Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1973)
Clarke’s third law gets quoted to excuse every opaque product launch. We prefer to read it as a challenge: if it looks like magic, somebody has not documented it yet.
Satellites pass overhead constantly, broadcasting weather images, telemetry and amateur radio traffic to anyone with the right antenna. Building a ground station used to require a roof, a budget and a licence application. Now it can be done on a balcony with a cheap software-defined radio, a homemade antenna and open-source decoding tools. Hobbyists share pass predictions in group chats and compare the crispest captures of storm systems. It is one of the few corners of technology where curiosity is rewarded directly, with pictures of the planet pulled out of thin air.
The part about the maintenance backlog is the scariest thing I have read all week.
Would love a follow-up on how the volunteers are funded.
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