SILICON SKY

Reviewed 2/18/2000

SILICON SKY: How One Small Start-up Went Over the Top To Beat the Big Boys into Satellite Heaven Gary Dorsey Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1999				Rating: 4.5 High
ISBN 0-7382-0094-8	332pp.	HC/BWI	$26.00

Errata:

I've documented 45 mistakes in Silicon Sky. I present them here, divided into four types:

Errors in describing technology
Mixed messages and mangled metaphors
Errors of spelling or punctuation
Errors of number

Errors in describing technology

Page 11:	"But on April 5, 1990, with former NASA astronaut Gordon Fullerton piloting the B-52, the Orbital company — 'a bunch of guys', according to the project's chief engineer, Antonio Elias — demonstrated the first successful expendable launch vehicle in this country in twenty years. Not since the creation of the space shuttle had any American company produced a new rocket that worked."
	I judge this an error of historical research. The claim would be disputed by many, including Martin-Marietta, builder of the Titan IV, as well as the American Rocket Company and the creator of the Percheron.

Pages 12-13:	"...a force that, combined with the algorithms of rocket science, would perform as a kind of lox generator, giving their corporate dreams hyperbolic ignition, like hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate in the turbine drive of a V2..."
	S/B "hypergolic" — and that's no hyperbole. Also, LOX (liquid oxygen) by itself is not hypergolic with anything.

Page 16:	"...ice chilled sodas outside a transparent clean room..."
	This probably means a clean room with a large window, but it's not clear. (Pun unintended.)

Page 22:	"The concept was childlike; ..."
	Dorsey does not explain why; and I don't agree with his assessment. (I might also put this in the "Mangled Metaphors" section, on the basis that what Dorsey meant to say is "The concept was childish.")

Page 29:	"The man understood software only as it had existed in the prehistory of C."
	Ambiguous: Does it mean before C existed (i.e. the 1950s) or when C was new, before it was well documented and widely available?

Page 76:	"...a collection of ionized electrons suddenly flips a logic state..."
	Probably should be "ions or electrons". Free electrons are ionized — carrying an unbalanced charge — by definition.

Page 86:	"Even if a system reeks, you still can't change the laws of physics."
	Again, it's not clear what he's trying to say. It's true that you can't (more properly canna in this context) change the laws of physics, but how does that relate to fixing a system that "reeks" (i.e. is badly designed)?

Page 96:	"The legal fees alone cost Orbital $800,000 in 1983, but by early 1984 the three founders had raised more than $50 million, the largest amount of private capital ever raised for an aerospace system at that time."
	Another exaggeration, I think. Was not Spacehab financed by this time? Besides which, the statement is far too general.

Page 131:	"..an elementary design using serial (one-way) lines of communication..."
	Serial lines do not have to be one-way (and neither do parallel lines).

Page 180:	"...a humidity-free, computerized operations room..."
	The proper description would be "controlled-humidity" (or just "air-conditioned"). Working in a room free of humidity is uncomfortable and unhealthy.

Page 232:

"On each attempt Morgan saw the signal-to-noise ratio escalate unexpectedly nearly ten times beyond spec, while the flow of gray numbers on the blackened screen of his PC monitor kept burping up a bit error rate of zero."

This suggests that Dorsey got the SNR backwards, that what he meant to write was a SNR ten times lower than spec. But a zero BER is consistent with a higher SNR. The only technical problems I see with this as a description of an electronics test are that it never explains how the higher SNR happened, or why Morgan thinks it is a bad thing. (One possibility: the result indicated signal leakage through a filter or around some shielding.)

Page 235:	"In a way the satellite's subscriber receiver would have to act more like a military countermeasures receiver — a device immune to jamming from foreign sources — than like a traditional radio receiver operating in a noise-limited environment."
	Here the phrase "noise-limited environment" seems wrong. It implies that noise is the limiting factor, somehow dominating the performance of traditional radio receivers operating in their typical environment. I suspect that what Dorsey was told was "limited-noise environment", which more correctly describes the conditions in which most receivers operate.

