The Rise and Fall of COMSAT
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The Rise and Fall of COMSAT

Technology, Business, and Government in Satellite Communications

D. Whalen

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eBook - ePub

The Rise and Fall of COMSAT

Technology, Business, and Government in Satellite Communications

D. Whalen

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After pioneering this technology and growing the market, COMSAT fell prey to changes in government policy and to its own lack of entrepreneurial talent. The author explores the factors which contributed to this rise and fall of COMSAT.

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Year
2014
ISBN
9781137396938
Topic
Sciences physiques
Subtopic
Cosmologie
1
The Communications Satellite Act of 1962
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke’s October 1945 article, “Extraterrestrial Relays,” in Wireless World is generally considered to be the first description of geosynchronous communications satellites.1 His satellites orbited the Earth in 24 hours— the same rate as the Earth revolves—and would therefore appear stationary. Clarke hypothesized that three of these “geosynchronous” (synchronized with the Earth) satellites, each fixed over a specific longitude on the equator, would be sufficient to provide communications services for the entire globe except for the poles. The satellites would be used for broadcasting— especially television broadcasting. Many years later, Comsat’s President (1963–1983) Joseph Charyk asked Clarke when he had thought communications satellites would be launched. Clarke replied that he had not expected communications satellites to be introduced until after the year 2000. The main reason: it would be that long before manned missions to geosynchronous orbit would be commonplace.2
Several of Clarke’s assumptions turned out to be false—or at least premature. His satellites would have been huge—weighing hundreds of tons rather than hundreds of kilograms. He assumed the station would be manned because the vacuum tubes would have to be changed on a regular basis. Clarke powered his satellite with solar steam boilers, but imagined solar-electric devices (solar cells?) in the near future. Transistors were simply unknown to him and solar cells were not well understood. He also assumed the three basic locations for geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) satellites would be over land masses, rather than over oceans, to maximize broadcast coverage. As the original article was not well publicized, Clarke’s real contribution to the development of satellite communications was to continue pressing for the geosynchronous system. His 1951/19523 book, The Exploration of Space, was viewed by many as a blueprint for the entire space program. In that book he also included the concept of global communications using three geosynchronous satellites. In Homer Newell’s retrospective on his NASA career, he credits Clarke as the champion of communications satellite applications.4 Clarke refers to himself as the “godfather” of satellite communications, on the grounds that he had very little to do with the actual technical developments or the implementation.
Seventeen years after Clarke’s article, on August 31, 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed the Communications Satellite Act, which had been debated since the beginning of the year. Just a few weeks before, on July 10, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) had launched Telstar 1. The Act provided something for almost everyone—even AT&T. The dominant—almost monopolistic—American company would be the largest single shareholder of the new Comsat5 Corporation, but it was unlikely that it would control the organization or sell hardware to the new corporation. Comsat would be the “chosen instrument” of the US government in the development of the single global satellite communications system.
The two most notable commercial entities involved in the build-up to the Communications Satellite Act were AT&T and Hughes Aircraft Corporation. The actions of these organizations are discussed below. Many other corporations were involved, including RCA, ITT, General Electric, and Lockheed, but these two corporations had spent significant amounts of their own funds to develop and exploit satellite communications technology.
Within the government, the White House, NASA, the FCC, and the State Department all had roles in the development of satellite communications, as will also be discussed below. NASA was pushed aside by the Act, but the FCC had a minor victory in that as much as half of the Comsat’s shares could go to the international communications carriers (AT&T, ITT, General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), Western Union International (WUI))—a result the FCC favored. The articles of incorporation actually reserved 50% of the shares for authorized carriers.6 The National Air and Space Council developed much of the Kennedy policy, but the staffers were disappointed that government would not control satellite communications. The State Department was apparently successful in leading the new corporation into developing what became Intelsat. While never as visible as NASA and the FCC, the State Department seems to have been one of the most powerful players in developing the Act. The actions behind the scenes of the State Department and the Space Council suggest that Attorney General Robert Kennedy or President John F. Kennedy may have been more involved in the Act than the documentary evidence suggests. Finally, Congress was the ultimate arbiter. They had been interested in satellite communications since Sputnik—possibly before.7
