Sabotaged Satellite Scenerio

[h.g.Whiz]

What would happen if we lost the use of all our satellites for a significant amount of time .

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The World would end.

Or we would have to go back to depending on the postal service and reading books.

No. The World would End. :(

[MG1962]

The value of the Olympics Televison rights would plummet

[BenBurch]

The Sun may do that for us when it finally wakes up from its nap.

We are learning that the Solar Flares we have seen since the dawn of the Space Age are dwarfed by some that happened in the 1800s.

[dasmiller]

The Sun may do that for us when it finally wakes up from its nap.

We are learning that the Solar Flares we have seen since the dawn of the Space Age are dwarfed by some that happened in the 1800s.

Flares could take down most of the civilian sats. Some of the government satellites, such as GPS, are very, very resistant to radiation.

To address part of the OP's question, though, I don't think the internet would go down. Only a tiny fraction of IP packets actually go over satellite links. IIRC, the internet backbone relies on GPS for time synchronization among some nodes, but without that synch, it would simply slow down some. The internet is an extremely robust thing - its performance would be suffer, but it would keep working.

Beyond that - the various types of comm have gotten so intertwined that it's difficult to say what would stay up and what would go down, or what backups might be available.

Weather prediction would certainly suffer.

[JoeyDonuts]

The major television networks aren't built with any sort of fiber-network backup if their distribution satellites go down, but there are extensive third-party fiber distribution networks in place that could probably be finagled into doing the job. But at least for the first day or so, there wouldn't be any national TV coverage. Everything would be handled at the local level.

I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario that could destroy ALL of our satellites. Even if it was say, a massive burst of radiation from the sun, I'm not sure how that would affect the satellites on the night side of the earth. I guess it would depend on the frequency of the radiation, its power, and to what effect the satellites are electronically "dark" to events happening on the other side of the earth.

[Soapy Sam]

Does this include the Moon?
Difficult thing to lose...

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Does this include the Moon?
Difficult thing to lose...

So you never watched Space 1999 did you? :scared: