The stick is that to get the full tax right off and any other creative accounting benefits the world's first LEO constellation of satellites has to be scrapped. And in this day and age of orbital debris and smart litigation lawyers, Motorola wants to make sure all 66 satellites are de-orbited and their ashes scattered to the winds out of harms way.

This also serves to clean the field out and let MaCaw and Motorola get down to the serious business of building Teledesic or whatever name they care to give their much touted high performance broadband constellation of sky pies.

The danger is that terrestrial wireless technology might shove a hard disk in the proverbial optical disk, with cellular repeating its market destruction of Iridium by making a new generation of LEO birds obsolete on arrival.

Ten years ago few people in the PC industry thought the world would still be using hard disk drive technology in 2000 and that some sort of optical system would be needed to build any decent level of storage capacity.

But alas those mechanical geniuses at Seagate, Fujitsu and IBM among others took the humble 100 Megabyte drive and over 10 years turned it into a 200-dollar 20-Gig tribute to micromachines, and in the process leaving a wake of shattered optical illusions costing billions in research and scrapped production lines for making obsolete optical drives.

The question in the year ahead, as ICO begins launching its own constellation and Globalstar continues to quietly rollout, is whether any of these constellations can seriously compete against terrestrial wireless networks and if the Iridium disaster will soon be repeated.

ICO is already bankrupt but it's technology model is simpler and McCaw sees a bailout of ICO as a cheaper deal for a long term play to build a customer base for satellite services.

In the meantime, Iridium's customers are starting to receive a notification letter stating in part: "unless additional financing is obtained before March 16th 2000 we can no longer guarantee that Iridium service will be offered after 11:59pm of this date."

So in these final days of the Iridium Adventure, get online at Heaven's Above satellite tracker and catch an Iridium flash while they last. You need a high track close to zenith with a ground track distance of no more than 10km from your location. If you get it right they flash brightly like something you have never seen before and will never see again.

Last Iridium Statement
Iridium LLC Remains Committed to Asset Sale
Washington, DC, March 03, 2000

Iridium LLC learned yesterday that Craig McCaw's Eagle River Investments LLC would not submit a purchase proposal for Iridium's assets as previously anticipated. Iridium remains committed to a sale of its assets and is aggressively pursuing other potential qualified buyers. At the Company's request, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York postponed the hearing scheduled for today.

"We have received expression of interest from other potential buyers," said Iridium COO Randall Brouckman. "Much attention has been afforded the potential McCaw bid. Now that he has clarified his intentions, we believe that the quality of our system and the value of our assets should attract additional qualified proposals."

Iridium LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 13, 1999.

Iridium

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
Space

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

SPACEDAILY

Satellite Launch To Boost DTH In India
Calcutta, India (SPX) Dec 28, 2005
The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India.