Satellite (pronounced sat-l-ahyt)
(1) In astronomy, celestial body orbiting around
a planet or star; a moon.
(2) In geopolitics, as “satellite state”, a country
under the domination or influence of another.
(3) Something (a county, sub-national state,
office, building campus etc), under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination
of another entity; Subordinate to another authority, outside power, or the like
(also known as a “satellite operation”, “satellite campus”, “satellite workshop”
etc).
(4) An attendant or follower of another person,
often subservient or obsequious in manner; a follower, supporter, companion,
associate; lackey, parasite, sycophant, toady, flunky; now used usually in the
derogatory sense of “a henchman” although, applied neutrally, it can be used of
someone’s retinue or entourage (and even the machinery of a motorcade).
(5) A man-made device orbiting a celestial body (the
earth, a moon, or another planet etc) and transmitting scientific information
or used for communication; among astronomers and others form whom the
distinction matters, man-made devices are sometimes referred to as “artificial
satellites” to distinguish them for natural satellites such as the Earth’s
Moon. The standard abbreviation is “sat”
and the situation in which a satellite is hit by some object while in orbit
(which at the velocities involved can be unfortunate) is called a “sat-hit”.
(6) As “derelict satellite”, a man-made device (including
the spent upper-stages of rockets) in orbit around a celestial body which has ceased
to function.
(7) In medicine, a short segment of a chromosome
separated from the rest by a constriction, typically associated with the
formation of a nucleolus.
(8) In biology, a colony of microorganisms whose
growth in culture medium is enhanced by certain substances produced by another
colony in its proximity.
(9) In formal grammar, a construct that takes
various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the
grammatical aspect (highly technical descriptor no longer used in most texts).
(10) In television, as satellite TV, the
transmission and reception of television broadcasts (and used also in narrowcasting)
using satellites in low-earth orbit.
(11) In the military terminology of Antiquity, a
guard or watchman.
(12) In entomology, as satellite moth, the
Eupsilia transversa, a moth of the family Noctuidae.
1540-1550: From the fourteenth century Middle
French satellite, from the Medieval Latin
satellitem (accusative singular of satelles) (attendant upon a
distinguished person or office-holder, companion, body-guard. courtier,
accomplice, assistant), from the Latin satelles,
from the Old Latin satro (enough, full)
+ leyt (to let go) and listed usually
as akin to the English “follow” although the association is undocumented. Although the Latin origin is generally
accepted, etymologists have pondered a relationship with the Etruscan, either satnal (klein) (again linked to the English
“follow”) or a compound of roots: satro-
(full; enough) + leit- (to go) (the English
“follow” constructed of similar roots). Satellite
is a noun, verb & adjective and satellitic & satellitious are adjectives;
the noun plural is satellites. Satellitious
(pertaining to, or consisting of, satellites) is listed by most dictionaries as
archaic but is probably the best form to use in a derogatory sense, best
expressed in the comparative (more satellitious) or the superlative (most
satellitious).
Lindsay Lohan promoting the Sick Note series, TV & Satellite Week magazine, 21-27 July 2018.
The adjectival use is applied as required and
this has produced many related terms including satellite assembly (use of committees
or deliberative bodies created by a superior authority), satellite broadcasting
(in this context distinguished from transmissions using physical (point-to-point)
cables or ground-based relays), satellite campus, satellite DNA (in genetics,
an array in tandem of repeating,
non-coding DNA), satellite-framing (in linguistics, the use of a grammatical satellite
to indicate a path of motion, a change of state or grammatical aspect (as
opposed to a verb framing)), satellite navigation (the use of electronic positioning
systems which use data from satellites (often now as “SatNav”)) and satellite
station (either (1) as ground-base facility used for monitoring or
administrating satellites or (2) a manned facility in orbit such as the ISS
(International Space Station)), satellite telephone (telephony using satellites
as a transmission vector)
Sputnik 1 blueprint, 1957.
The original sense in the 1540s was "a follower
or attendant of a superior person" but this use was rare before the late eighteenth
century and it seemed to have taken until the 1910s before it was applied in a derogatory
manner to suggest "an accomplice or accessory in crime or other nefarious
activity” although the Roman statesman Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43
BC) often used the Latin form in this way.
In the seventeenth century, as telescopes became available, the idea was
extended to what was then thought to be "a planet revolving about a larger one"
on the notion of "an attendant", initially a reference to the moons
of Jupiter. In political theory, the “satellite state” was first described in 1800, coined by John Adams (1735-1826; US
president 1797-1801) in a discussion about the United States and its relationships
with the other nations of the Americas although in geopolitics the term is most
identified with the “buffer states”, the members of the Warsaw Pact which were
within Moscow’s sphere of influence. The
familiar modern meaning of a "man-made machine orbiting the Earth" actually
dates (as scientific conjecture) from 1936, something realized (to the surprise
of most) in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik 1. Sputnik was from the Russian спу́тник (sputnik) (satellite (literally "travelling companion” and in
this context a shortened form of sputnik
zemlyi (travelling companion of the Earth), from the Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, the construct being the Russian
so- (as “s-“ (with, together)) + пу́тник (pútnik) (traveller), from путь
(put) (way, path, journey) (from the Old Church Slavonic poti, from the primitive Indo-European pent- (to tread, go)) + ник
(-nik) (the agent suffix).
Sputnik, 1957
Russian Sputnik postcard, 1957.
