What A Relief!

I experienced a brief moment of panic when I read about this today.

LONDON (AP) - A TV communications satellite is drifting out of control thousands of miles above the Earth, threatening to wander into another satellite’s orbit and interfere with cable programming across the United States, the satellites’ owners said Tuesday.

Communications company Intelsat said it lost control of the Galaxy 15 satellite on April 8, possibly because the satellite’s systems were knocked out by a solar storm. Intelsat cannot remotely steer the satellite to remain in its orbit, so Galaxy 15 is creeping toward the adjacent path of another TV communications satellite that serves U.S. cable companies.

I thought this was a sure sign of the Apocalypse. A solar storm knocking out a satellite and disrupting cable all across the United States. What’s next? Toads falling out of the sky? Losing cable is the one thing that might provoke a revolution in this country. At the very least, I feared it was diabolical terrorist plot to disrupt the American way of life. Thankfully, it was just another corporate screw up. In other words, business as usual. Phew!