Six Typical Problems

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.

At the Foundation: Basic Physical Principles

Despite these many important differences, there is one common thread running through the solving of all the problems we have chosen. The men who have been working on them had to know some basic principles of classical physics—principles that most of them first learned in their high school physics classes. You can’t, for example, calculate a satellite’s orbit without knowing Newton’s Laws of Motion. You can’t make optical measurements on a satellite without knowing the law of reflection of light. You can’t decide what color a satellite should be without knowing the law of heat exchange.

To emphasize the importance of a solid grounding in basic physical principles, we have tried to have our problems touch on most of the general areas of physics: mechanics, heat, sound, light, electricity and magnetism, electronics, the properties of matter, atomic physics, physics of the solid state. But most of them, of course, are not limited to just one of these—they cross the lines of a number of areas. For instance, the problem of keeping solar cell power plants working in space involves laws of heat, mechanics, and atomic physics, as well as physics of the solid state. And, in studying the perception of time delay, we even branch out into experimental psychology.

Problem-Solving Techniques

When you start to solve a problem in science or engineering you can go about it in several ways. In some cases you have no choice: There may be only one practical method of doing the job. Other times, there may be several ways to attack the problem. You may try one, find it to be unfruitful, and then work on another approach. You will see both these methods of attack in the case histories we present in the next chapter.

Here are some of the techniques of scientific problem solving that we will be discussing:

• Applying basic principles directly. In answering the questions “How do we calculate a satellite’s orbit?” and “What color should a satellite be?” the successful procedure was to begin with basic known concepts and use them in a new field.
• Adapting known devices. To answer the question “How can we make optical measurements on a satellite?” the story was somewhat different: Devices that already had been developed—mirrors, telescopes, and cathode ray tubes—were utilized in a new and different way.
• Developing entirely new equipment. Another question—“How do we keep solar cell power plants working in space?”—deals with an entirely new area of investigation; it could only be answered by perfecting some entirely new techniques.
• Experimentation. Sometimes there is no definite answer to a problem. In the case of “Would time delay be a problem in using a synchronous satellite?” investigation is still going on. Our report tells of one set of experiments that helped add to our information about this problem—the final answer, if there is one, must come later. But, as with many problems, experimentation continues.
• “Detective work.” Our sixth problem is really a unique one—and, for want of a better way to describe it, we use this title. It tells how the problem of “How can we repair an orbiting satellite?”—something never even attempted before—was ingeniously solved by means of scientific deduction hundreds of miles away from the problem itself.