handsets in use. So they signed a deal to keep their service going (assuming that the service stays) for the next couple years. It's no biggie.

    What honestly surprises me is that someone from the government would actually claim that it was to prevent re-intry when obviously it isn't.
  • Could this be a cover story for a secret government operation? Perhaps the DoD is paying to keep the satellites up because they are neccesary for Echelon to work properly? Or maybe they are pummeling us daily with mind controlling microwaves to make us buy more cheetos? It just doesn't add up I tell you!
  • I would start the deorbit of Iridium tomorrow. Then I would seriously spank the designers and anyone else who dares to put up transmitters that intefere with radio astronomy

  • Pan Am didn't go out of business until late 1991.
  • Something that might amuse you --

    At Microsoft, I often saw vans marked, "Teufel Landscaping Company" or something to that effect.

    I'm sure it's simply the last name of the founder (a Google search for 'Teufel' turned up a number of home pages of Herr Teufels), but usually it translates from German as "Devil" IIRC.
  • ...this costs $1 million a day to operate?
    72 million = 2 years?
    With the way the DoD misappropriates funds, this isn't that bad really. Although, I think we can safely assume that they aren't funding a glogal wireless telecommunications empire because the public (Most of which don't know where on a map is, much less that there are the satilites in the lower atmosphere. Imagine that? The DoD not telling us the whole story.
  • Good point. Besides I thought we are supposed to be anxious over the election...does that give them a coup excuse? I wonder who Motorola's special friend at the DoD is?
  • If you read the rest of the details you will find that the DoD is buying itself a worldwide phone system for real cheap. They are paying pennies on the dollar for use of the satellites. They are installing crypto phones in the field to use Iridium. This lets them shift routine traffic off the heavily loaded secure sats.

    The other blather is just added benefits included to pacify public imbecility.
  • This is a wise move on the part of the DoD. A number of very well respected researchers have raised valid concerns over the possibility that sattelite re-entry of such a large scale may result in significant fragments surviving re-entry [aero.org].

    While the concers of the public are most liekly grounded in Hollywood science fiction they are no less improtant. Every day small pieces of space debris are able to survive re-entry. Most of this debris is too small to damage structures or living things, it also is concentrated in relatively uninhabited areas. Regardless, large pieces of Iriduim satellites reaching earth is a distinct possibility. Many municipaliteis have plans [www.naz.ch] for just such an event, plans that have scientific justification. While the possibility of this is remote, it is certainly in our best interests to consider the possibility.

  • Is it corporate BS? If maintaining the satellites costs more than they can earn, they have to offload the whole setup. Where (outside the DOD) are you going to find a buyer for a money sink like that.

    Abandonment is stupid and irresponsible. Who can "claim" them? Anyone who can successfully hack them? If you want the satellite, you also get the responsibility. All orbits degenerate, and no company can accept the liability of having a satellite of theirs crash in New York just because they didn't want to bother with de-orbiting their equipment properly. If they could have done it safely, but didn't, it all falls into their laps.

  • Re:Sounds like a smokescreen to me. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I concur... take the latest bird NOAA-16 put up by NOAA recently, it cost $350m to build and launch, that's just for a single polar orbiting bird, and this was also considered doing it on the cheap because they used an old titan (?) rocket from the 60's that was designed to deliver ballistic missiles.

    $72m is an absolute give away, they spend about half that on the maintenance of Air Force one for the president every year.
  • IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the driving force behind the destruction of Iridium comes down to one thing:

    Tax Writeoff

    If Iridium ever comes down, Motorola can turn to the IRS and say "Even though we made around $44 billion USD this year (intial projection value for 2001, though this has been revised [cnn.com]), we just lost a $5 billion dollar system. Please have pity on us." And the IRS will cut them some slack.

    The irony of this is that in a manner of thinking, the US governnment will have partially funded the cost of Iridium through lost tax revenue. So the DoD buying it seems strangely logical, given that a) the government would have footed the bill in one way or another and b) it's better to have a working orbital communications system than a rain of space garbage.

    PS: I seem to recall an old animation on the Macintosh that showed a Star Destroyer-esque ship from the underside. A fleet of spacecraft flew out of the hold, there was a pause, and then a bunch of crap started coming out of the hold as the words "SPACE GARBAGE" flashed on the screen.

    Man, that cracked me up at the time.

