Eccentric Orbits
The Iridium Story
by John Bloom · first published 2016
74% recommend26% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Page-turning history of the Iridium satellite network: its engineering feats, Motorola's dysfunction, the bankruptcy, and the rescue from deorbiting. Suits readers into tech, business and startup chronicles.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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There's an excellent and fascinating book that describes, among many other things, how the satellites were saved from being "de-orbited" (crashed) about 20 years ago. It's called Eccentric Orbits. https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...
on “Iridium Completes Constellation Replacement” ↗If you enjoyed this, Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom is a good book on the similar topic from few decades back. Spiced with a healthy bunch of politics, entrepreneurship and action.
on “Network topology design at 27,000 km/hr” ↗For anyone interested in the story of the Iridium system, including its many near-death business episodes, I can recommend "Eccentric Orbits", by John Bloom.
on “3 Months After Explosion, SpaceX Plans to Launch Rocket Bearing Satellites” ↗Eccentric Orbits is a really great book about their history, especially the near de-orbit with lots of fun tidbits about their fundraising and US gov response. https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...
on “The Iridium Museum” ↗…Make a Spaceship by Julian Guthrie 94. West with the Night by Beryl Markham 95. The Age of Uncertainty by Tobias Hürter 96. American Steel by Richard Preston 97. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary 98. Eccentric Orbits by John Bloom 99. The Great Bridge by David McCullough 100. Loonshots by Safi Bahcall 101. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming 102. Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner…
on “Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things” ↗"Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story" by John Bloom is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in satellites, communication networks, or corporate management. The project achieved several outstanding engineering feats,…
on “White Hat Hackers Expose Iridium Satellite Security Flaws” ↗One of the best books I have read in recent years, somehow immensely relevant now: _Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story_ by John Bloom, that explores exactly what went wrong, the bankruptcy filing and so on. I wonder if you might find your experiences reflected there.
on “RocketLab Acquires Iridium” ↗I highly recommend the book Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom. The story of how Iridium came to be and how difficult it was to keep Motorola from literally destroying the whole constellation (which they had originally built!) is…
on “RocketLab Acquires Iridium” ↗This kind of trivia can be discovered in the very interesting and entertaining book "Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story" by John Bloom. Highly recommended read (if you're generally into tech/business/startup chronicles)! And while you're at it, read "Chip Wars" by Christopher R. Miller as well. Extremely…
on “US agency approves Amazon Leo’s $11.5B acquisition of Globalstar” ↗I can highly recommend the book "Eccentric Orbits" by John Bloom if you want to learn about the Iridium constellation story. Easily one of the best books I've read in the last few years. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26893707-eccentric-orbit...
on “US agency approves Amazon Leo’s $11.5B acquisition of Globalstar” ↗I recently read the book Eccentric Orbits about the Iridium comms system that was a lot like this (recommended by the way). One of the technical issues that was mentioned in it was that the satellites had to correct for the Doppler shift in…
on “SpaceX sends laser-linked Starlinks to the polar orbit” ↗…flying through it. It would help to see a scale model of the completed orbits as it looks "worse" than it is. I'm not against it, though it would be nice if it was free ha. side note: not related but the Eccentric Orbits book about Iridium was really good imo.
on “SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Seattle Internet Exchange” ↗…PHP because of that ha. First in office web developer job after restaurant, I had to bike 30 miles a day lol [1] round trip, that was brutal. On the plus side, 3 hrs of podcasts. I listened to the book Eccentric Orbits then that was good. Uber was like $60/day so yeah... although I only made it 4 days straight, never 5 days of bike riding so I would eat the Uber cost one day. I was lucky that friend loaned me $3K to…
on “Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]” ↗Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story Book about Dan Colussy, who somehow managed to rescue Iridium satellite network when it was weeks away from bankruptcy and being deliberately crashed into the ocean.
on “Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things” ↗The Last Viking - a biography of explorer Roald Amundsen The Wager- a book about a ship by the same name which wrecked in the Drake Passage. Eccentric Orbits - about the Iridium constellation. The Great Bridge by David McCullough - goes into a pretty good amount of detail in the engineering and sub-problems of construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
on “Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things” ↗