May 13, 2021 6:55pm Musk has a vertically integrated LEO business, which no one may be able to match on cost. (NASA) For years much of the satellite industry has taken a wary view of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ventures, which have been viewed as promising far more than they could actually deliver. Iridium and Globalstar both went bankrupt before surviving as relatively modest ventures. The Teledesic project of Bill Gates and mobile entrepreneur Craig McCaw folded in 2002 before it started service. They were complicated to implement in space, needing large numbers of satellites, and complicated in use, entailing tracking antennas on the ground and signal hand-off between satellites.