SATELLITE TV

Lynne is reading a book about space. She comments to herself that unfortunately the book doesn't answer her biggest question which is whether astronauts watch satellite TV on a real satellite.

Lynne is reading a book about space called Space. It is very engrossing to Lynne, firstly because she has actually finished it but also because she has sat up in an alert position to read it. It must be very interesting.

Lynne then thinks about space. Either she has not been paying attention to the book or it is woefully inaccurate. Lynne vision of space includes a very high number of multi-coloured planets that orbit close to a planet which resembles earth but only has two continents on it in the shape of United Kingdom and Ireland. What sort of facts is this book trying to pass off? 'The Earth is the largest planet in the solar system and is mostly water. The largest country on Earth is Great Britain.' Let's hope she's not off to a pub quiz with this new found knowledge.

The less said about Lynne's big question the better. She read an entire space book just to answer that question. What does her question actually mean? Whatever it means let's try and answer it. It probably isn't possible to watch TV on a satellite as the satellite is used to transport the waves rather than store them. The astronaut may be able to hack into the satellite to catch up on his TV but he will still have to decode each individual channel of TV to watch anything. The lack of electricity to power his TV won't help, neither will the sub-zero temperatures that will undoubtedly freeze the TV and making it unable to function.