On July 20, 1969, an estimated 600 million people around the globe watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps onto the lunar surface. This was about 15% of everyone alive at that time. (“When the Eagle Landed,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2009)
Read MoreIt really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