  • Is this the new kinder, gentler DOD president Bush used to talk about?
  • So it's bad for me to give some small change to a downtown beggar, but it's OK for the DoD to shell out $72M to spare the blushes of some prosperous corporate types after one of their business judgements went pear-shaped?

  • it would appear that the very thing that the FBI was faraid of, that of people being able to communicate in an untracable medium, the DoD has gone and done for them so that they wont have to worry about it.

    GlabalStar hasnt been selling like the investors had originally wanted, and could possibly be on its way out in the next couple years if things keep going down this path.

    Take those two players out of the picture and there is no way to have a wireless communications system that cant be tracked by the government.

    /conspiracy_theory

  • Just think of the uses of these little suckers.

    Completely useless, heavy objects with a bit of propulsion ability.

    Uses: To set in the path of competeting countries spy sattelites.

    Think about it. Russia worked for years and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to perfect the "Sattelite Killer"

    The US DOD bought one for about a buck fifty.

    krystal_blade

  • So...what you really mean is that this is corporate welfare spent in an attempt to justify a bad decision on the part of the Air Force? I think I prefer ordinary corporate welfare.
  • The operating expenses are quite high, actually. More importantly, there is still a huge debt to be serviced. Motorola and the government should let it die. Especially the government which has no reason for being involved anyway. Spend your money supporting up-and-coming companies, not companies on the brink of death.
  • This sets a bad precedent. The DoD is acting to prevent totally unjustified anxiety on the part of millions of Americans. I thought the function of Government Departments was to do what is right, not what people think is right.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • 1. Mir is finally deorbited. 2. The Iridium sats are splashed. 3. The presidential election comes to an end.

  • This is probably a good idea... (Score:4)

    by malahoo ( 128370 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:19AM (#575857) Homepage
    In a moment of drunken weakness, my ex-girlfriend and I allowed a burning, premature "re-entry". In retrospect, it has triggered quite a bit of anxiety in both of us.


    If you're not wasted, the day is.

  • Re:Iridium the Cat (Score:4)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @07:30AM (#575858)
    "Is it just me, or does Iridium have more lives than a cat? I mean, hey, being slated for destruction two, or even three, times is one thing, but when even the US DoD steps in to take up the slack, you've got to wonder if those satellites are ever coming down."

    I tracked a lot of the Iridium financial and PR stuff in the early days (several evil MBA projects ). Buried pretty deep in this info was the fact that the US Department of Defense was either a large potential customer, or a large actual customer but the details were secret. I have been wondering for a while if we would see something like this - it seems pretty clear now that DoD is making use of this system and doesn't want to give it up. Interesting.

    sPh
  • It is very noble of the DoD to step in to prevent "widespread anxiety" of these satellites dropping into the atmosphere.
  • Here we have more evidence of big business relying on big government to survive...

    Next time you hear those in big business praising the vigor of the free market, and being critical of the welfare state, just think of the Defense Department. The Defense Department is the welfare mother for our corporate failures.

  • 1. The DoD (and the Air Force in particular) bought into the Iridium concept early on. Ever since the Gulf War, the pressure has been on to use Commercial Of the Shelf (COTS) means when possible to reduce operating costs. Iridium gives the DoD global voice/fax/data for a fraction of the cost of deploying a pure military system.

    2. As part of the deal with Iridium, the DoD built an access site that connects the Iridium system into Defense phone and data networks.

    3. Per this press release [af.mil], Iridium forms part of a critical link between AF leadership and foward deployed forces.

    4. For other missions, such as Search and Rescue, Iridium phones have become backups for regular systems and in some instances the primary means for emergency communications.

    These are all capabilities that the DoD won't want to easily give up. $72 Million over two years is a drop in the bucket compared to cost of developing and deploying a new constellation, as well as the back-end costs of converting over the missions listed above.
  • The Iridium satelites are in what is called "low earth orbit". This means that they are actually flying through an extremely thin part of the Earth's athmosphere. Eventually the orbit decays (over a period of many years)

    Actually, I do know that. I don't have enough math to calcualte an orbit, but I am familiar with the basics.

    My point, not very well stated, is that the satelites won't begin to fall for several years. Not even Motorola would build 'em with an orbit the enters serious decay after just two years. When the time to de-orbit them comes it will take maybe two or three minutes worth of radio, and a few hours of a mathematician's time to handle the job. Hardly a couple of million dollars.