The launch of Sputnik shocked the American public
which, in a milieu of jet aircraft, televisions and macropterous Cadillacs, had
assumed their country was in all ways technologically superior to their Cold
War enemy. Launched into an elliptical
low-Earth orbit, Sputnik was about twice the size of a football (soccer ball)
and it orbited for some three more months before falling towards earth, the
on-board batteries lasting long enough for it to broadcast radio pulses for the
first three weeks, transmissions detectable almost anywhere on earth. It sounds now a modest achievement but it
needs to be regarded as something as significant as the Wright Flyer in 1903
travelling 200 feet (61 m), at an altitude of some 10 feet (3 m) and in the
West the social and political impact was electrifying. There were also linguistic ripples because,
just as a generation later the Watergate scandal would trigger the –gate formations
(which continue to this day), it wasn’t long before the –nik prefix (which had
actually been a part of Yiddish word creation for at least a decade) gained
popularity. Laika, the doomed stray dog
launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957 was dubbed muttnik (although the claims it was the first living thing in space
have since been disproved because "living" entities were both on board the Nazi
V2 rockets (1944-1945) which often briefly entered the stratosphere and have
long been present in the upper atmosphere where they’re ejected into space by
natural atmospheric processes) while the early US satellites (quickly launched
to display the nation’s scientific prowess) failed which gave the press the
chance to coin kaputnik, blowupnik, dudnik,
flopnik, pffftnik & stayputnik.
Sputnik 1's launch vehicle (left), the satellite as it orbited the earth (centre) and in expanded form (right.
Although not a great surprise to either the White
House or the Pentagon, the American public was shocked and both the popular and
quality press depicted Sputnik’s success as evidence of Soviet technological
superiority, stressing the military implications. This trigged the space race and soon created
the idea of the “missile gap” which would be of such significance in the 1960
presidential election and, although by the early 1960s the Pentagon knew the
gap was illusory, the arms race continued and the count of missiles and warheads actually peaked in the early 1970s. It
also began a new era of military, technological, and scientific developments,
leading most obviously to the moon landing in 1969 but research groups
developed weapons such as the big inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defence systems as well as spy
satellites. Satellites were
another step in the process of technology being deployed to improve
communications. When President Lincoln
was assassinated in 1865, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest ship
crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.
By the time of President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, the news
travelled around the world by undersea cables within minutes. In 1963, while news of President Kennedy’s
death was close to a global real-time event, those thousands of miles from the
event had to wait sometimes twenty-four hours to view footage which was sent in
film canisters by air. By 1981, when an
attempt was made on President Reagan’s life, television feeds around the planet
were within minutes picking up live footage from satellites.
1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible.
Chrysler's Plymouth division introduced the
Satellite on the corporation's intermediate ("B") platform in 1965 as
the most expensive trim-option for the Belvedere line. Offered initially only with two-door hardtop
and convertible coach-work, the range of body-styles was later expanded to
encompass four-door sedans and station wagons.
In a manner, typical of the way the industry applied their nomenclature
as marketing devices to entice buyers, the Belvedere name was in 1970 retired
while Satellite remained the standard designation until it too was dropped
after 1974.
1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 440 6 Barrel.
Were it not for it being made available in 1966 with
the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8, the Belvedere and Satellite would
have been just another intermediate but with that option, it was transformed
into a (slightly) detuned race-car which one could register for the road,
something possible in those happier times.
The Street Hemi was an expensive option and relatively few were built
but the demand for high-performance machinery was clear so in 1968, Plymouth
released the Road Runner, complete with logos (licensed from the Warner
Brothers film studio for US$50,000) and a “beep beep” horn which reputedly cost
US$10,000 to develop. The object was to
deliver a high-performance machine at the lowest possible cost so the Road
Runner used the basic (two-door, pillared) body shell and eschewed niceties
like carpet or bucket seats, the only addition of note a tuned version of the
383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 engine; for those who wanted more, the Street Hemi
was optional. Plymouth set what they thought
were ambitious sales targets but demand was such that production had to be
doubled and the reaction encouraged the usual proliferation, a hardtop coupé
and convertible soon rounding out the range.
1970 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Superbird.
The option list later expanded to include the
six-barrel version of the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8, a much cheaper choice
than the Street Hemi and one which (usually) displayed better manners on the
street while offering similar performance until travelling well over
100 mph (160 km/h) although it could match the Hemi’s sustained delivery of top-end
power which, with the right gearing, would deliver a top speed in excess of 150
mph (240 km/h), something of little significance to most. However, by the early 1970s sales were
falling. The still embryonic safety and
emission legislation played a small part in this but overwhelmingly the cause was the extraordinary rise in insurance premiums being charged for the
highset-performance vehicles, something which disproportionately affected the
very buyers at which the machines were targeted: single males aged 19-29. However, the platform endured long enough to
provide the basis for the Road Runner Superbird, a “homologation special”
produced in limited numbers to qualify the frankly extreme aerodynamic modifications
for use in competition. At the time, the
additions were too radical for some buyers and dealers unable to find buyers
were forced to convert the things back to standard specifications to shift them from
their lots but they’re now prized collectables, the relatively few with the
Street Hemi especially sought.
1971 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner.
The intermediate line was revised in 1971 using
the then current corporate motif of “fuselage styling” and it was probably more
aesthetically pleasing there than when applied to the full-sized cars which truly were gargantuan. The 1971 Satellites
used distinctly different bodies for the two and four-door models and while there
were no more convertibles, the Street Hemi and six-barrel 440 enjoyed a
swansong season although sales were low, the muscle car era almost at an
end.
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