Silicon Sky: How One Small Start-up Went Over the Top to Beat the Big Boys Into Satellite Heaven

For more than a decade some of the world’s most powerful defense companies have raced to launch the first constellation of low-earth orbit commercial satellites. The prize? An explosive global market for personal communications worth billions of dollars. Fresh out of Harvard Business School, twenty-something David Thompson entered the fray with an insane idea: to build his own rockets, satellites and a multi-million-dollar corporation that could go head-to-head against the big guys. His electrifying grab for the heavens—huge start-up costs, mind-blowing technical obstacles, and dark tangos with investors—is told by acclaimed writer Gary Dorsey, who was there reporting from inside. The story of their obsessive gamble in the high-stress game of space commerce is told through the lives of Thompson’s managers, markets, and “freshouts”—a brilliant team of young engineers from the country’s best universities. Like The Soul of a New Machine, Silicon Sky—part of the celebrated Sloan Technology Series—reads like fast-paced fiction, tracing the advent not just of a single company, but of a quickly emerging technological industry.