    So long as they are up there, they could be useful. Motorola is preventing them from being useful. Satelites have been abandoned and claimed in the past (I can only recall one instance, but it has happened). Instead they are seeking to destroy them out of what I can only assume is a sense of pure bastardry. Also, I suppose, for a tax write off.

    On the subject of decaying orbits, I will add that I'm still pissed that they chose to put the ISS into a decaying orbit. Ten year lifetime, feh! We won't make any progress in space until we have a permanant station.

    Yes, it would cost more to boost the components into a higher orbit, but what really is the point in spending billions building a space station that you intend to crash after just a few yars?

  • The DOD is not going to lose the best world-wide source of spread spectrum hash to hide things in.

    Not only can you hide signal in it, but one of the up/down links is located in Quantico, Va., if memeory serves. Extremely convienient for three letter agencies.

  • Good:

    - Iridium will not burn in vain
    - The world will still have its own satellite telephone network

    Bad:

    - The astronomers will still curse Iridium for its "flare" effect
    - Normal people will never use Iridium again...

  • That's their story... (Score:5)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @08:18AM (#575865) Journal
    and they're sticking to it:

    Mercury News report [mercurycenter.com]

    : FEAR OF PUBLIC OUTCRY CITED: Despite the relatively small risk, an interagency group led by the Justice Department was ``extremely unhappy at the prospect of a 14-month mass de-orbit,'' a background paper handed out at the Pentagon said. ``The group worried that this might create widespread anxiety and lead to a public outcry for ill-considered government action,'' the document said.

    The Pentagon got a global phone system real cheap. They can encrypt all their transmissions, with add-ons or Iridium's existing feature set, and they have unlimited (well, up to the capacity anyway) use of the thing. Plus all the relationships with the local PTTs are toast, so they don't have to worry about China Telecom controlling them when the Green Berets are roaming around Tibet. Sounds like a great deal for the taxpayer!

  • IANAI (I am not an Idiot), but I'm pretty sure that you are wrong. Did you read the response of everyone else and disregard the possibility that perhpas, just perhaps they might be right.

    Iridium must have a plan for destruction because of physics and statistics, not a freaking tax writeoff. Just because you see everything in a slashdot induced corporate hate, doesn't mean that you are right. They are already taking tax write-offs on the business losses that they have I'm sure, but the destruction of Iridium is not about TAX WRITEOFF.

    God, do you have a problem?
  • Since the DoD is going to save the iridium project, they might as well need some ideas as to what to do with them. I was thinking something along the lines of:

    Turning them into a television service that broadcasts "Ishtar" to puerto rico 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

    Streaming porn service for RV'ers across the nation

    Anonymous spam remailer

    seti?

  • Re:Iridium and corporate BS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From the bankruptcy courts point of view, if the satellites are still left up there, they're considered a liability of Iridium. Putting satellites into orbit isn't as simple as launching then forgetting about them, they have to pay millions to keep them in the correct orbit, they have to pay for the controlled re-entry when they finally reach the end of their life cycle. Also, if a few of these birds decided to drop on Washington for example... guess who would have liability and could get sued for corporate manslaughter.

    Also, as long as these birds are kept in orbit and not sold off, they cannot be written off as a tax asset.
  • Keep this in mind next time they ask for more $$. Absurd.
  • rc-flyer:
    The Iridium satelites are in what is called "low earth orbit". This means that they are actually flying through an extremely thin part of the Earth's athmosphere.

    Um...the earth's atmosphere extends beyond the moon. An Earth satellite couldn't not be flying through an extremely thin part of the earth's athmosphere.

    Also, "Earth" is capitalized; "the earth" is not capitalized. As in, "Mom" is capitalized; "the mom" is not capitalized.
  • Nah, it's just because either Bill, Al or George Jr have an Iridium phone that they like using.

    --
  • the DOD pays $36M per year and has 20.000 phones. so they pay
    36.000.000,-/20.000=1800USDannually for each phone

    which comes out to
    => $150 / month, unlimited minutes, works world-wide.

    now, if you ask me, the DOD has made an excellent deal here. plus, they get encryption and independence of local networks thrown in for free.

    hey, i would go for a cell phone like that any day!

  • Lame... (Score:2)

    by hugg ( 22953 )
    Gotta love our administration... rather than address the problem through education or doing additional reentry studies, they spend shut-up money to postpone the problem until the next administration. Those satellites are coming down sometime, it's just a matter of when!

