It should be noted that you don’t need satellites in GSO to triangulate signals between satellites and the ground. It’s not a much more difficult technical problem to have a table of the full ephemeris data for a bunch of satellites in lower orbit, and use that information in GPS receivers. It’s just that our current chips wouldn’t be compatible with receiving data such a system.
IMO the Kessler Syndrome is overblown as a risk. Most of our space infrastructure would go to hell in such a scenario, but it’s not an existential threat like it’s often made out to be.
> IMO the Kessler Syndrome is overblown as a risk. Most of our space infrastructure would go to hell in such a scenario, but it’s not an existential threat like it’s often made out to be.
It's not a threat to existence of life (or civilization) - though losing satellites would have severe economical and geopolitical consequences. GNSS systems are one thing, but then there are also weather satellites, climate observatories, satellite comms, emergency beacon tracking and spy satellites.
The main worry here is that a full-blown case of Kessler syndrome would simply lock us out of space access for couple decades or centuries, depending on the severity of it. You could forget about satellites. Space probes might work if launched straight into some transfer orbit. Manned missions would be most likely deemed too dangerous.
Existential was the wrong word to use. What I mean is geared towards your second paragraph - that we won’t be locked out of space. Our current systems are in a pretty narrow range of ideal orbits which would get cluttered up. But there’s a lot of room in sub-optimal orbits that would still be clear, and can still be used for everything we do today. Just at a little higher technical cost.
IMO the Kessler Syndrome is overblown as a risk. Most of our space infrastructure would go to hell in such a scenario, but it’s not an existential threat like it’s often made out to be.