In 1992, when I first began to explore the unlikely business of commercial space, it was clear that the Space Age was quickly receding in the rearview mirror of the twentieth century. A parody of formerly heroic times, the withering cult of aerospace still held the interest of a bemused public mostly because of its campy, bloated vestige of Cold War ambitions and awkward efforts of the federal government and private industry to revive something of the Apollo spirit before congresssional budget-cutters clipped its wings.

Exactly when the decline set in was hard to say, but the image of Christa McAuliffe's parents in 1986 beneath the strange swirling smoke of the Challenger explosion came most clearly to mind. The loss of the shuttle marked the first in a strange series of very public disasters and malfunctions that suggested what rather quickly became identified as a far-reaching malaise. Cynicism and incompetence had settled into the heart of the nation's space program.

By the time David Thompson announced plans to launch the world's first commercial satellite constellation, the aerospace industry too was, if not lost in space, certainly floundering. Its greatest achievements were regarded in some places with as much nostalgia as Richard Nixon in China or Marshall McLuhan in polyester, with as much comic distance as Cold War iconography, psychological warfare, Tang, space dogs in orbit and monkeys fitted with silver Mylar-and-Velcro suits. The hip world's underground communicated in those days not via spacecraft but through a vast interconnected system of cables and wired networks that the new American Vice President would call the "information super-highway," and the wider world would soon recognize as the awesome Internet.
That satellites might some day take the Net and lift it skyward, making it mobile as well as global, had entered the minds of only the most prophetic or most peculiar savants.

It may have only been a reflection of how dire times had become that a young man like David Thompson created a stir when he started comparing satellites to Apple computers and coined the phrase "Microspace" to describe his vision of how a small entrepreneur might find new ways to "do" space in the 1990s. It was not entirely obvious how a constellation of small satellites could serve massive consumer markets the way the Apple II computer did, but in any case, his ideas began to attract a following among people who were, if not immediately persuaded, at least willing to indulge his passionate desire to blast old paradigms.

In a keynote address in 1989 at the annual conference on small satellites at Logan, Utah, Thmpson first introduced the concept of Microspace. A drastic decline in weight, power, and costs, brought on by constantly improving miniaturization and performance in computer technology, he said, would eventually allow new players like his Orbital Sciences Corp. to enter an industry largely consisting of gargantuan, government-subsidized corporations.

The principal barrier was the cost of launching satellites. Traditions in aerospace required that most  space hardware meet a military grade, a measure of testing that calculates risk of failure at infinitesimal rates. Often an industrial grade would be sufficient at far less cost. But the cost of a rocket launch (between $50 million and $250 million) made any gamble with a deficient part seem ludicrous and politically dangerous. An inexpensive satellite or an excellent business plan still had to overcome upfront costs of tens of millions of dollars just for an initial ride to orbit. To purchase a ride on a Titan rocket, designed to lift extremely heavy payloads, or even on the space shuttle, when it was in service, kept the entrepreneurial mind at bay.

That meant that before even contemplating a global constellation of satellites or anything else, the Orbital Sciences Corporation would have to invent a rocket that a little company like it could afford.

In 1990, a year after Thompson's presentation in Utah, one of the industry's few grand achievements occurred not under the auspices of NASA or among its prominent corporate legions, but within an obscure team of about thirty-five young engineers from Northern Virginia who had built a new kind of small, winged launch vehicle. The rocket, designed to begin its lift-off not from a concrete pad or even a runway but from beneath the wing of a B-52 at 40,000 feet above the ground, was roundly dismissed as just another quirky, blue-sky project when the concept was unveiled. But on April 5, 1990, with former NASA astronaut Gordon Fullerton piloting the B-52, the Orbital company -- "a bunch of guys," according to the project's chief engineer, Antonio Elias -- demonstrated the first successful expendable launch vehicle in this country in 20 years. Not since the creation of the space shuttle had any American company produced a new rocket that worked. Best of all, the rocket boasted a sticker price almost 90 percent less than the next cheapest launcher in the country. The highway to Microspace opened wide.

And so it was that Thompson and his colleagues emerged as America's first space entrepreneurs. As equally stunning achievements, the new rocket, which they named Pegasus, and the little Mom n' Pop space company that built it, won the National Medal of Technology that year. Orbital very quickly became the world's first publicly traded commercial space company, the subject of Harvard Business School studies, and a sought-after supplier for the beleaguered NASA, whose new director wanted desperately to do new things faster, cheaper, and better.

Gary Dorsey has written narrative non-fiction for more than a decade. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Congregation: The Journey Back to Church, a portrait of contemporary church life, and The Fullness of Wings: The Making of a New Daedalus, which chronicles the creation of a human-powered airplane. He currently works as a science writer at Johns Hopkins University and lives with his family in Catonsville, MD.

Reprinted with permission from Silicon Sky: How One Small Start-Up Went Over the Top to Beat the Big Boys into Satellite Heaven
by By Gary Dorsey.
Copyright 1999, by Gary Dorsey
Published by Perseus Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group
A Cornelia and Michael Bessie Book
Sloan Technology Series
Adapted by permission of the author and Perseus Books
May not be modified, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any manner.
Available beginning April, 1999, from bookstores nationwide, online retailers, or by calling 800 386-5656