    Why not take the $72 mil and buy everyone in the U.S. an ice cream cone instead?
  • Maybe I can sell my Iridium equipment for a good price on eBay after all. I'll just wait a few more days/weeks...

    I've seen this news before, and as a result, it might lower Globalstar's prices, IF the new administration of Iridium Satellite LLC are smart enough to fix their old marketing practices, and more importantly be able to operate the sixty-something satellite network, in terms of money and also in terms of remote management (technical), but Motorola's in the house for that.

    They might get a good shot. But I won't use their services again UNLESS they prove to me that they can beat Globalstar's prices, service and coverage.

  • All conspiracy theories aside, doesn't it bother anyone that the DoD is spending $72 million to "clean up" someone else's mess? Isn't this essentially hazardous waste and as such subject to the laws that govern hazardous waste? Those who created this mess should not be allowed to simply walk away from it.
  • And here is an Iridium tracking site: Heavens Above [heavens-above.com]
    They also track the ISS, Mir and a few hundred others. All with the intent of telling you when you can see the critters going by overhead.

  • Re:Heh (Score:1)

    by Gyver ( 62682 )
    At this point Reagan probably doesn't remember how to spell Star Wars, much less remember that he had anything to do with it.

  • The DoD uses Iridium internally. In fact there is a second Iridium ground station in HI operated by the DoD.

    It's not the only service that has world-wide coverage, but the terminals, sucky as they are, are much smaller than inmarsat et al.

    The "widespread panic" argument is fun, but reality is that $72MM isn't a lot for them to pay to keep the cabability around (given the huge sunk cost paid by the investors). In fact this is probably the best deal the pentagon has ever gotten with their COTS purchasing program!
  • Most people I know like to see beautiful shooting stars at night. If anything, the DoD needs to fund MORE artificial shooting stars so people get used to it.

    I always wondered, what would happen if NASA took a refrigerator box full of steel lugnuts and launched them towards the earth? Would they have enough mass to make a shooting star on re-entry? If so, the US could put on a worldwide pyrotechnics show with a man-made meteor shower. I think that would have an interesting psychological morale boost for the space programs of the world: "Space isn't some obscure place millions of miles away- it's close and friendly enough that we can launch meteor showers in it." I personally would like to see NASA flaunt the rather godlike ability to announce and then create meteor showers the world over.

    Also, if perfectly good lugnuts would be a waste just to melt on re-entry, we could always use trash with no other practical use, like: [INSERT HUMOROUS ITEM HERE] (Possible Examples- Furbies, Aibos, AOL CDs, Florida Ballot trucks, Playstation 2s, iMacs..)Heh heh heh. With dry, cool, and topical wit like that I could be a tech cartoonist! ; -)

    Databass
  • As a democratic government, it IS their job to do what we "think" is right.

  • Does it cost that much to run and maintain that people would rather spend money to make sure that it doesn't cause unwarranted fears than to use it for something? Could it not be converted for something? How about using the phone for some global humanitarian causes where all the phones produced originally are donated for the cause?

    Granted, I don't understand the underlying costs for such an operation, but surely all the brilliant minds in the world can come up with something?

  • Why don't they use the birds for target practice as they re-enter? That way, we get to test the system and calm the public. What could be better? I'm sure DoD has some extra rockets they need to get rid of anyways.
  • I believe that the name of the failed company was Iridium, not that the satellites actually containded Iridium.

    Maybe their problem was in their name choice. It's similar to naming a consulting company "The Devil"

    The Devil says we need a new web server!
    We're going to launch Iridium satellites into space!br>
    At least they didn't name their company "Plutonium".



  • Yeah, but it is thick enough in LEO to cause a satellite to deorbit in a couple years, as opposed to geosynchronous orbits, which are stable for much, much longer.

  • Can't they just send all the satellites to Quasi?

    On the serious side, I guess we should have all known that only the government could save this. After all, everybody else figured it was worthless, so naturally they have to spend our tax dollars on 'em.

    That stuff about lots of reentries causing problems is bogus. Some people at DoD probably want them as yet-another-backup-channel in the event of a military communication problem. Why don't they just come out and say that?

  • At least then I would have a reason for the invulnerability

    Number one reason Iridium will not be de-oribited:$5,000,000,000 it cost to put it up.

    'Everyone' obviously sees the value of the $5B array of sats 'we' have already put up - collectively the planet sees it as a usefull asset. The problem is* corporatists have corrupted our communities and our minds - we feel powerless - to the point where no one is willing to say "we can run them Non-Profit for the all people" or set up a quick and dirty 'world organization' and get quick commitments of government dollars to fund their usage... why is it that the next owners have to be a For-Profit corporation??? People of the planet obviously see the value - why cant 'civic will' step up and assume ownership???

    With the alternative being de-orbiting $5,000,000,000 - what seems like a more plausable/reasonable/sane idea? How did 'profit making corporations' become the only method of force/action/will on the planet?? Why the HELL are we standing around hoping some corporatist is going to step up and save this resource 'for us'?

    *Just what you need - another /. a$$hole know-it-all telling you what the 'real problem is'... ;)
  • The first paragraph of the CNN story didn't really seem to jive with my current perception of the Department of Defense, so I checked out the story at the DoD website. The story, at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2000/b12062000_ bt729-00.html [defenselink.mil], doesn't make any mention of the reason cited at CNN. I wonder who in the Department of Defense said that? At any rate, I think it would be rather naive to think that the DoD would spend all that money soley for the purpose of preventing "widespread anxiety." I do not doubt that was one of their reasons, but the reasons cited in the DoD news release seem much more valid to me. In my opinion, CNN got a big list of reasons, but tossed all of them out except the one which would probably get the most reaction from the masses. I mean, of course the military could use this kind of technology, but that's not newsworthy! But if CNN can report something interesting that will get them more public reaction, then they would certainly do that. Objective news just isn't interesting to most people anymore, or so it seems.

  • Really? Then you should ask yourself why the U.S. is not a direct democracy (i.e., why do we elect representative instead of voting for issues directly?). There have been many times when the tryanny of the majority would have been much more severe than our government has ever been. The fact is that our founding fathers recognized that what we think is right too often is not what is right, and that the elected officials are supposed to be wiser.

    You can also see this reasoning in the use of the electoral college and in the difficulty of passing or repealing a constitutional ammendment.

  • "widespread anxiety" on re-entry? More like "what do you mean I can't call that field op in Iraq? -- what do you mean their phone company went bust?"
  • Yes, it was morally correct, to a Nazi. Thankfully the rest of us kicked their collective asses because they thought that way.

    Oh, wait, Godwin's law... I've already won this argument.
    --
    Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
  • Aren't you glad that your government is spending $72 million to keep Iridium in limb- uhh, orbit?

    Remember, they're the same government that spends $10,000 on a hammer and $30,000 on a toilet seat.

  • Iridium in Embassies (Score:4)

    by leperjuice ( 18261 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @04:20AM (#575893)
    I was at the US embassy [state.gov] in New Zealand for a few months about a year ago, and I recall both the Ambassador [state.gov] and the Deputy Chief of Mission received spiffy new Iridium handsets [motorola.com] (follow the link; it cracks me up that the antennas, which were monstrous, are conviently not shown).

    I think it was a great idea: Unclassified but Sensitive information could be phoned back to the US without high level personel having to locate a STU [tscm.com] (secure telephone unit). Bypass landlines and possible wiretaps, and you can call from anywhere. I believe conversations from the handset to the satellite were encrypted, so it was a great investment. Of course, the Iridium shut down around 6 months later and the phones were useless...

  • Doesn't the DoD also have an expensive missle defense system? Couldn't they instead let those Iridium satellites fall to earth as targets to test out their precious new toys?
  • AIUI, they're paying the receiver, who will use the money to pay off companies that Iridium owed money to. Not investors, but people like landlords, electric, car leasing, maybe salaries, etc. All people who've lost out through no fault of their own.
  • Remember that it's a MILSPEC that requires that hammer to be made out of a cobalt nickle aluminum alloy, be exactly 265.09987 mm long weigh exactly 170.25 grams, hold a magnetic charge of 2500 Gauss, be shockproof. And oh yeah, we only need 17 of them. The process for publishing the bid spec probably costs $500,000 while the setup charges for the manufacturer probably run into the millions.

    It's not that standards are bad. It's that there are so many.

  • you've got to wonder if those satellites are ever coming down

    Perhaps Slashdot should have used something other than the money icon. Maybe a lucky charm or the Energizer Bunny (with all due trademark symbols, or course).

