[Zeg]

What use if any could satellites be in TWD?  seeing as there are not any ZOMBIES IN SPACE to damage them.

[Barry Cade]

Zeg, on 17 May 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

What use if any could satellites be in TWD?  seeing as there are not any ZOMBIES IN SPACE to damage them.

If we can have NINJA ZOMBIES and NAZIS IN SPACE, I don't see that there's a massive paradigm shift to have ZOMBIES IN SPACE as well. Or pirates.

[backwoodsroamer]

Zeg, on 17 May 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

What use if any could satellites be in TWD?  seeing as there are not any ZOMBIES IN SPACE to damage them.

Satellite phones, Global Positioning Systems. The satellites need their flight path adjusted from ground control, so eventually the GPS becomes inacurate. Without control their orbit will decay and they will burn up on reentry. If any country goes rogue and starts tossing denial of service nukes out of the atmosphere the satellites are history.  

[Goat]

You guys remember in Superman II where they're choking each other in space?  I mean, how stupid is that?  #hijacked

(also, what BWR said. I think perhaps satellite phones would be the biggest advantage, though that too will fall prey to a dead power grid sooner or later from the perspective of groundside equipment. #unhijacked)

[Melquiades Estrada]

WoW  !


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Shane-Walsh]

They would stay in space for a number of years without human interaction, sooner or later fall back to earth in the form of a massive fireball.

[Sapper]

So, there are two main types of satellite orbits

1.  Satellites in geosynchronous orbit - these satellites remain in orbit over a specific geographic area of the earth.  They are kept inside a "box" in the sky by a ground control team who calculates where they are in relation to where they are supposed to be and after calculating any adjustments that need to be made the ground control team fires on board rocket boosters to position it back into place.  I don't know how often these rockets need to be fired.  These satellites are generally used for communications.  These would be your sat phones, GPS, satellite radio, and satellite television catalysts.

2.  Satellites in polar orbit - these satellites orbit the earth around the poles, or more precisely around the poles at a 90 degree declination, so at some point in the day it will be almost directly over the south pole and at some point during the day it will be almost directly over the north pole.  It takes on average about an hour and a half to make a rotation around the earth.  As it travels from pole to pole it has coverage of a very large part of the earth's surface.  These satellites are generally used for mapping and satellite imagery and for collecting data about global temperatures and ozone levels.  They are not generally used for communication because they move too quickly.

So that being said, like others mentioned, you wouldn't be able to use GPS or sat phones for long.  At some point those satellites would fall out of orbit, or more accurately drift away, and while they still might technically work, their accuracy for GPS applications would begin to get very poor.  However, they would probably still work for phones.  You wouldn't be able to use them for television though unless you got out and adjusted where you pointed your dish every once in a while.

Edited by Sapper, 18 May 2012 - 12:06 PM.

[ZombieSlayer]

30 years A.H.

• Devastated by solar winds, artificial satellites return to Earth in the form of shooting stars. Some of their pieces make it to the ground and start some fires.