ABSTRACT
In the mid-1980s the author participated as a witness to a strange story, one that had a profound lesson to teach, a lesson which a dozen years later became of this book. The story has a metaphor: six eagles that in almost clockwork sequence failed to catch the fish they expected to have for dinner. This story begins in the early 1960s when a young agency in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was tasked to develop a series of Earth-orbiting satellites for the military purposes of communications, navigation, weather observation, remote sensing, space exploration, and what later became intelligence and strategic warning. Their design and construction was duly contracted to a series of aerospace companies including The Boeing Company, General Electric, Hughes Aircraft, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell International, and TRW — eagles of companies, all.
