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.

  • jarfil@beehaw.org
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    5 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.