• Question: What would it be without satellites?

    Asked by Anna to Leah-Nani, Kathryn, Ian, Andrew on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Kathryn Burrows

      Kathryn Burrows answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      We rely on satellites alot for communication, sending information around the world or phone calls. We use satellites to know where we are with GPS. And we use satellites to study the world, to monitor things like climate change. So we would be a lot worse off without satellites.

    • Photo: Ian Jones

      Ian Jones answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      The Space Race in the 1960s was responsible for huge developments in technology. The computers, Internet, mobile phones and all the technology we use today all had their origin in the development of silicon chips – the building blocks of computers.

      We also learned a lot about physics, materials science and many other fields of engineering.

      As the world’s population grows (take a look at the graph on this page: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ ) we need to be able to look down on earth to monitor vital things such as water and food production, climate change, security, transport and may other things. We used to be able to do that without satellites – but not any more! There are too many people to look after.

    • Photo: Leah-Nani Alconcel

      Leah-Nani Alconcel answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      It’s hard to imagine the world without satellites now, but it really has only been in the past few decades that we’ve come to rely on them so intrinsically. If our global satellite network were to fail catastrophically, we would lose our telephone communications, our GPS, television signals, and probably quite a lot of the internet’s functionality. It would be a real shock, and would take some months (at least) to fix.

    • Photo: Andrew Margetts-Kelly

      Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      It’s very easy to underestimate how much benefit we get from satellites. Without them:
      * You’d be reading maps all the time
      * There wouldn’t be enough food
      * Illegal deforestation would be a huge problem
      * When there is a disaster the aid wouldn’t be very well coordinated
      —
      The list goes on and on and on

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