Re: De-Lurk Plus Why Bother with DTT?

Cardman wrote:
> No large solar eruption has ever taken out a large group of
> satellites. A few have been lost, but that is more due to a design
> issue than anything.
>
> Satellites are reasonably safe as they do not have the grounding
> problem, but solar storms can still cause short circuits. In this case
> though the motherboard is radiation hardened, has back-up processing,
> and where the whole core electronics are well shielded.
>
> They also tend to tilt their satellites into solar and meteor storms
> to minimise the impact risk. History has highlighted that these
> satellites are going nowhere quickly.

The history of communication satellites is however extremely brief. It
would be unfortunate if it coincided with an unusually benign period of
solar activity!

The "perfect solar storm" of 1859 was powerful enough to disrupt the
cutting edge communications technology of the day - the electric
telegraph. Power surges in telegraph wires caused widespread fires in
both Europe and the United States.

I wonder what effect an event of this magnitude (or worse) would have on
today's communications infrastructure?


.

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