![1969, 1971 at&t’s monopoly over long-distance challenged 1969, 1971 at&t’s monopoly over long-distance challenged](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1574073007020166-gr004.gif)
In May of that same year the RAND Corporation’s first work of research provided a preliminary assessment of the feasibility of an artificial Earth satellite. Army confirmed that radio transmissions would travel through space by bouncing a signal off the moon and capturing its return. Others would translate this concept into more concrete proposals. Clarke posited that this geosynchronous vantage point could provide an optimal location for relaying radio transmissions for long-distance communication. Clarke proposed the concept and advantages of space-based communications in 1945 by showing how an artificial satellite in a 26,199-mile circular orbit would circumnavigate Earth along a trajectory synchronized with the planet’s rotation. Renowned science fiction author Arthur C. space cooperation should not be confined to partner nations with established space programs.Ī Practical Application of Orbital Flight The narrative that emerges from this analysis represents a formative example of diplomatic spacepower and provides a sharp reminder that U.S. In short, policy actions in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations abetted the development of communication satellites as a tool of strategic competition by prioritizing multi-national collaboration – especially with rapidly decolonizing developing nations – over short-term economic gain. grand strategy and communication satellites from1958 to1972. This article explores the reciprocal relationship between U.S. grand strategy during the early years of the U.S. Yet despite the unspectacular nature of communication satellites, this technology permeated U.S. Despite world-wide adoption and proliferation, today’s communication satellites are a technology so unassuming as to only be noticed when they malfunction. Communication satellites, in contrast, have no comparable sensational associations. Weather satellites promise predictive power over many of nature’s most violent forces. Classified spy satellites stimulate the forbidden thrill of clandestine espionage. Intercontinental ballistic missiles stoke existential fears. Human spaceflight energizes the imagination. Dedicating a single sentence to this technology, Kennedy noted that “when we have put into space a system that will enable people in remote areas of the Earth to exchange messages, hold conversations, and eventually see television programs, we will have achieved a success as beneficial as it will be striking.” Ĭommunication satellites generally receive short shrift in political histories of the early Space Age. Later in his address, President Kennedy also requested $50 million to accelerate the development of U.S. But Kennedy’s lunar ambitions have eclipsed less spectacular, but immensely more practical, elements of his moon speech. Space was the “new frontier of human adventure” and spaceflight “a great new American enterprise.” These lofty words enshrined a lunar mission as the most exciting and impressive endeavor humanity could achieve in an age of space exploration. Delivering an address to a joint session of Congress, the president called for the United States to commit to landing an American on the moon by the end of the decade. President Kennedy set the tenor of the 1960s U.S. Introduction: Unsensational and Overlooked Through these mechanisms, communication satellites proved to be the most immediate, pragmatic, commercially important, and strategically relevant element of the early U.S. radio and television broadcasts over a U.S. controlled infrastructure, and receiving U.S. communication satellites, routing their long-distance communication requirements through a U.S. satellite technology, deploying ground stations compatible with U.S. Just seven years after the Soviet Union pioneered orbital spaceflight with the launch of Sputnik, developing nations around the world were investing in U.S. Because of these decisions, communication satellites provided the United States with an unglamorous, though immensely practical, means of incorporating all nations into the Space Age. During this period, policy actions taken in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations abetted the development of communication satellites as a tool of strategic competition by elevating multi-national collaboration – especially with the decolonizing nations across the developing world – over short-term economic gain. This silence, however, underrepresents the strategic role these satellites played during the early years of the U.S. Communication satellites generally receive short shrift in political histories of the Space Age.