Page 237:

"The oscillator converted everything in the band from 148-150 MHz to 10 MHz, this down-conversion making it easy later to amplify the signal again without overloading the system."

I assume a fixed-frequency oscillator, so the band is shifted while the bandwidth remains constant: 10-12 MHz. This is standard practice in a superheterodyne receiver. Also, Dorsey's description is incomplete; this sort of thing is done to prevent overloading of the receiver by strong, out-of-band signals. In other words, it's for selectivity, not for sensitivity and dynamic range. He may be describing a double-conversion design. This design mixes the received signal with a fixed-frequency oscillator's output, thus getting sum- and difference-frequencies. The sum-frequencies are ignored; the difference-frequencies are amplified and then mixed with a variable-frequency oscillator signal. The fixed-frequency output of this process is again amplified, and also filtered. The end result is a tunable and very selective receiver.

Mixed messages and mangled metaphors

Page xvii:	"Veteran engineers, wolf pups, Freshouts, satellite prima donnas, and grizzly technicians who populated the project..."
	To this point, the term "wolf pups" has not been explained. As for "grizzly", this should be "grizzled" — which is what Dorsey uses later. No, there are no four-footed wild animals in Orbital's labs.

Page 5:	Descriptions of David Thompson as being the "reigning wunderkind of the business" but seeming to have "a shallow arrogance or subtle gimmickry that had characterized the aerospace industry since its earliest years."
	These descriptions are contradictory. And the thing that characterized the aerospace industry since its earliest years has been the "can do" attitude. Sure, "shallow arrogance" and "subtle gimmickry" have been and are present; but they are not characteristic of the industry.

Page 6:	"Straight up. Blue turf. Open fields. High cotton."
	These got the point across. But I had to think about them some to sort it out. Dorsey could have chosen a set of metaphors with fewer jangling terrestrial connotations.

Page 6:

"A parody of formerly heroic times, the withering cult of aerospace..."

It seems extreme as well as inaccurate to describe the aerospace industry as a "withering cult". However, if Dorsey means that the Apollo-era worship of NASA by the public is fading, I'd only call it extreme. Also, a parody implies something done intentionally, which this is not. And again he contradicts himself; describing the aerospace industry as "formerly heroic" negates his statement about it on page 5.

Page 11:	"At least initially, the Microspace blueprint seemed to offer an antidote to the industry's malaise and a juggernaut for Orbital into contract competitions against major players."
	"Juggernaut" seems a bit over-enthusiastic. It certainly is not the word I would have chosen.

Page 14:	"The little universe in David Thompson's office was about to tilt..."
	This statement is mind-bogglingly opaque.

Page 25:	"Stocked with 486s, Suns, and galleries of CAD supplies, their offices spilled over into the noisy corridors of the second floor of the Sullyfield building like a block party swimming in home brew."
	Where does he get these similes?

Page 26:	"Exotic concepts rolled off their tongues as fluidly as the tastiest licks of John Coltrane. Their lab conversations were as esoteric as the midnight dissonance of Monk-like chords."
	I was fooled by this at first, thinking it refers to medieval monks. "Gregorian chants dissonant? No way, José!" But the capital "M" is the tipoff, of course; this refers to a modern Monk — a fellow name of Theolonius. Nevertheless, it seems an odd comparison.

Page 39:	"'Fresh out' of Stanford University graduate school, Grace [Chang] could deliver a ferocious report if she was riled."
	I doubt that she "blowed up real good". I think that what she delivered so ferociously was a retort.

Page 74:	"Orbcomm-X ... presented a clear expression of classically conservative, awesomely inexpensive AMSAT ideas, reflected most ostensibly by an unusually simple and efficient design."
	Used in this context, "ostensibly" would mean that the design was not really simple and efficient, but only appeared to be so. Maybe the proper word is "notably" or "obviously".