AT&T
After earning a PhD at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), John Robinson Pierce became a senior scientist/engineer/manager at AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL). In 1954 Pierce was invited to give a talk on space to the Princeton section of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE). He chose to talk about satellite communications—a subject which was “in the air” at the time. His talk, later published,8 posed, possibly for the first time, the choices which would have to be made in order to make satellite communications a reality: passive (reflectors) or active (transmitter) satellites, low earth orbit (LEO) or geosynchronous orbit (GEO), attitude control, and position control. Pierce provided mathematical analyses that suggested that almost all of the possibilities would work, but that some would be better than others. Not least of all, Pierce provided an estimate of the worth of such a system: $1 billion.
In early March 1958,9 John R. Pierce and Rudolf Kompfner of AT&T, independent inventors of the traveling wave tube, saw a picture of the shiny 100 ft sphere that William J. O’Sullivan of NACA Langley Research Center was proposing to launch into space for atmospheric research. It reminded Pierce of the 100 ft communications reflector he had envisioned in 1954. He visited the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Laboratory to confirm his understanding of the sphere and by the end of the month was discussing the project with Hugh Dryden, NACA Director, in Washington, DC. Thus began the Echo program. Later that summer (July), Pierce and Kompfner participated in an Air Force-sponsored meeting on communications at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. They were unimpressed with the plans of the Air Force, which to them seemed unrealistic. While there, Pierce met William H. Pickering of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who had received his PhD from CalTech the year before Pierce. The three engineers discussed among themselves the possibility of launching a sphere such as O’Sullivan’s for communications experiments. Pickering volunteered the support of JPL (which eventually resulted in use of the JPL Goldstone station as the West Coast station for Echo). To support this plan, Kompfner and Pierce wrote a paper10 which they presented at an IRE conference on “Extended Range Communications” at the Lisner Auditorium of George Washington University in Washington, DC on October 6–7, 1958.11
On October 15, 1958, just two weeks after NASA had begun operation, Pierce was invited to serve on an ad-hoc Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) panel on communications satellites—especially 24-hour communications satellites. Part of the briefing included soldiers using hand-held satellite terminals to communicate on the battlefield. Pierce was upset that “requirements” and “needs” were driving military research and development (R&D) activities with little or no reference to, or apparently knowledge of, the state of the art. At this meeting the Defense communications satellite program was outlined: first, a spin-stabilized satellite in 1960 (Courier); second, a body-stabilized satellite in 1962; and finally, a 24-hour satellite. Payload frequencies would be both very high frequency (VHF, 30–300 MHz) and microwave (SHF, 3–30 GHz). Pierce noted that the division of labor— Army communications and Air Force satellite—was causing some friction. He suspected the Air Force of wanting to take over the whole program. The unreality of the military programs only made Pierce more anxious to begin the Echo program with NASA.12
C.C. Cutler, D.E. Alsberg, and Kompfner of BTL visited Space Technology Laboratories (STL), a division of Thompson, Ramo, Wooldridge (TRW), met the following week to discuss the ARPA satellite program. STL was the Air Force systems engineering contractor. With some exceptions, the AT&T/BTL team was unimpressed with the proposed STL-run communications satellite program and with STL personnel. They described some of what they read as “scientific quackery.” Cutler concluded a memo to Pierce by saying, “any hope of BTL taking part in STL’s program would appear to be in a position subservient to an irresponsible organization and does not seem desirable to me. There must be a better way to get into the space communication business.”13
In early January of 1959, John R. Pierce was preparing an internal brief soliciting major AT&T support of satellite communications R&D and preparing for meetings with NASA, ARPA and the Department of Defense (DoD) were not interested in his plan to bounce signals off balloons in orbit, but NASA was—especially since it was already committed to launching balloons to study atmospheric density. Pierce estimated his funding needs for 1959 as $1 million, with larger amounts in succeeding years. On January 9, the AT&T team met with NASA management, including Leonard Jaffe, an electrical engineer from NASA Lewis, who had been brought to NASA HQ by Abe Silverstein to follow the satellite communications efforts. NASA and AT&T concluded an agreement: NASA would be responsible for building and launching the Echo balloon, JPL and AT&T would be responsible for building communications facilities14 and running the Echo experiments.15
