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Sure, anything is less catastrophic than an extinction event. Where's your threshold? Tsunami in Indonesia? Tsunami in Fukushima? Hurricane Katrina? Do those co
by nautilius 5y ago
Sure, anything is less catastrophic than an extinction event. Where's your threshold? Tsunami in Indonesia? Tsunami in Fukushima? Hurricane Katrina? Do those count as catastrophes?
The problem isn't that we're no longer able to launch new rockets - it's that anything in space comes to a standstill when it gets destroyed. How about GPS is suddenly no longer usable, with planes in flight and ships somewhere on the ocean? Weather satellites allow no more observation, with no more forewarning for hurricanes, and no reliable planning of routes by either plane or ship. What will be the impact of both on modern agriculture? No more satellite based communication, etc.
- mschuster91 5y agoWe will find fallbacks. Humanity as a species is surprisingly resilient. > How about GPS is suddenly no longer usable, with planes in flight and ships somewhere on the ocean? Anything over land can be replaced by antennas sending out a signal from a known location, and receivers can triangulate their position from that. In-flight planes can use landmark plus compass based navigation, as well as (already existing) ground based navigation beacons, and pilots are trained on how to deal with all instruments gone dark scenarios. Ships can sail along land and use sextant navigation on the open seas (actually, the US Navy re-introduced training sailors in sextant use in 2016, to account for a no-electronics scenario!). > Weather satellites allow no more observation, with no more forewarning for hurricanes, and no reliable planning of routes by either plane or ship. The worst loss will be for everything over the open sea, but land based weather documentation will still be possible. > What will be the impact of both on modern agriculture? Not too much, technically we can gather everything agriculture needs from the ground, it's just way more effective and cheaper to observe from space. > No more satellite based communication, etc. That would not be a big loss, there exist (long forgotten outside of amateur radio) technologies to deal with that.
- macintux 5y agoYou’re correct that all of these are addressable in isolation, given time, with some loss of utility. However, if we experience a catastrophic problem in space, we’ll have to deal with all of them simultaneously, with extreme time pressures.
- mschuster91 5y agoThe scenarios where losing GPS would cause immediate issues (naval and air transport) have built in that possibility in their training for ages.
- nautilius 5y agoI don’t know what straw man you’re destroying here, no one claims humans will go extinct without spaceflight. But without any doubt the loss of all space flight will have a major impact on how humanity organizes trade, communications, travel, agriculture, intelligence, war/peace, science. And sure, ‘solutions’ will be found. Here’s another one for your list that will diminish the impact of the loss of weather satellites: just strap someone to a weather balloon and have them draw what they see, and drop those drawings until the person runs out of oxygen. Is it as powerful/convenient as what we have today? Hardly.
- thih9 5y ago> Where's your threshold? I meant world scale extinction event like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinct... . A layer of sediment literally everywhere, etc.
- nautilius 5y agoWell then I guess in your view no human has ever experienced a catastrophe. One may think many people will disagree (me for example). How do you call, say, a disease that kills half of all humans? An inconvenience?