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After slump, satellites get back on the beam;
Palo Alto's Loral continues to be among the industry's leaders
The following article appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle Sunday, February 18.
By Tom Abate
Chronicle Staff Writer
February 18, 2007
At the south end of
Palo Alto , barely visible from Highway 101, sits one of
Silicon Valley 's oldest, but least-known, manufacturing
companies - Space
Systems Loral.
For 50 years, under a succession of corporate owners, Loral's
engineers and technicians have specialized in building civilian
and non-defense satellites for everything from beaming television
to collecting data for weather maps.
Experts say aerospace companies like Loral are bouncing
back from post-Cold War defense cutbacks and the dot-com
crash that crimped demand for these orbiting electronic platforms.
Suddenly, orders are booming for civilian satellites that
can cost $100 million to $300 million to build, driven largely
by what seems to be the insatiable appetite of earthlings
for television signals.
Read the full
story from the San Francisco
Chronicle.
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