XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.space, alt.politics

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12270421/Northern-Lights-visible-TONIGHT-double-punch-solar-storms-smash-Earth.html

. . .

This is TWICE this year we've been hit.

These things CAN damage satellites, but they also
heat the extreme upper atmosphere. As I recall
last time, SpaceX lost a batch of StarLink sats
launched about a week before because the atmosphere
expanded and dragged-down the satellites before
they could boost themselves into higher orbit.

Coronal Mass Events are bigger, but the effects
of Solar Flares can pack more raw punch - they've
brought down electric grids in the past and
auroral activity, a pinkish night sky, was seen
in Havana (before the pink street lights).
I remember seeing this as a youth, from somewhere
in central Florida. Lasted about two days.
Hydrogen 656 line "pink".

Our tech has become much more complex - and also
somewhat less robust. A bad solar flare could
nuke most satellites, even most military sats,
because the energies are so great. Earthly
comms networks, even cell comms, could be
turned into Swiss cheese. Are we prepared to
cope - or does "What, ME Worry ?" prevail ?

In any case, two big CMEs in short order suggest
an increase in solar instability. For decades
these tended to aim away from us, but perhaps
there's a ripe zone of match between solar
rotation and earth orbit that comes around
every few decades ???

It is reported that there was serious solar
flare activity in the latter 1800s, but the
tech then was telegraphs and maybe the very
beginnings of electric power systems. Those
were mostly invulnerable. Not so today.

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