Hacker News Reader

>I personally don't get a lot of productivity gain from putting stuff into space

You don't use phones, digital maps, or are glad that your national defense is up and running?

Of course, but that productivity is "baked into the cake" at this point. How much incremental productivity is gained by the new things being put into space now?

Edit: Just 1 GPS satellite, I misread.

Satellites don't last forever. SpaceX launched 10 gps sattelites in 2018... (or more, not sure, that's just one launch)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA

I believe SpaceX has launched one next generation GPS satellite so far (Dec, 2018). They are big and take up the full payload of a Falcon 9. So heavy, in fact, that SpaceX has to launch them in disposable mode. It is the Iridium satellites are the ones that SpaceX launches 10 at a time.

You're right. Put an edit at the start of my post making it clear I misread.

Thanks!

Something tells me that it's possible these devices will need to be replaced or upgraded at some point

Reply on news.ycombinator.com