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.

Gary Dorsey's Silicon Sky tells the engrossing tale of a private company's quest to develop the world's first low-earth-orbit commercial satellite--a momentous accomplishment that paved the way for everything from reasonably priced GPS navigational receivers to pay-at-the-pump credit-card terminals at filling stations. Dorsey tackles the true story of the emerging world of "microspace" in a manner reminiscent of Tracy Kidder's pioneering The Soul of a New Machine, using an interesting combination of first-hand observations, critical analysis, and literary techniques usually found in novels. By sticking close to Orbital Sciences Corporation's extensive cast of characters working in the early design stages in 1992 through the product launch in 1995, Dorsey brings readers into the labs and boardrooms as the fledgling operation grows into a booming company that entered 1998 with $3.9 billion in orders already in its books. --Howard Rothman