This book provides the information that is required to start a small spacecraft program for educational purposes. This will include a discussion of multiple approaches to program formation and build / buy / hybrid decision considerations. The book also discusses how a CubeSat (or other small spacecraft program) can be integrated into course and/or program curriculum and the ancillary benefits that such a program can provide. The assessment of small spacecraft programs and participatory project-based learning programs is also discussed extensively. The book presents prior work related to program assessment (both for a single program and internationally) and discusses how similar techniques can be utilized for both formative and summative assessment of a new program. The utility of these metrics (and past assessment of other programs) in gaining buy-in for program formation and funding is also considered.

This book provides the information that is required to start a small spacecraft program for educational purposes. This will include a discussion of multiple approaches to program formation and build / buy / hybrid decision considerations. The book also discusses how a CubeSat (or other small spacecraft program) can be integrated into course and/or program curriculum and the ancillary benefits that such a program can provide. The assessment of small spacecraft programs and participatory project-based learning programs is also discussed extensively. The book presents prior work related to program assessment (both for a single program and internationally) and discusses how similar techniques can be utilized for both formative and summative assessment of a new program. The utility of these metrics (and past assessment of other programs) in gaining buy-in for program formation and funding is also considered.

Conventional assumptions hold that U.S. government research and development efforts produced the satellite communications industry. David J. Whalen has looked deeply into the history of the industry and presents remarkable new information to tell a much different story. He finds that most of the satellite technology was privately developed by AT&T and Hughes Aircraft Company, and that the market for satellite communications existed before the government stepped in. In this detailed history of satellite communication's earliest years, Whalen explains that NASA, the White House, and Congress intervened in satellite communications development to show the world that the U.S. was in the space race and that the billions of dollars the U.S. government planned to spend would result in practical applications. He traces many different outcomes of government intervention, such as the marginalization of AT&T, who designed and paid for the first real communication satellite, Telstar 1; the positioning of Hughes as the dominant commercial satellite manufacturer; and the establishment of geosynchronous Earth orbit as the preferred orbit. Had the market been allowed to operate freely, AT&T would have launched their commercial low-earth-orbit telephone satellite in the 1960s. Many previous histories of satellite communications have emphasized government contributions; this version is the first to focus on the industry's contributions.