Re: The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives [Telecom]

Feb 21, 2009 1 Replies

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Sam Spade 17 years ago

And so many of these things rely on a fully functional GPS system,

> how long until those who want to bring down Western civilization
> figure out a way to cripple this system by knocking out a satellite?

Not an easy task. There are spares on orbit right now. There [are] several spares awaiting launch.

Someone would have to destroy several widely separated satellites before they would knock out the system. With our technology we would figure out quite quickly where the destruction was coming from. That would be a major act of war.

Here is a link to info about the GPS constellation:

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David Clayton 17 years ago

A few missiles that can reach the orbit altitude and blow up leaving suitably sized debris that would eventually collide with those satellites would probably do the job (although with the amount of garbage now in orbit it may happen anyway......is there any environment that humans can reach that they don't pollute in one form or another?) And even if you found out where the missiles came from, would those who sent them really care?

Put enough debris into orbit - with malicious intent or otherwise - and sooner or later the whole resource will be severely degraded if not made unusable, and that would have a major impact on the modern way of life (and warfare).

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