num_pages: 560
description: In the early 1990s Motorola the legendary American technology company developed a revolutionary satellite system called Iridium that promised to be its crowning achievement. Light years ahead of anything previously put into space and built on technology developed for Ronald Reagans Star Wars Iridiums constellation of 66 satellites in polar orbit meant that no matter where you were on Earth at least one satellite was always overhead and you could call Tibet from Fiji without a delay and without your call ever touching a wire.Iridium the satellite system was a mind-boggling technical accomplishment surely the future of communication. The only problem was that Iridium the company was a commercial disaster. Only months after launching service it was $11 billion in debt burning through $100 million a month and crippled by baroque rate plans and agreements that forced calls through Moscow Beijing Fucino Italy and elsewhere. Bankruptcy was inevitablethe largest to that point in American history. And when no real buyers seemed to materialize it looked like Iridium would go down as just a science experiment.That is until Dan Colussy got a wild idea. Colussy a former head of Pan-Am now retired and working on his golf game in Palm Beach heard about Motorolas plans to de-orbit the system and decided he would buy Iridium and somehow turn around one of the biggest blunders in the history of business.In Eccentric Orbits  John Bloom masterfully traces the conception development and launching of Iridium and Colussys tireless efforts to stop it from being destroyed from meetings with his motley investor group to the Clinton White House to the Pentagon to the hunt for customers in special ops shipping aviation mining search and rescueanyone who would need a durable phone at the end of the Earth. Impeccably researched and wonderfully told Eccentric Orbits is a rollicking unforgettable tale of technological achievement business failure the military-industrial complex and one of the greatest deals of all time.
language: English
title: Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story
publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press