Oh dear, back to the Periodic Table. Motorola Inc has decided to cut costs on its Iridium global satellite telephone network by going with more powerful satellites and reducing the number it needs to 66 from the 77 that it originally planned – and which gave the project its name, 77 being the Atomic Number of Iridum. The cost-cutting will only keep the project – which is planned to fly in 1998 – on its original budget of $3,370m. The switch to 66 means that the project should now be renamed Dysprosium, which our resident chemists tell us is one of the Lanthanides, an unstable metal for which no-one has found a use.
