Not that Mr. McCaw would announce a grand plan unless forced by some business need. Teledesic came to light when the company had to file a petition for radio spectrum with the Federal Communications Commission. Those in his inner circle say he is open with them, but often difficult to read. Russell Daggett, vice chairman of Teledesic, says associates have to ''connect the dots'' of McCaw commentary to come up with executable plans, and Dennis Weibling, president of Eagle River and a close financial adviser since 1982, says that Mr. McCaw's good ideas come interspersed with ''things that will make you bankrupt.''

These days, Mr. McCaw is so wealthy that he has a greater margin of error than early in his career. After remarrying in 1998 following a bitter divorce in 1997, then becoming a father for the first time, he also has less of his life wrapped up in making his business bets pay off. Where he once kept his aircraft, yachts and other toys deployed to make business and vacations as convenient as possible, he now juggles them to support family life, although not always with the same success.

''No amount of infrastructure can keep you on schedule with kids,'' he recently told a bemused Mr. Ratliffe.

BUT Mr. McCaw remains fascinated by the satellite opportunity and is unlikely to retreat drastically anytime soon. His interest began in 1986, when he explored putting satellites in orbit above the Indian and western Pacific oceans to serve Asia.

It was rekindled in 1990 when Ed Tuck, a pioneer in using satellites to pinpoint the location of boaters, hikers and others with handheld transmitters, suggested using satellites in low-earth orbits for a global phone system that would not suffer the disruptive delays that plagued calls using geo-stationary satellites in high orbits.

In Mr. McCaw's hands, the vision expanded to encompass a variety of computer applications that could benefit from eliminating that signal lag, known as latency. The devil was in the details: No one could see how Teledesic could afford, much less control, the 840 satellites in the original plan, which would be constantly shifting their positions in relation to the earth's surface. Beyond that, no one had ever secured permission from regulators around the world to use the broad swath of high-frequency radio spectrum Teledesic wanted for such communications.

Mr. McCaw handed the challenge to Mr. Daggett, a lawyer by training, and has yet to look back. Today, Teledesic has its regulatory approvals. It also has big name investors like Boeing ($100 million), Motorola ($750 million, including assets from Celestri, a planned network that was folded into Teledesic), and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia ($200 million).