Iridium satellite constellation

Um, the company Andronow manufactures Pearl, which is a roughly 70-pound buoy equipped with underwater acoustic sensors that listen for maritime activity.

The system uses satellite comms, including SpaceX's Starlink and Iridium to send-

... collected information to remote operators.

The kinda scary thing, this is cool tech, but the kinda scary thing, both these companies are like, "We'll give it to the military, we'll give it to civilians, we'll give it to anybody."

Um-

Probably the Iridium Network then, 'cause that's-

Yeah

... what the, um, uh, Garmins are using.

Buran and Energia for the Soviet shuttle.

Iridium for satellite phones.

The Cray-1 for supercomputing.

And the SS United States for ocean liners.

Long development cycles lock in assumptions about markets and competing technologies that are guaranteed to be stale by the time the product ships.

Say that more concretely.

Dan Colussi, the man who eventually rescued Iridium out of bankruptcy, put it about as well as anyone has.

He said the Iridium business plan was locked in place 12 years before the system became operational.