  • I'm semi-surprised to not see anyone ...at least not anyone who hasn't already been modded up to 3 or better ...question the veracity of the idea that our government spent 72 mil. to protect against fears resulting from reentry. I'm not very big on conspiracy theories, but if the discussion went something like this:

    gov't: yeah ...um ...people are terrified, senator. give us seventy-two mil.
    senator: sure. [plop]

    ...then let me humbly suggest they have other plans. In addition, I want to see who approved this and on what evidence.

    My .02,

  • Actually its funny you mention the amount of lives that Iridium has had. I was thinking Mir was the biggest feline in space with all of its on agains/off agains but Iridium just might be the prize winner here. Maybe we should ask for a recount. Sad though, as hard as it is to get any kind of money for space projects, that the DOD would just fork over 72 million for this commercial space casualty.

  • 1) Sattelites bought on the cheap from the military. 2) Cell phones are reputed to cause cancer.

    Who needs SDI when you have a space-based cancer weapon? It works something like the sattelite laser from Real Genius only much, much slower.

    Ridiculopathy.com: Our rejected plan to use it in a bid for world domination [ridiculopathy.com]



  • They'd probally spend more than 72M on the missiles themselves. Do you have any idea what a good missile costs these days?


    Neither do I.

  • While obviously it isn't going to happen, seeing as the government has paid the bill... maybe there should be a massive reduction in fees that will bring the demand up to the point of realizing profitability. After all, if they have enough money to operate now certainly their variable costs are now under control (it's not like they are going to launch any more birds).

    Unless it was never commercially feasible to begin with.

  • The military has stepped in because Iridium is currently being used. By who? You guessed it. Its not going down until they get a replacement up there.

    Nobody would give a crap if you sent down a satelite a day into the pacific. Nobody would even notice it anymore than they notice the hundreds of pounds of other cosmic crap that rains down on this planet every day.
  • Let me see.....$72 Million, 20000 Users, 2 Years. That works out at $150/Month, for unlimited use.. and as any two phones can call each other over the network, sound to me the DOD have a bargin.
  • What the article fails to mention is that the State Department already owns 2,000 Iridium handsets for use in remote spots.
    There is a growing need for the encrypted services that will be made possible through a special "sleeve"" outfitted for secure handsets.
    The Pentagon already owns about 1,600 Iridium satellite phones.
    It will get unlimited air time for up to 20,000 government users for $3 million a month under the deal.
    This will be ideal for easing the current crush of the U.S. military's ultra-high-frequency mesh for networking and point-to-point communications.
    Currently, the department's communications satellites provide less than half such services required by U.S. forces, crowding lower-priority users off the airways.
  • What have I missed, is this the latest processor from Intel?

    Thimo
    --
  • No, you have it backwards. They're attributing anxiety where none exists. It's the same as all the fear mongering about criminals with encryption: it is simply an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along.

    Besides, what is right is what people want, or do you believe in some silly notion of moral absolutism? I'll laugh when some jack-booted thug asserts his moral justification to beat your face in, troll.
    --
    Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
  • Tax Write-off? Not exactly. Motorola probably took a loss in the bankruptcy, so they get a big enough tax write-off for their investment (which isn't the full five B's). What they'll have to do, though, is write down a loss for the 4th Quarter and this will affect corporate earnings, so it's not all a bed of roses for them.

    It wasn't completely "worth more down than up", but it was getting close. This way, at least, the new Iridium company gets to survive while most of the investors, like Motorola, swallow the loss of their investment.
    ----
  • Neither Galileo nor Cassini had nearly enough radioactive materials to give any significant radiation dosage. The only risk was if some of the plutonium became powdered or vaporized and then inhaled, and the canisters it was stored in are extraordinarily sturdy. I have no idea what you mean by raising the "temperature", but it sounds ludicrous.

    --
  • That only applies if we idiots a stupid enough not to reelect them.

    AFAIK, Ted Kennedy is still in office.

  • Actually, you're sick of uninformed people.

    If this were a democracy, we would all vote on it, which we are not doing. Hence they don't have to do what we "think" is right.

    They do if they want to get reelected.

  • Marketing usually tries to appeal to a customer base, right? As I recall, one of Iridium's earlier ads talked about how a man stuck in the middle of the Sahara could make a phone call. Is this supposed to appeal to all of those people stranded in the Sahara with no food or water but just happen to have a working Iridium phone with them?
  • Run them non-profit for all the people? No, they won't be run for all the people. They'll be run for all those people who need a comm sattelite array -- mostly those money grubbing corporatists you complain about. Why should the government dollars donated by Average Joe and his wife go towards funding something they'll never use, particularly when those who can use it can pay for it themselves?

