Intelsat Reprising Pivotal Role In Creating A Spacefaring Civilization

While mapping out the future for Intelsat, the satellite operator’s erudite CEO says the outfit aims to expand its leading-edge role in fostering a spacefaring civilization while pushing forward humanitarian missions in conflict zones across the continents.

Boosting humanity’s advances in the heavens, while promoting peace on Earth, and satellite transmissions across the two realms, are all directed at co-crafting a pacific space culture that circles the globe, Intelsat CEO Dave Wajsgras tells me across a sweeping interview.

A key player in Space Race I, Intelsat is now set to enter into a union with SES, a fellow space-tech titan that has co-ruled the highest rings of orbit, in order to win the new Space Race II against upstarts in the satellite sector.

It was Intelsat’s world-leading “Early Bird” satellite that transmitted live footage of the first NASA astronauts to explore the Moon’s silver, shadowed craters—to more than 600 million entranced space aficionados around the world—marking a fantastical advance in the space epic that is still unfolding, he says.

Humanity’s triumph in touching down on this celestial outpost had an incredible, transformative effect on societies across the planet, helped animate a global culture and generated the first sparks for a spacefaring civilization, Wajsgras says.

Bruno Fromont, chief technology officer at Intelsat, adds these first torchbearers for humankind descending on the ancient Moon reshaped the entire Earth.

The Apollo Moon landing, Fromont tells me, “was extraordinary.”

“Space was offering a mirror to our humanity.”

On Earth, he says, “everybody at the same time was watching this and rooting for that same person because it was a human doing something that was impossible.”

“And everybody of every generation and race and wealth was rooted to their TV set to see this.”

And just as Homer played a central role in immortalizing the gods and heroes, voyages and myths of the classical Odyssey, Intelsat’s pathbreaking spacecraft heralded the drama of the Apollo aeronauts—who flew like demigods on their surreal space odyssey—to star-struck followers some 380,000 kilometers away.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission in orbit between the rival superpowers, the United States and the Russian Soviet Union, marked another leap toward cultivating a globe-spanning space civilization, Wajsgras says.

The project was astounding because the two sides were still locked in the decades-long Cold War, between the forces of democracy and communism, that had been playing out across the continents, marked by escalating build-ups of opposing atomic weapons arsenals and brinkmanship that threatened to engulf the world in nuclear flames.

The out-of-the-blue goal, proposed by scientists, of creating a “space detente” between Moscow and Washington, despite their terrestrial conflicts, became “one of the important drivers behind that [Apollo-Soyuz] mission,” Wajsgras says.

This docking of the Eastern and Western bloc capsules, as they sped around the planet at 28,000 kilometers per hour, was relayed to well-wishers worldwide by Intelsat.

“This is where you had, you know, millions, tens of millions of people, from around the globe, standing together as one and saying, ‘Look what we can do together – it’s so much more powerful than what’s going on here on Earth,’” Wajsgras tells me during the interview.

That initial orbital rendezvous between East and West—lauded by peoples across the planet—served as “a precursor,” Wajsgras says, to the swiftly expanding space alliance that NASA created with the Russian space agency, along with its European and Japanese counterparts, in building the cosmopolitan International Space Station.

He adds that human advances across the celestial sphere—like exploring the Moon and deploying thousands of spacecraft in concentric rings surrounding the globe—along with the creation of the internet and its spread across the surface of the planet, are driving more and more rapid evolution of civilization.

Intelsat has been playing a leading role in both of these globe-changing breakthroughs, with its colossal cutting-edge satellites beaming broadband internet connections to expanding waves of users across the planet, including hotspots that have been decimated by armed conflicts.

In a fascinating mission Intelsat’s leaders have joined with actor and humanitarian peace activist Forest Whitaker, the satellite giant is providing ten learning centers set up by the trail-blazing Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative, across South Sudan and Uganda, with satellite dishes and high-speed internet connections.

The Academy Award-winning, utopian Whitaker tells me in an interview that these centers, and their being plugged into the cybersphere, are aimed at engendering a fountainhead of young peace-builders who, as they are transformed into Web-savvy global citizens and mediators, spread social harmony and a cultural renaissance across the region.

Intelsat has likewise joined forces with the hyper-tech humanitarian group Help.NGO to bring life-saving internet access to the besieged citizens of Ukraine—across its blitzed cities, campuses and space centers—after cell phone towers and internet infrastructure nationwide were targeted in Russia’s never-ending rocket barrages.

“Help.NGO is basically focused on humanitarian missions, and similar to what we’re doing with the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative,” Wajsgras says.

“We believe it’s important to support these types of missions and these very important types of programs around the world.”

“People in Ukraine need support – they need our help,” he adds.

Meanwhile, he says, the crescendo in lofting satellites that can bounce films and music, internet connectivity and images of the cosmos around the world at the speed of light is transforming the very core of civilization.

“The pace of change today,” he says, “is arguably greater than ever.”

CTO Bruno Fromont agrees.

The takeoff of a spacefaring culture—boosted by new-generation spacecraft set to return to the Moon, and then to touch down on Mars—and the rush of new satellites into orbit, he says, “continues to transform the way human civilization evolves.”

Intelsat and SES, he predicts, “will no doubt be a significant part of this evolution.”

After their alliance is formalized, the U.S.-headquartered Intelsat and the Luxembourg-based SES will command a fleet of 150-plus exquisite spacecraft, specially designed super-satellites dominating geosynchronous orbit—36000 kilometers above the planet—and medium Earth orbit below.

A partnership with OneWeb’s constellation in low Earth orbit will enable these allies to face off against NewSpace rivals that will compete to shape the future of satellite operations across the 2020s.

With its avant-garde satellites whizzing around the globe, this new alliance is already preparing to transmit footage from the next scenes in humanity’s space odyssey, as Allied astronauts start exploring the South Pole of the Moon and set their sights on Mars.