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How would the end of satellite service impact your life? (beehaw.org)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Lately I have been thinking a bit about how commercial and governmental satellites impact my life, so that I'm mentally prepared for life if they end service. This isn't a doomer post, it's solar punk or whatever. Practical.

The first time I remember interacting with a commercial satellite was in the late 2000s when I got a device with GPS. I don't entirely know how satellites are involved in my current cellphone, but I know it does use them for GPS. Never had sat TV or sat Home Internet.

The internet would still exist, people would have less access though especially in remote places
Weather Service would be impacted, I think? But much of that is also done with radar.
I don't know anything about air traffic control! Does that have satellites?
Those ugly TV dishes would still be ugly, but maybe they could be ugly spider plant planters or something.
I don't care about how nations spy on each other, but it's funny to me that would be impacted.

What about your individual experience? What about the world experience am I missing?

*edit 1 Apparently it would mess up crop rotation in a lot of places and environmental monitoring would be broadly impacted.

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[–] randombullet 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Anything that uses GPS time (many devices use GPS as Stratum 0) would break. For example stock exchanges that use RF would become out of sync.

This includes traffic lights and various other quality of life improvements that rely on LTE and 5G connectivity. Also all mobile data would be depreciated.

Many wars that involved any precision munitions would stop.

Many air gapped facilities use GPS time as opposed to NTP which includes powerplants nuclear safe guards, and industrial systems will start to become depreciated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Many wars that involved any precision munitions would stop

Unlikely. They'd just use lower precision munitions, with more "collateral damage". ICBMs with multiple warheads, are an example of such munitions.