Evaluate the role of satellite technology in our society?
959173
Satellite technology has provided society with the following advantages:\n\n* World wide communication (TV, radio, amatuer radio, Internet, for example) enabling societies to better know one another.\n\n* Weather forecasting (for example, the NOAA weather satellites covering the USA), which saves many lives each year by warning people of major storms.\n\n* Spy satellites enable countries to know what their potential or real enemies are doing militarily. This could avert some war as in the Cuban missle crisis.\n\n* NASA satellites like the manned International Space Station enable various countries to work together on peaceful space projects, provide beautiful photos of earth, conduct science experiments without the influence of gravity, and discover the effects of weighlessness on humans in space (for missions to the moon and other planets).\n\n* NASA satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope, Swift, Chandra and SOHO missions  have enabled astronomers to discover new information about our solar system, the Milky Way, and other cosmological entities.\n\n* many others...\n\nHope this helps!
909285
You would have to be able to find an Internet Service Provider that supports satellite.
360987
Are you surprised that there are mobile phones with satellite navigation?\nI  hate to answer a question with another question, but you let me no choice
550313
Communications satellites allow telephone and data conversations to be relayed through the satellite. Typical communications satellites include Telstar and Intelsat. The most important feature of a communications satellite is the transponder -- a radio that receives a conversation at one frequency and then amplifies it and retransmits it back to Earth on another frequency. A satellite normally contains hundreds or thousands of transponders. Communications satellites are usually geosynchronous.
3702
Old satellites contribute a lot to the pollution around our planet. A snippet from the article below,\n\nAlthough penetration of space by people and their machines is but a few decades old, already the space above the Earth has become contaminated. There are now 110,000 man-made objects larger than a half-inch orbiting in the space above the Earth, and the situation has gotten so serious that NASA 'now replaces pitted orbiter windows after most flights' of space shuttles, notes a 1987 US National Research Council report that warns of potentially catastrophic collisions with space debris. The amount of 'space junk' has doubled since 1990 and now poses 'a navigational hazard,' says Norwegian space specialist Erik Tandberg. The US and Norway are planning a giant radar station to be called Globus II in Norway's Arctic specifically to better monitor orbiting debris.\n\n'A total of over 3,000 tons of space debris surrounds the Earth today,' says Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a noted biologist and president of the Centre for Russian Environmental Policy. The 'rapid accumulation of debris' could 'complicate the further development of astronautics since there would be a direct threat of collision with debris fragments which travel at very high altitudes,' says Dr. Yablokov.\n\nAmong the junk now overhead are 37 nuclear-powered satellites put in space by the US and former Soviet Union. The operation of the satellites is over but the radioactive fuel in them is still hot and lethal and they'll be falling back to Earth in the centuries ahead.
443551
Satalites have helped make the society we have today possible:  \n1. We broadcast live around the world. \n2. We spy with satalites and I would hate to see space war technology develope elsewhere but not in USA.  \n3. We can study the earth in space in ways we can't on the ground, (a birds eye view so to speak.)\n4. Things with which others can explain.\n\nNASA and Space exploration may be able to detect an asteroid or comet that may strike the earth.  Something most certainly did in Siberia in 1908.  I would not go by any event that happened 65 million years age, but 1908 isn't so long age.  We were so lucky then.  If something like that happens over New York, 10 million people will be killed.  If it happens over the ocean, the title wave will probably compare to the one in 2004.\n\nColonizing space, the moon and/or Mars may prove to be invaluable in the future.  It is proving difficult to clean up this Earth after we messed it up so bad.  We could start over.  (if you care about future generations.)\n\nWe are a species that need to test it's limits.  That is why Stonehedge and the pyramids were built.  We need self esteem as a species.  We will concider our selves disapointments if we don't do that which we are capbable.
