I ask about satellite tech because I've worked for several of those companies and they teach you how their satellites work while on training. Could these machines be closer than we are told? Maybe. But to spend money in teaching employees the routes of your satellites makes no sense if you have no satellites moving, I think. You could just tell them the machines are stationary and to say every malfunction is related to weather and they wouldn't know any different.

Could it be that the author who proposed satellites was already aware of their existence because of who he had been hanging out with?

I don't know if I came up with Intellectual Honesty, but I've been using it for a while hoping it catches on :)