At the congressional hearings on satellite communications of March 3–4, 1959, John R. Pierce made the second presentation. He briefly mentioned the planned NASA balloon reflector experiment and the 24-hour orbit satellite, but most of his presentation and a supplementary statement addressed the technologies required to build satellite communications systems—especially AT&T advances in these technologies.
During most of 1959 AT&T concentrated on building the antennas, transmitters, and receivers required for the Echo program. By November, successful experiments had been conducted by moon-bounce (literally bouncing a communications signal off the Moon and receiving it) between the AT&T/BTL facilities at Crawford Hill and the JPL facilities at Goldstone.16 AT&T and several other companies interested in satellite communications (notably ITT, but also Hughes) looked on the ground facilities as the most important component of a communications satellite system. In general, from this early period to the present day, more money has been spent on Earth stations than on communications satellites themselves.17
Active satellite work had not been neglected. By August 1959, Leroy C. Tillotson (AT&T/BTL) had described in a memorandum a satellite design quite similar to what later turned out to be Telstar. A separate group had developed a design for a satellite traveling wave tube, which was also described in another BTL memorandum. By the end of the year, studies of spacecraft power systems (solar cells, Ni-Cd batteries, DC–DC converters), structures, space environment, thermal control, and attitude control had also been completed. Perhaps more important, a commitment toward developing active satellites was building. In the words of J.R. Pierce, “by the end of 1959 our thoughts were directed toward a simple, low-altitude active satellite as the next step.”18
In April 1960, AT&T began to prepare a follow-on passive experiment after Echo. Huge 3600 square ft horn antennas would be built on either side of the Atlantic. Forty-kilowatt transmitters would beam television signals up to a duplicate of Echo in a higher orbit: 2000 miles. Unfortunately, the studies showed that passive satellite TV transmission would be of marginal signal quality. In a letter to Leonard Jaffe at NASA Headquarters, on May 13, 1960, Rudolf Kompfner describes the current AT&T/BTL research program as shifting to active satellites. In this letter Kompfner reviewed the active satellite component/subsystem studies that had been underway since late 1959.19
On September 15, 1960, George L. Best of AT&T hand-delivered a letter to NASA boss, T. Keith Glennan, outlining AT&T’s plans for communications satellites. In the letter, Best described AT&T’s on-going work on an active satellite and Earth stations. It was their hope that an experimental trans-Atlantic satellite could be launched into a 2200-mile orbit within 18–20 months. The communications package would be a 5 MHz repeater. Best said that AT&T would assume all the costs in this trial except for the foreign Earth stations, and “would hope that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would be willing to launch these trial satellites for us, at our expense, if this proved to be the most practicable arrangement.” Glennan replied on September 28 that “issues of national policy” raised by the AT&T proposal were still being studied—he was thus prevented from responding. On October 12, Glennan made a speech stating that US policy would be to allow private industry to develop satellite communications. On October 20, E.I. Green, AT&T Executive Vice-President, forwarded a description of the technical features of the AT&T satellite. On October 21, 1960, AT&T asked the FCC for permission to launch and operate a satellite communications system.20
Hughes Aircraft Company
In late 1958, possibly due to the success of their Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program, the Soviets canceled their advanced intercontinental bomber.21 In 1959 the US Air Force canceled the F-108 longrange interceptor, the purpose of which was to shoot down those canceled Soviet bombers. Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) was responsible for the fire-control system and the missile for the F-108. Cancellation of the program was a major blow leading to the layoff of 20% of Hughes employees. Frank Carver, manager of the group that was designing the F-108 fire-control system in El Segundo, California, had seen the coming blow and had earlier asked Harold A. Rosen, a 32-year-old CalTech PhD, to explore potential markets for the skills of advanced development laboratory personnel. In 1959, Donald D. Williams, a 28-year-old physics major from Harvard, joined Rosen. Williams suggested that a navigation system simpler than ARPA’s Transit could be designed using geosynchronous satellites. Rosen felt that geosynchronous orbit was more suited to communications satellites. The Pierce and Kompfner satellite communications article had recently been published in the March 1959 issue of the Proceedings of the IRE. In the article Pierce and Kompfner had been somewhat negative toward geosynchronous communications satellites because the need for body stabilization, propulsion, large antennas, and high power seemed to require a very large (too heavy for then existing US launchers), sophisticated satellite. Rosen felt that a simple lightweight solution to these problems could be found. For the next several months Rosen and Williams worked on that solution.22
Rosen and Williams were joined by Tom Hudspeth, an older, more experienced electrical engineer, who was brought in by Hughes senior management to provide maturity and balance to the team. By the summer of 1959 they ...

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