In the early 1990s, Motorola, the legendary American company, made
a huge gamble on a revolutionary satellite telephone system called
Iridium. Light-years ahead of anything previously put into space,
and built on technology developed for Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars,'
Iridium's constellation of sixty-six satellites in six evenly
spaced orbital planes meant that at least one satellite was always
overhead. Iridium was a mind-boggling technical accomplishment,
surely the future of communication. The only problem was that
Iridium was also a commercial disaster. Only months after launching
service, it was $11 billion in debt, burning through $100 million a
month and bringing in almost no revenue. Bankruptcy was inevitable
- the largest to that point in American history. It looked like
Iridium would go down as just a 'science experiment.' That is,
until Dan Colussy got a wild idea. Colussy, a former CEO of Pan Am,
heard about Motorola's 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. Eccentric Orbits masterfully
traces the birth of Iridium and Colussy's 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
rescue. 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.
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