Silicon Sky

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 is the author of Congregation: The Journey Back to Church (Viking, 1995) and The Fullness of Wings: The Making of a New Daedalus (Viking, 1990), which was a National Book Award finalist.