803972
1. As an engineer, I've worked intimately with high-technoloogy. The interesting thing is that many people are unaware of some of the ways technology influences their lives. From the sensors that control the airbags in their cars, to traffic indicators with burried sensors, to cell phones, and even the way mail gets sorted. It's ubiquitous.\n\n2. Technology helps in research, in travel and even entertainment.\n\n3. Technology, when it malfunctions can be extremely frustrating. About the only thing it doesn't help with is in enjoying the out-doors, as long as you don't count the technology in your footwear, and you don't use a GPS.... etc.\n\n4. I know many people who've gotten together on MySpace and other sites. I, too have made friends. Certainly it's helping people to get together in some ways. On the other hand, if you spend all your time on the computer, you tend to lose the real-life relationships that are very important.\n\n5. False dichotomy. People want to see things as good or bad; right or wrong; innocent or guilty; straight or gay; whatever. Technology can't be pinned down to such a thing. I think that technology is purely neutral. It's how it is used that is good or bad. Just like a gun, an inanimate object. It could be used to gather food, for protection from wild animals, or even as a hammer. It could also used to commit a crime. The object, or technology has no inherent good-ness or bad-ness.\n\n6. Technology is becoming more ubiquitous and more embedded in our lives. It will continue on to the point where we view it as an extension of ourselves, like clothing. We hopefully will use it more and more, but not become so dependent on it that we are unable to function without it.\n\n7. That's an impossible question as every tool we have is technology. From the early spears to kill game, to heated rocks to keep oneself warm in the cold. People tend to think of computers and cell phones and automobiles as technology, forgetting that they are simply logical extensions of the technology of our forebears. To attempt to exist completely without technology leaves one naked in the woods.\n\nWithout computers or telephones or automobiles, some of us would still be quite happy, knowing how to survive without these things. Hopefully I could retain some of my books (technically, they are technology), and I could be quite comfortable (assuming that the technology deficit happened during the spring or summer and I was able to prepare for the harsher seasons).
820906
there are many satellites mapping the earth and not all of them are owned by the US gov. regardless of what paranoid europeans want to believe. The french own the SPOT sattelites and quickbird and orbview are privately owned. Different sattelittes monitor and are used to map different features such as land use and land cover, ocean temperatures, weather, geological data, ecological data and a host of other things
352813
I dont think so.\n\nYa you have to take the internet technology into consideration and not internet persay.\n\nHow could we book our air tickets, how could we communicate with friends half way round the globe, how could we even dream of video phony?\n\nI dont think the present life can sustain without internet technology.
256533
I found a great article that should help you think through your proposal - it is "Measuring the Value of a Satellite Office" http://www.oandp.com/edge/issues/articles/2002-05_07.asp
746511
Dear Sir:\n\nWhile there have been some actual transmissions from Earth to the Solar System seeking echos, and some of this might still be going on in a coordinated fashion, as I understand it, the primary mission of the existing radio telescopes is to "Listen" to upper wavelength radio emissions from gas clouds, and other phenomina in the universe. Of course, once some interesting\nradio emissions are detected, a full spectrum scan of the target is most likely conducted to determine the full extent of radio\nsignals from that source.\n\nOther radio transmissions are made from Earth to our traveling Space Probes and Robotic Explorers at various locations in the Universe. A continual litany of telemetry, television and voice signals also flows between the Space Station and Ground Control Center to keep a constant watch on the health, status, and activities of the space crew, mission, and the station itself.\n\nI will defer to someone from one of those positions for an\nanswer as to the power and frequency of transmissions from Earth to the Space Station, Earth to the Robot Explorers, and Earth to the existing Space Probes way out in deep space.\nMy guess is that these various transmissions take place on frequencies between 2,500 Mhz and 40,000 Mhz. That is a \nvery large radio spectrum. \n\nSince my response turns around your question, in that I am telling you that the biggest radio telescopes listen rather than\ntransmit, let me also tell you that the biggest radio telescopes are not simply single structures at a given location. In recent years a scheme for the linkage of two or more radio telescopes was developed. Therefor, the biggest radio telescope would be an electronic combination of the signals from most of the largest installations on Earth. A lot of work has been done in that vein in recent years. Using more than one receiving antenna provides an easy means for researchers to filter out local ground (earthbound) noise generators and radio disturbances. Signals heard at the same time by widely separated receiving antennas (and equipment) are most probably from the sighted target source (assuming both antennas are aimed at the same target). It is also interesting to know that the radio signals that are received require a vast amount of processing to be identified and detected. The processing of the radio telescope incoming signals takes a huge array of computers and some very complex software programs to yield useable data.