After I was all prepared for them to come crashing down, the Iridium satellites are being saved by the U.S. Dept of Defense (which reminds me, soon it’ll be time to worry about tax returns again). There’s a Slashdot thread on this too. For $3 million a month, the Pentagon gets unlimited air time for up to 20,000 government users. That’s $150/month per person. Not too bad. They also get to avoid public panic over pieces of satellite falling out of the sky. Perhaps that’s the real bargain here. Someone’s going to do a Mastercard commercial parody, aren’t they? “Global satellite system: $25 million. Two years of satellite phone service for 20,000 government workers: $72 million. Keeping a public raised on “Armageddon”, “Deep Impact”, Y2K hype (and many who still remember Skylab falling in 1979) from panicking: priceless.