4 ms·

Putting aside communications with other survivors / between settlements, there's a very good reason to want to receive satellite communications: weather satelli

Putting aside communications with other survivors / between settlements, there's a very good reason to want to receive satellite communications: weather satellites. You probably won't have a weather radar at your post-apocalyptic settlement, but if you can receive NOAA imagery (or whatever suits e.g. Himawari-8 if you're in the APAC region like me) you can at least see if there's any nasty storms coming up and hopefully do some basic agricultural forecasting. I do agree that it's something you should worry about once your basic survival, shelter, and community needs are secure. However given you would need a reasonable technology base to manufacture mechanical computers, I think the "dependency management" would naturally sort itself out. This also assumes that the satellites haven't been shot down during whatever disaster caused the complete failure of electrical computing, and that you can actually build a mechanical computer that can receive the broadcast and usefully render the images.

Someone 5y ago
Do these satellites automatically correct for orbital decay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay) and collision avoidance or does that require commands from the ground? Reading https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impacts/satellite-drag https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impacts/satellite-drag, I get the impression that involves ground control (because of those complicated models that get updated all the time) So, how long will these satellites stay up there without ground control?
- waste_monk 5y ago
  My understanding is that (at least for Himawari-8) it is geostationary at a high enough altitude (apogee and perigee) that it should be good for at least a few decades - apparently you actively have to boost geostationary satellites out to a retirement orbit so they don't crowd up the prime real estate. That said, the imaging sensors have a limited lifetime (the satellite platform is designed to be good for ~15 years but the sensor package limits the mission lifetime to 8 years).

Someone 5y ago

Do these satellites automatically correct for orbital decay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay) and collision avoidance or does that require commands from the ground? Reading https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impacts/satellite-drag https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impacts/satellite-drag, I get the impression that involves ground control (because of those complicated models that get updated all the time) So, how long will these satellites stay up there without ground control?

waste_monk 5y ago
My understanding is that (at least for Himawari-8) it is geostationary at a high enough altitude (apogee and perigee) that it should be good for at least a few decades - apparently you actively have to boost geostationary satellites out to a retirement orbit so they don't crowd up the prime real estate. That said, the imaging sensors have a limited lifetime (the satellite platform is designed to be good for ~15 years but the sensor package limits the mission lifetime to 8 years).