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Satellites: When Innovation Is Invisible
Did you check a weather app today? Use a credit card? Turn on your GPS? If so, you’re living in a world made possible by a technology we too often take for granted: satellites.
Satellites have come a long way since 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, the first such device in history. Back then, satellites were a (slightly unnerving) novelty. Today, they’re the backbone of much of everyday life.
They allow us to map greenhouse gas emissions. They help us farm more efficiently. They’re an essential tool for protecting wildlife. They even played a key role in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
And in the future? They’re only going to become more central to our lives. While humans have launched 16,000 satellites into orbit in the decades since Sputnik, nearly 5,000 of them went up in 2022 alone. One of the reasons: over the last few decades, the cost of launching them has fallen by about 98%.
This new era is not without complications, however. There are 3,000 inactive satellites in orbit right now, along with 8,000 metric tons of debris — all of which could be a recipe for a potentially catastrophic collision in space. There’s also the question of what the effects on the environment will be when all those satellites someday disintegrate in the atmosphere.
But despite all those complications, it’s a near-certainty that satellites are going to continue changing our lives for decades to come.
Published in General
But are we going to change the lives of satellites?
I recently appeared with Pete Wilhelm. He worked at the Naval Research Lab from 1959-2014. His projects included GRAB the first ELINT satellite and the four Timation satellites which led to GPS. He met Wernher von Braun and Elon Musk.
I always wanted to take a ride on one.
Been working on those satellites for NASA (EOS (climate), JPSS, GOES (weather)) since the 1980.
My smarmy children would insert a “Your Welcome” here, however I know it was a privilege to develop those space borne instruments that provide such useful data to society.
I’d call it a life time of win-win.
As a child, I can recall stupid conversations about the Russians launching more satellites with trap doors that would drop bombs or other bad stuff on us. But the idea that they had a big edge in the space race was scary.
My adult children watched us unfold large paper maps in the car but they did not need them once they were old enough to drive. They and their kids will never have a stack of folded maps in the glove compartment.
My wife acquired cab-driver-level knowledge of our home county streets. From years of taking kids to birthday parties, pickups for after-school practices, visits to friends, etc she had clever routes through curving streets in many other neighborhoods. But she was incapable of giving directions in terms of distance, NSEW, or even some street names. The big yellow house on the corner, the playground, or some series of physical landmarks was the route description.
I read somewhere that migrating geese in a V formation usually have some old female in the lead because she remembers the way. I get that.
However, she is now addicted to the Waze app. She refuses to accept that the shortcut is unlikely to be much faster because she is not the only one using it. Sadly, her old knowledge seems outmoded even for her.
Reminds me of the movie Gravity . . .
I have own cars with navigation since 2010 and refuse to buy one that doesn’t have it. Yes, I have Apple CarPlay and use it a lot. For short hops I just like touching a button on the car screen and instantly getting a map. If I know in advance that I will need a map, I plug in my iPhone and use its maps. Despite all that, I still carry paper maps and pick up new ones every few years at the welcome stations. There is something convenient about opening one to see the big picture, not just the little screen. [Of course, the last comment refers to when Bob drives and I am navigating.] Also, I can mark on the paper maps where all the Dairy Queen exits are.
Re satellites, before built-in car navigation, I carried my laptop with Street Atlas installed. When it upgraded to include live GPS inputs, I bought the little GPSreceiver that was half the size of a mouse. I will never forget the first time I used it. I popped the receiver onto the dash and then saw my location, but that wasn’t what blew me away. It had a display that showed the satellites I was receiving and each had a numbered ID. Usually I had 3-5 showing, and as one would go away, another would appear. I remember Sputnik. It blew me away seeing that I personally was receiving information from so many satellites.
Today, that detailed display isn’t available, just the results of the capability to receive that data on our cars and phones. We take it for granted now, without the awe. It is invisible to us how we get the data (rooftop antenna or cellular source) but the image of that Street Atlas display is burnt into my memory.
Elon says that Starlink comprises the majority of active satellites.