Satellite Bankruptcy: How Motorola Burned $5 Billion to Call from Mount Everest

In the late 1990s, Motorola had a vision: a network of 66 low-earth orbit satellites that would allow anyone to call anyone, from anywhere—even the North Pole. It was called Iridium. It was an engineering marvel, launching satellites faster than anyone in history. It was also a commercial catastrophe.

"The Satellite Bankruptcy" details one of the largest corporate failures of all time. It explains how a company became so obsessed with the engineering challenge that they forgot the customer (...