    So, if the potential users are people who can pay for it, why don't they? The only reasonable answer is that the functionality doesn't justify the operating costs. If that's so, it shouldn't be run -- non-profit or otherwise.
  • The Air Force hasn't gotten anything..They are funneling money to a SUNK COST. The Air Force can't afford to run its own satcom network...at least it shouldn't...it should be spending its money higher priority systems.
  • The DoD which is chartered with tracking space junk and reentry of same would probably spend more than 72 million just following all of the deorbit paths down and releasing normal operational communiques saying "nothing to see here, just move along..."

    It's just cheaper to pay to leave them there. And before you trot out your "Not my tax dollars !!!" warhorse just remember there are lots of things your tax dollars pay for that you should have no expectation or desire to take advantage of. Prisons are a good example of that.
  • Which is exactly what my father ( a former-navy guy who works, indirectly, for the DoD) has been suggesting since the company went belly-up.
  • Anyone remember the old missile command video game? You'd shoot the falling objects, and when they exploded, they'd take out all the ones next to them?

    How's this for a twist? The DOD shoots $72 Million in tax money at the falling objects, and they still all explode when nobody buys them.

    Of couse, $72 Mil means someone in the Pentagon'll have to go without an extra pencil sharpener...
  • Please do not lump me in with the rabid, foaming at the mouth, anarchists seen at WTO protests.

    I have to make the point that I have no hate for (most) corporations. In fact, I see nothing wrong with tax deductions. Hell, my parents took tax deductions because of me (I was a dependent), yet I don't see them as greedy, just sensible.

    Motorola has an obligation to it's stockholders. If it has a system that is sucking in cash with no chance of payout, then it is in the stockholders interests to get out of that venture while minimizing the losses. It would be totally foolish to do otherwise. And since they're taking tax write-off's why not take this one too?

    Even if they couldn't get the writeoff, absorbing the costs of a useless system makes no sense from a bottom-line standpoint. And altruistic notions such as "open source satellite systems" are filtered out before they get there.

  • Actually, I kinda dig the Iridium flares. I saw one in broad daylight once. They never messed up my observations. The reason astronomers don't like them is because of radio interference - they operate in and near some of the more important wavelengths used for radio astronomy.
  • I'm hardly a liberal (quite the opposite, actually), but I'm appalled that we'd piss away this kind of money based on the possibility of people being worried about something. There are a lot of social program that could use that $72 million a hell of a lot more effectively. Even if we couldn't bring ourselves to spend the money on positive social programs, use it for SOMETHING REAL for crying out loud.

  • Sounds like a smokescreen to me. (Score:3)

    by AlphaInsight ( 140726 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:24AM (#575926)
    What's preventing the DoD from turning around, twiddiling a few bits, and cranking out a few radios, and have a nice, nifty, neat, new "not quite military quality" comms channel? Makes sense to me. --Reality is for people who can't handle drugs.

  • Re-Entry Day (Score:3)

    by chorder ( 177607 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nadroja>> on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:28AM (#575929) Homepage
    What the DoD should do is spend all that money on a big parade to celebrate the Iridium re-entry into orbit. As the pieces enter the atmosphere everyone can watch them burn up like fireworks and celebrate in techno-pagan style a la "Max Headroom" [imdb.com]. All this new technology, we need to get on the ball making up new holidays, and Science Fiction has showed us enough examples that we should get on that already!

  • Anxiety? (Score:4)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:30AM (#575930)
    What about the anxiety of wasting $72,000,000 tax dollars to satisify the minds of those who have watched a few too many made-for-television 'Asteroid' movies?
    ---
    seumas.com
  • They did, slashdot listened to the wrong source ...http://spacedaily.com/news/iridium-00g.html [spacedaily.com]

  • Re:Anxiety? (Score:5)

    by mjackson14609 ( 69635 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @04:53AM (#575935) Homepage
    In general I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I find it difficult to believe the Pentagon would throw in $72M unless they had some so-far-undisclosed interest in Iridium's orbital components.

    For example the Galactic Radiation and Background satellite, launched in 1960, carried a second set of hardware to perform signals surveillance of the Soviet Union; this function was not made public until 1968. See http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p51.h tml
  • Kiss The Blade's hilarious MO [slashdot.org] is to make straight-faced "devil's advocate" posts with just enough misinformation and logical fallacy to send the average intelligent-but-gullible slashdot user into a blindly raging counterattack. Normally, the only reason I don't mod him (-1, troll) is that unlike the hot grits morons he's so good at it. 23 replies, 6 replies, 39 replies, 11 replies... he picks up everything from flaming rants to philosophical theses. That earns respect.

