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Comment by donarb | Hacker News Reader

An interesting fact is why the name Iridium?

When they were in the planning stages for this set of satellites, they estimated that they would need 77 of them to completely cover the Earth (including the poles), evoking an image of 77 electrons circling the nucleus of an atom. The atomic number for the element Iridium is 77. The number of satellites needed was paired down to 66, so the satellites should actually be named Dysprosium.

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I pointed this out when I interviewed for a job at Iridium.

I didn't get an offer.

You may not have gotten an offer, but you do get something else of incalculable value: my upvote!

Didn't that company end up going out of business and getting bought out for pennies on the dollar by another company which is the one operating it now?

You might have dodged a bullet there.

Ya miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Probably wouldn't want to work there if they couldn't take the joke!

And for completeness, the name of the element comes from the name of the Greek mythological personification of the rainbow. With rainbows being something of a "heavenly" phenomenon, the name was doubly appropriate.

Cambridge Consultants designs a lot of their subscriber equipment - modems, handsets etc. Their internal project name for the Iridium work is Dysprosium for exactly this reason.

pared down

As in the thing you do with a paring knife.

Yes, original Motorola design called for 77 which drove the name, which stuck.

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