Dorsey, Gary. Silicon Sky: How One Small Start-Up Went Over the Top to Beat the Big Boys into Satellite Heaven. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1999.

This book features a first-person account of how David Thompson, chief executive officer of Orbital Sciences Corp., was able to create a global satellite system for a fraction of the cost of his competitors in the 1990s, and become one of the biggest providers of satellite services today.

"National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (amended); Title I, Section 103." Washington, D.C. Historical Reference Collection, History Office, NASA Headquarters, 1958.

20 Dec. 2004. < http://www.hq.nasa.gov/ogc/spaceact.html>.

This is the bill signed into law establishing the U.S. space program. It explained how the space program was set up for peaceful purposes to do research.

"Special Committee on Space Technology Report, Oct. 28, 1958: Recommendations to the NASA Regarding A National Civil Space Program." Washington, D.C.: NASA Historical Reference Collection, History Office, NASA Headquarters, 1958.

20 Dec. 2004. < http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/report58.html>.

This report, found in the NASA archives, was the official U.S. report recommending the establishment of a federally sponsored space program. It was sent to the U.S. Congress to get funding for the new space program.

Tanner, John C. "Here Comes the Pain." Telecom Asia. Sept. 2003.

16 Dec. 2004. <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FGI/is_9_14/ai_109404230

This article featured interviews with three of the top satellite experts in the world talking about the current economic crisis in the satellite industry and what the future holds. The experts are Simon Twiston Davies of the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, Peter Jackson of AsiaSat; David Ball of PanAm Sat and Chris Lanzit of Hughes Electronics/Boeing Space Systems International. They say the satellite industry is in a bad place but will recover if the governments of the world can loosen some of the regulations regarding how satellite companies do business.

Taylor, Leslie A. "The Role of Satellites in the Internet." PTC, 2002.

2 Jan. 2005. < http://www.lta.com/res_articles/resourcesarticles.htm>

Leslie A. Taylor is a satellite communications consultant, and she delivered this paper at the 2002 Pacific Telecommunications Conference. In it she described how satellite communications companies expected people to use satellites to connect to the Internet but the growth in this business has been slow because other, cheaper technologies are available.

Whalen, David J. "Communications Satellites: Making the Global Village Possible." NASA Historical Reference Collection, History Office, NASA Headquarters, 1988.

20 Dec. 2004. < http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/satcomhistory.html>

This article, by NASA historian David J. Whalen, gave a comprehensive overview of the communications satellite industry, from the very first radio transmitters in space to the domestic satellite systems used by Malaysia, Russia and Canada.

"World Technology Evaluation Center’s Report on Global Satellite Communications Technology & Systems." December 1998.

30 Dec. 2004. < wtec.org/loyola/satcom2/01_01.htm>

This report describes how the satellite communications industry exploded in the 1990s when a number of major corporations planning to build satellite "constellations" that formed a grid around the world offering around-the-clock service. It explains how some areas of satellite business have been more successful than others (especially cable television), but satellite telephones and Internet usage have been less successful.

Adams, David. "An Elevator into Space." The Guardian, 2003.

       13 Sept. 2003. < http://guardian.co.uk.spacedocumentary/story/> 

This article talked about the latest breakthroughs in satellite communications technology such as the space elevator and satellite tethering concepts.

This book was a little out of date but it helped me develop a timeline of the various satellites and probes that were launched in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

This book provided the best timeline of communications satellite history from the days when radio signals were bounced of big mylar balloons to the Intelsat system in the 1980s. Unfortunately it was too old to tell me much about what has happened since then.

This book was like an illustrated encyclopedia. I used it to look up definitions of difficult words about orbits and abbreviated satellite acronyms. It was also helpful in showing drawings of the different types of satellites.

This book explained the technology of GPS, which is Global Positioning System. This is one of the most popular uses for satellite technology today. It is used by the military for spying and for strategy, and it is used by ships, planes and helicopters for navigation.

This book was a reference book, like an encyclopedia. It was useful in learning about Sputnik, the Telsat program and the more than 250,000 satellites in orbit around the Earth today.

