Author: Robert Bell

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” So wrote the Lebanese poet and artist Kahil Gibran. I was of a generation that read...

The economist Herbert Stein once wrote, “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.” The question, of course, is when.  It can be an exasperating question.  Human beings have...

The space business needs to recruit more people who know less. Strange, right?  The global pandemic dramatized how important skills are to personal economic progress. As states and countries locked...

The satellite business has developed a bandwidth obsession.  Really, it’s nothing to apologize for. After decades as one of the most capacity-constrained communications technologies, the industry has lately been enjoying...

For an industry that aims to go where no one has gone before, space and satellite has an imagination problem. You are probably familiar with the 2018 report from Morgan...

Has it ever struck you that the satellite industry does all the work and the mobile industry has all the fun? It is an unfair comparison, of course.  But consider:...

The digital economy has become a major driver of total economic growth. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated the combined value of platform companies with a...

In 2018, natural disasters claimed 10,400 lives and caused $160 billion worth of damage, according to German reinsurer Munich Re. That’s down from $350 billion and 13,000 lives lost in...

Working in space and satellite is technically challenging.  Our friends in social media, online shopping, and ridesharing have it easy by comparison. It can be thrilling. Who else launches and lands...

What’s the proper dividing line between what government does and what business does? This is not a political question — it is meant in the context of the space industry....