This will be the third time today that I have attempted to post this. Just when I get it typed and ready to submit the power goes off. Its been going off anywhere from 2 to 8 times a day for the past ten days. Doesn't stay off, just enuff to knock me off line, shut down the electric oven and the microwave. Anyway...do the older satellites have embedded chips or date codes in them? I am sure the ones being put up now are compliant, but what about the ones that have been around for 20 plus years? And are their any ramifications involving the production/distribution of power? I don't know all what the satellites do, but I know communications is a big part. Without them don't we get into the Iron triangle? Several people have recently asked me about satellites and no one seems to commment about the working/compliancy of them. Taz

-- Anonymous, September 26, 1999

Answers

Taz, in the past few months there has been a lot of discussion about the status of satellites on this forum, especially as it applied to the GPS rollover. Snyder Gokey has been focused on the satellites and what we know about them for a long time and he posted several articles with info. If you use the search function at the top of the New Questions page and just type in "snyder" or "satellites" you will likely get a lot of hits with pretty much all the information he's been able to compile.

The short summary is that the government has said there are no Year 2000 date problems which will interfere with the proper functioning of the GPS satellites, but the ground receivers needed to be evaluated for Year 2000 readiness and replaced in some cases. The general impression is that Year 2000 issues were taken care of at the same time GPS rollover upgrades were dealt with, so utilities etc. should be good to go in that respect.

If you are talking about all the other myriad communications, military and scientific satellites in orbit, these are in most cases proprietary (owned by whichever corporation paid to put them up there) and therefore there has been next to nothing reported about their status, at least no details that I have seen anywhere. There are lots of applications of the Y2K issue that have basically fallen into a "no focus upon" category, and as far as I can tell, other satellites outside of the two dozen active GPS ones are included in that area. The U.S. is also just one of many countries who have orbiting satellites for various purposes and I haven't encountered any reports about them from abroad either.

As you're undoubtedly already aware, if there's not a law or pressure group forcing a status report, any corporation or business is going to take the path of "if I don't have to tell, I'm not going to", if only for litigation reasons. Hopefully someone else will be able to add to our knowledge base of satellite status; commercial and/or foreign. Otherwise I'd say it's going to be another situation where we just wait and see.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 1999

Thanks Bonnie (I guess!!) Yes, I was refering to all the ones that are not gov't . There is a company now in the process of putting up 48 satellites this year. They have shot up 40 of them, the last 4 out of Khasatan(sp)Russia on the 23rd. The other 8 will go up in Oct and Nov, but I don't know from where. We just sold our stock in the company but have friends that are over extended because they wanted to get in on it. I am sure these new satellites are compliant but now wonder about solar flare. Oh well...we are out of it and sitting tight with the idea that we will buy back into the market on firms that survive y2k.

taz

-- Anonymous, September 26, 1999