The Trouble with Telstar

Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The real trouble with communications satellites is the enormous difficulty of repairing even the simplest little trouble. You need such a loooong screwdriver.
oc Stone made sure I wouldn't give him the too busy routine. He sent Millie to get me.
Okay, Millie, I said to Stone's secretary. I'll be right with you. I cleared the restricted notes and plans from my desk and locked them in the file cabinet, per regulations, and walked beside Millie to Stone's office.
It's a reflex mechanism, Mike, Dr. Stone said as Millie showed me in. Every type knows how to fight for survival. He took one thoughtful puff on his pipe. The old fud, he added.
The solenoid again, Doc? I asked.
What else, Mike? he said, raising his pale eyebrows. It's Paul Cleary's baby, and after all these years with the company, he doesn't figure to go down without a fight.
So I was in the middle of it. I had no business to be there, either. The design of that solenoid certainly hadn't been mine. All I had ever done was find out how to destroy it. And after all, that's part of what my lab does, and what I do, for a living.
Quit staring out the window, Mike, Doc said behind me. Here, sit down.
I took the chair beside the desk and watched him go through the business of unloading his pipe, taking the carefully air-tight top off the humidor we had machined for him down in the lab, and loading up with the cheapest Burley you can buy. So much for air-tight containers. Doc got it going, which took two wooden matches, because the stuff was wringing wet—thanks again to an air-tight container.
I just left Cleary's office, Mike, he explained. He won't admit that there's any significance to the failures you have introduced in his solenoid. He insists that your test procedures affected performance more than design did, and he wants to talk with you.