    But damnit, KTB, what are you doing now???

    This sets a bad precedent. The DoD is acting to prevent totally unjustified anxiety on the part of millions of Americans. I thought the function of Government Departments was to do what is right, not what people think is right

    I totally agree with this. What is going on? Did you get bored and decide to write something honest instead of baiting people? Did you realize that many of us were on to you weeks ago, and decide to throw in a monkey wrench by posting something reasonable? Is your karma dangerously close to the default score: -1 threshold?

    I don't detect any hyperbole, feigned ignorance, or baiting here. And what scares me is the thought that maybe KTB hasn't changed, maybe I'm just in the select group of misinformed idiots being parodied by one of his posts, and don't realize it...

    (Score -1: Confused)
  • What I love about the entire Iridium issue is the outright example of corporate nastyness it represents.

    The company that put the satelites up went bankrupt, rather than a) selling them cheap, or b) abandoning them so others can claim them it is c) planning to destroy them if it doesn't get millions.

    Once you put something into a stable orbit there isn't any reason to send it back down. Any mass in orbit is eventually going to be valuable simply in that it is already there. But, corporate idiocy strickes again "If we can't get our high fees, we'll just destroy our expensive investment." I simply don't understand this attitude: the money has already been spent, crashing the satelites results in an utter loss, any payment for the satelites is at least something.

  • Iridium the Cat (Score:5)

    by ClayJar ( 126217 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:34AM (#575952) Homepage
    Is it just me, or does Iridium have more lives than a cat? I mean, hey, being slated for destruction two, or even three, times is one thing, but when even the US DoD steps in to take up the slack, you've got to wonder if those satellites are ever coming down.

    If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the Iridium project was actually an integral part of the new global monitoring system the US uses to track late model vehicles and toothpaste choices. At least then I would have a reason for the invulnerability of the Iridium system.

    As it stands, I can only assume that it's the aliens that have kept Iridium flying so the astronomers can't see them. It wasn't a design fluke that the satellites wreak havoc on astronomers; the aliens got tired of hiding behind the moon, so they set up Iridium so they can take field trips around the earth.

    You know, on the other hand, perhaps it's just an annoying thing that just won't die... kind of like Windows (or FORTRAN), I guess.

  • Heh (Score:3)

    by glowingspleen ( 180814 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @06:32AM (#575960) Homepage
    I bet Reagan called this one in. Now he can finally have that Star Wars Defense System that he always wanted...as soon as they enable the hidden laser grid on the birds.

  • I'd be far more interested in what's actually powering those satelites... anyone know?

  • Re:Iridium and corporate BS (Score:3)

    by rc-flyer ( 20492 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:42AM (#575962)
    You had better learn about orbital mechanics before you speak.

    The Iridium satelites are in what is called "low earth orbit". This means that they are actually flying through an extremely thin part of the Earth's athmosphere. Eventually the orbit decays (over a period of many years) due to the friction of the satelite hitting the molecules of air and the satelite will re-enter the athmosphere.
    By doing a controlled re-entry they can control where the satelite will actually enter the athmosphere and hit the (hopefully) water.

  • real rationale (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07, 2000 @03:45AM (#575964)
    The sum of 72 million US dollars is a small investment compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars which the DoD has already invested in developing technologies based on Iridium. Since the inception of the project, the DoD has been developing communications systems based on Iridium. Now that they are ready to field them, the plan is to destroy the satellites. D'oh! When the announcement to destroy the satellites was made last spring, I asked one of the DoD's communications planners (forgive me if I obfuscate the actual identity) if the DoD could buy Iridium to protect their investment. According to this fellow, this would require renegotiating a maze of international agreements made for Iridium. It's one thing for a country to negotiate a deal with a private corporation. It's quite another thing to make the same deal with the US Department of Defense! The DoD is simiply attempting to buy extra time for Iridium before eating the loss.
  • Umm...

    It takes money and effort to deorbit satellites. That is why there was plan to destroy the satellites. It actually was a very responsible and necessary corporate exit strategy. The issue for buyers is can they also have a serious and credible amount of resources need to operate and deorbit these satellites.

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