Launching satellites: Do you ever ...
 

watch Sky TV? Or make international phone calls? Satellites help us to send information around the world in all sorts of ways.
Communications satellites 

eat fish? Satellites let us watch the Earth from above. We can use them to make maps, to look for disasters like forest fires, to check which crops are healthy and which are not, and to look for signs of fish in the sea. Earth observation satellites

catch a bus? Satellite navigation or ‘Satnav’ systems can help to tell you when the next bus will come along. Navigation satellites
 
 

It costs about $1000 million to launch  a satellite and there have been at least 5,000 launches since the 1950s. Currently there are around 600 orbiting the Earth.

 What else could we spend $600,000 million on?