Satellite Communications, Globalization, and the Cold War

The concept of globalization encompasses a number of different meanings that reflect the diminishing importance of national boundaries and the rise of worldwide social and economic processes. Analysts of globalization have focused on such issues as the growth of transnational companies, the expansion of international trade, and the increased tension between metropolitan and local practices and cultures. A crucial element in this process of transformation has been the development and implementation of global communication technologies. The communications satellite, an essential instrument of globalization, was first developed during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The popular media theorist Marshall McLuhan articulated his concept of the "global village" during the 1960s partly in response to the potential he perceived in this new technology. Satellites, in conjunction with telephone technology and, especially, broadcasting, created possibilities for global communications, education, and propaganda. ¹

As the earliest, and arguably most important, example of the direct application of space exploration to social problems, communications satellites played an important role in the space race, the cold war competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for dramatic achievements in the exploration and exploitation of space. ² The cold war involved not only a quest for military superiority but also an effort to demonstrate national preeminence in science and technology as a means of asserting global political leadership. ³ The German-born engineer Wernher von Braun aptly summed up what was at stake for the United States in the 1960s when he argued that "we are competing for allies among the many have-not nations for whose underfed multitudes the Communist formula of life has a great appeal." ⁴

The enhancement of national prestige through technological development became especially significant with the dramatic growth in the U.S. space program after the Soviets successfully orbited the first satellite, Sputnik I, in October 1957, and then sent the first human into space, Yury Gagarin, in April 1961. Project Apollo, the American program to land a man on the moon initiated by President Kennedy soon after the Gagarin flight, symbolized the effort to turn spectacular technological achievement into a tool of both domestic and foreign policy. Government officials sought not only to use achievements in space to convince the world of the superiority of American political institutions but also to carry out a mandate to share with the public the knowledge acquired in the course of building the space program. ⁵

This article focuses on the decision by the United States during the 1960s to establish a satellite communications system open to all countries of the world. Locked in competition with the Soviet Union for both military superiority and international prestige, President Kennedy overturned the Eisenhower administration's policy of treating satellite communications as simply an extension of traditionally regulated telecommunications. Instead of allowing private communications companies, most notably the dominant communications common carrier, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), to set up separate systems that would likely primarily serve profitable communication routes to Europe or other major "developed" regions, the new administration decided to take the lead in establishing a single world system.

Congress passed the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 to create a unique company, Comsat, which in turn helped set up and manage the first international system, Intelsat. By the end of the decade over sixty countries belonged to Intelsat, with twenty-eight members operating fifty ground stations. The system achieved worldwide coverage in 1969, when geosynchronous satellites successfully served the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins. ⁶

Although AT&T pioneered research in satellite communications, the geosynchronous design of the final global system was mainly based on research by another company, the Hughes Aircraft Corporation. Especially during the early years of the Kennedy administration, U.S. officials sought out designs that would offer alternatives to AT&T's plan for a system of medium-altitude, random-orbiting satellites that operators would need to track as they moved across the sky relative to...