This was a great book that described what it was like in the U.S. when the Soviets launched Sputnik. Americans were humiliated to be beat by the Russians and it tells how the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun rushed to get the United States into the space race. I liked it because it had a lot of quotes from people back then, which are primary sources.

This book explained why the Soviets beat the U.S. into space (they were better rocket builders) and how their rockets’ ability to carry heavier payloads than U.S. rockets allowed them to dominate the space race for six or seven years.

Daniel R. Glover is the technical manager for NASA’s Glenn River Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. That is where NASA develops new satellite technology. This article described some of the unusual satellites NASA has developed over the years.

This book was a technical journal for companies that want to launch a satellite. It was pretty hard to read but it explained how to put a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit (that travels at the same speed as the Earth’s orbit, so it looks like it’s standing still in space); and it explains the advantages of satellites over other technologies. It also explains how the industry changed in the 1980s after the U.S. government deregulated the satellite industry.

This book explained the history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL was involved in creating the first Saturn rockets, which put the first U.S. satellites into space, then the moon probes and eventually the Gemini and Apollo spaceships.

This book was useful in helping me understand the history of radio wave and radar technology. It also taught me how little energy is needed to power a satellite in space.

This article described how the U.S. Defense Department began developing secret satellite communications systems in the 1950s for surveillance purposes, with the goal of sensing troop and equipment movement in other countries and in sensing nuclear detonations in remote areas. The military conceived of creating a satellite defense system to protect from global missile attack. And in the 1990s, they began developing mobile satellite communications equipment and global positioning systems that U.S. troops can carry with them to use for immediate location-finding and communications.

This was one of the more recent books I found, so it described what was happening with satellite technology in the 1990s. It explained the use of the Space Shuttles to launch hundreds of satellites and it explained how the different types of orbits (low-Earth vs. eccentric, polar vs. equatorial) are used for different types of research. It also explained geosynchronous orbits, which are used by all communications satellites.

This article describes how the satellite industry is in a very bad economic recession that bottomed out in 2002. The industry was overbuilt and a lot of the capacity of the satellite networks was not being used. But the launching of new satellites has declined, so eventually the demand will catch up with the supply and the industry should be healthier by the year 2013.

This was a biography of Werner Von Braun. He was a rocket-builder for Nazi Germany in World War II, but after the war, he was recruited by the U.S. to develop its rocket program in the Cold War missile buildup in the 1950s. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, he converted the missile rockets into launch vehicles for satellites.

In this book I learned about Goddard, Korolev, von Braun and other early rocket developers. Without rockets, satellites could never get into orbit and it took almost 20 years to develop rockets strong enough to escape gravity and carry a payload out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

This book gave me information on the behind-the-scenes fighting and politics that were involved in trying to beat Russia to the moon. It talks about how President Eisenhower secretly knew the Russians would put a satellite up first, but the U.S. satellite would be better made and would last longer.

This book explained the science of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves are the longest wavelengths in the spectrum and the best conductors of sound. It explains how radio waves vibrate and how they can travel long distances but only in a straight line. It explains how the radio waves travel straight off into space, but if the wave hits something, like the moon, the ionosphere or a satellite, it will bounce back to Earth.

This book taught me what materials are used to make satellites; how satellites operate; the six different types of satellites; the three different types of orbits; and the things that can damage satellites, like solar wind, radiation and meteor showers.

This book explained how before 1962 live television broadcasts were impossible because video pictures were too complex to be transmitted over phone cables. So it took satellites to bring live TV to the world. It also explained the science of radio waves.

This article describes how the satellite industry over-expanded in the 1990s and several major satellite companies went bankrupt. The reason why was because the companies anticipated the people of the world would buy hand-held satellite telephones and home-based dishes for their computers to operate on the Internet, but they were too expensive and the public already had cheaper cell phones and high-speed internet connections by phone or cable. It describes how the public may never want to buy a satellite telephone, but the companies can recover by "trunking" their phone services and selling them to big phone companies or corporations.