Page 79:	"In Virginia, Steffy's engineers used software to launch the first Orbcomms for an entire week up and down the hallway."
	Must have been tough getting any work done with those satellites whizzing up and down the hall. Maybe the engineers came and went through the windows.

Page 82:	" 'Okay,' King countered."
	"Countered"?He was agreeing with his interlocutor, not disputing him.

Page 101:	"...groaning under the weight of stony tomes about pipeline routes, oil rigs, and refrigerated railcars."
	I have no idea what Dorsey means by "stony tomes" — but I'll bet he doesn't mean "books made of rock".

Page 151:	"As we sat down to supper, a small feast prepared with a gourmand's flair..."
	Try "gourmet's". A gourmet goes for quality, a gourmand for quantity.

Page 237:	Dorsey makes reference to the "Canadian paging system".
	He does not explain what this is, nor makes he reference to a prior explanation.

Page 247:	"...from July through December, in an effort to staunch financial losses in the division..."
	The proper word is "stanch".

Page 270:	"Forced to endure continual oversight from bosses who apparently sniffed the rank of failure..."
	Bottom is the rank of failure, I guess... What Dorsey needs here is the word "reek" — or perhaps the phrase "rank odor".

Page 286:	"...but heavy fog still rolled across the mesa at night with unpredictable regularity..."
	"unpredictable regularity"?

Page 289:	"Someone started to rank on Grace Chang."
	Since this refers to the someone relating an altercation he had had with Grace, "pull rank" doesn't fit. This could be a slang usage I haven't heard, or (less likely) Dorsey means "rant" or "rag on". (I wonder if Grace Chang delivered a ferocious report.)

Page 290:	"They talked about the three spacecraft as if they were prodigious children."
	Dorsey probably means "precocious". (Of course, many children in America are obese, and we aerospace types all know how the weight of a spacecraft tends to balloon...)

Page 292:	"News reports said bridges and parts of some major roads were unpassable..."
	This is an imforgivable error!

Errors of spelling or punctuation

Page 9:	"With few exceptions the aerospace executives always required enormous capital..."
	Comma needed after "exceptions".

Page 15:	"...Orbcomm's space products would rely on the world's storehouse of commercial radio parts, where were, by comparison, ubiquitous and inexpensive."
	Should be "which were".

Page 61:	"...resources to inaugerate two dozen satellite franchises..."
	Spelling error — S/B "inaugurate".

Page 73:	"...an old Frigidaire that one of their technicians had bought at a used appliance store nextdoor for twenty bucks..."
	Space character missing.

Page 203:	"Although he had the loping gait of a slacker and sometimes emoted a kind smart-ass attitude..."
	I'm sure this ought to be "kind of a smart-ass".

Page 284:	"As birthplace of the American's first ICBM..."
	This has to be an editor goof — or more accurately two goofs. It should read "As the birthplace of America's first ICBM..."

Dorsey uses a curious spelling of the word "analog". I might guess him to be a Britisher, but I know he is not. In the American electronics industry, the "ue" suffix is never used.

Page 171:	"...the schedule for converting the data from an analogue to a digital format..."
	Analog

Page 237:	"The Orbcomm signal would then be ...run through an analogue to digital converter, which, as the name implies, translates the analogue signal into a digital format."
	Analog. Analog. It's as easy as falling off a logue.

Errors of number

Dorsey makes relatively few of these errors, where a sentence has a singular subject and a plural verb (or vice-versa). They are quite common in published books, and often arise because the verb is wrongly given the number of an intervening prepositional phrase just ahead of it. Dorsey, blast him, can't even claim this excuse in the examples below.

Page 94:	"Executives at Martin Marietta, who had just experienced an unusual downturn in its business cycle..."
	Actually, this one is probably OK. But it jars on me.

Page 210:	"When findings of the company's first report on morale was read..."
	S/B "findings {***} was read". You see?

Page 230:	"The trades he made to keep the weight of the satellite below 95 pounds, despite constant changes in designs and materials, was nothing short of fantastic."
	S/B "trades {***} were nothing short of fantastic".