Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
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.
Discussion (8)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
But are we going to change the lives of satellites?
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
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.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I always wanted to take a ride on one.
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
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.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
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.
You're seeing five of eight comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.