The questions we listed in Part I cover a very broad area of science and
technology. Their answers involve, more than anything else, physics,
electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Some, however, also
require that the men who work on them know chemistry, metallurgy,
mathematics, and occasionally even biology, psychology, geography, and
economics.
We obviously can’t show you how all the problems in Part I can be
solved. Rather, we have picked six of them as examples. They are not
necessarily the most important ones, but they seem to us to be typical
of what engineers and scientists working in the satellite communications
program actually have to do. These are the six problems we will be
talking about at length:
—_How do we calculate a satellite’s orbit?_
—_What color should a satellite be?_
—_How can we make optical measurements on a satellite?_
—_How do we keep solar cell power plants working in space?_
—_Would time delay be a problem in using a synchronous satellite?_
—_How can we repair an orbiting satellite?_
As you can see, we have picked problems that offer a good deal of
variety. Some of them have been satisfactorily solved; for others the
solutions are not yet complete. Some deal with basic scientific
research; others are much more concerned with the engineering
applications of technical knowledge. Some were solved by careful,
logical thinking; others were solved almost by accident. Some deal with
a particular immediate task (in this case, Project Telstar); others are
more concerned with general planning for satellite communications.