\n\nYes, radio waves do go on forever. However, their strength at the point of interception decreases by the square of the distance from the source. So, the strength of radio waves become very, very weak as you move into distances like 100,000,000 miles.\nThe wave front would continue out like rings of water in a pond until they hit something and bounced back off of it. In that sense,\na portion of the radio wave would not go on forever, but would become a new wave moving in the oposite direction from the new source (which was the object that the wave struck). The\nrest of the wave front would continue on until it struck something, and we repeated the above scenario. The exact same thing happens to signals transmitted from a sonar transducer in the water. Those devices are used to detect the depth of the bottom of rivers/oceans (depth finder), fish in the water (fish finder), or even other vessels (sub hunting). Sonar, uses sound waves and not radio waves, but the principle is almost the same.  Sound waves radiate out. Nearby echos are strong enough to be detected with existing equipment and are plotted and displayed on information screens. Some echos are so weak coming back that the existing equipment cannot detect/plot/or display  them.\n\nRegards,\nZah
461905
I really hope so there was a lot of things that came from the space program that people have forgotten. They were off shoots of the effort to make it to the moon. Computers, cell phones, medical equipment, very some thing that we use in our kitchen have roots in the space program some were failures that could not be use in the space program but found uses here on earth. We need to continue to have science for the sake of discovery. I think that it was in the 17 century that the government of either England are the US funded a project that had not use at the time. The research lead to the discovery of the electron. With out which you would not be reading this message. With space it will be either we do it our other will. The money that will come from space mission in the next 100 year will be greater than the US debt today.
650465
Technological advances.\n\nMany of the miniaturized components that we take for granted when we listen to our IPods or film someone with our less than one pound video camera are a direct result of the space program as they need to make components as small and light as possible in order to get the items into orbit.\n\nSome of the compression algorithms that we all use to send large files through the Internet are a result of NASA having to create them to receive data from the damaged Galileo mission to Jupiter.\n\nAre you aware of global warming and the hole in the ozone layer? NASA...\n\nDo you like the fact that weather reports show satellite images of storms headed for you that are currently hundreds of miles away in the middle of the ocean?  NASA...\n\nAre you impressed by cochlear implants that allow deaf people to hear for the first time?  NASA...\n\nEver thrown a Nerf Glider?  NASA...\n\nAs you can see, NASA has done a TON of positive things for Americans.  This just scratches the surface.
264343
How can we ever know that until we discover it?=D\n\nNo. Technically, with satellite technology, all land has been "discovered" since it has all been photographed. However, there are certainly many areas of the world that remain unexplored by the "civilized" world. And perhaps that's all for the best...
575495
Both.\nThe World as a Village \n  \nBefore we ask "what is technology doing to us," we must first ask "who has \naccess to technology at all?" \n\nIf we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of 100 people, with \nall existing ratios remaining the same, it would look like this: there would \nbe 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and \nSouth), and 8 Africans. \n\n   * 70 would be unable to read. \n   * 50 would suffer from malnutrition \n   * One would be near death; one near birth. \n   * Only one would have a college education \n   * No one would own a computer. \n   * 51 would be female, 49 would be male. \n   * 70 would be non-white; 30 white. \n   * 70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian. \n   * One half of the world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people, \n     and all 6 would be citizens of the United States. \n   * 80 would live in substandard housing. \n\nIf the digital revolution really is having an impact on the psychological \nmakeup of the people that it affects, then we must remember that it only \naffects an infinite small fraction of the world's human beings.
9430
There may be satellite photos available.
937133
There are no public system that allows for viewing live satelite images.\n\nSorry