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Introduction
- Rutgers University Press
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Introduction @ lisa parks and james schwoch Thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit during the past fifty years. During these launches eager spectators gazed upward in amazement as a fiery plume turned into a delicate white contrail tracing a rocket as it bolted into the sky only to vanish a few minutes later. The scene of a satellite launch is familiar to most. Not only have thousands of people witnessed launches with their own eyes, such scenes have appeared in television news accounts and have been popularized by Hollywood films over the years. While the purpose of a launch is to thrust a satellite into orbit, this book sets out to perform a reverse maneuver and bring the satellite down to Earth. In doing so, it focuses on the material effects and functions of satellites, the countries and companies that develop them, the cultures they generate, the orbital paths they occupy, and the industries of which they are a part. While many are familiar with the spectacle of the launch, fewer people know about satellites themselves. Thus the act of witnessing a satellite launch can be understood as one small step toward a deeper investigation of satellite technologies, industries, and cultures. Satellite design is a highly specialized field that involves engineers and scientists who tinker behind closed doors in federal science labs and corporate clean rooms. Satellite regulation enlists a scattered web of national and international agencies ranging from the Federal Communications Commission to the European Space Agency and from the United Nations (U.N.) to the International Telecommunications Union. Satellite funding structures are labyrinthine and support everything from the fabrication of the satellite itself to the policies that insure it, from the building of Earth stations to the salaries of employees who manage them. And satellite uses are manifold, engaging all kinds of players from different parts of the world, whether a wildlife biologist tracking a grizzly bear in Alaska, an immigrant worker in Germany downlinking a television show from Turkey, or a U.S. military intelligence analyst monitoring nuclear weapons facilities in Iran. This book is titled Down to Earth to emphasize the material and territorial relations of satellite technologies, industries, and cultures. It is also meant to highlight the vertical stretch between Earth’s surface and the outer limits of orbital space, drawing attention to the imperceptible and multiple “spheres” (atmosphere, stratosphere, ionosphere) through which satellite-to-Earth transactions move and world histories unfold. In their efforts to bring the satellite down to Earth, the authors in this book examine various satellite projects (whether Iridium or Sirius/XM) and applications (whether global positioning, broadcasting, remote sensing, or telephony) and approach them with the frameworks and tools of historical investigation and critical analysis . Satellites are enigmatic objects of study that demand methodological experimentation and creativity. Their remoteness and imperceptibility constantly beg the question: how is it possible to study and understand things and processes that cannot readily be seen or sensed (and which, in some cases, are purposefully hidden and suppressed)? Though this may be a common question for a historian looking back in time or a scientist working at the nanoscale, it is perhaps less common for a media or communication scholar. How do we communicate about satellites and work to make them intelligible? How do satellites matter within our global culture? What are the appropriate critical concepts and approaches for studying satellite technologies , industries, and cultures? These are some of the broader questions motivating the research trajectories of this book. The satellite’s position on and beyond Earth has meant that from the getgo concerns about the technology’s development, launching, funding, and uses have been quintessentially global. Throughout the 1960s, representatives from countries around the world participated in a series of international dialogues about the appropriate development and use of satellites. At the same time, the technology was being commandeered for Cold War geopolitics as the United States and the Soviet Union deployed their secret satellite espionage programs into space. By the 1980s and 1990s satellite industries—including direct satellite broadcasting, remote sensing, and global positioning—had emerged in different nations and have since expanded to operate in most parts of the world. It is almost impossible to imagine our twenty-first-century world without satellites since financial institutions, television broadcasters, military officials, city planners, oil corporations , airlines, telephone carriers, environmental activists, and cartographers , to name a few, all use them daily for a variety of purposes. Despite the centrality of satellite technologies and...