Satellite Spotters Make Government Uneasy 439
An anonymous reader found an interesting little story about satellite spotters and how, not surprisingly, their painstakingly methodical hobby doesn't exactly make gazillion dollar government agencies all that excited. Of course the article raises the very obvious point that if a guy with a pair of binoculars in his back yard can spot a satellite, so can the Chinese government.
Same s**t, different wrapping. (Score:3, Informative)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/05/1734208 [slashdot.org]
Dupe (Score:4, Informative)
Re:well (Score:2, Informative)
So sans a Star-Trek-style Cloaking Device, it will always be detectable at some leve. So they might as well just make it look like some random satellite so there's always a question as to what kind it is.
Re:Stealth Satellites? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:well (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than that. Visible light isn't the problem, it's self emission of long wave infrared (LWIR) radiation. The background of space is very cold (a few K above absolute zero), so anything with any significant temperature contrasts very nicely. In theory it might be possible to cool the front side of the (notionally black) satellite to near zero deg K, but in practice that'd take prohibitive energy, since that nice black surface would absorb a whole lot of solar energy when exposed (~1/2 the time).
So, civilian satellite spotters aren't the real problem, it's inimical militaries with LWIR telescopes...and there's pretty well nothing to be done about it.
Re:OSS wins once again (Score:2, Informative)
Satellites run proprietary, custom computers that run dedicated, real time operating systems.
Re:Stealth Satellites? (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that you can spot a spy satellite with binoculars proves that the government it belongs to isn't trying to hide it? Is that really what you're trying to say?
Here's some more reading [wired.com] for you.
And from an intel standpoint, this is one piece of a puzzle to knowing what the satellites are sued for but I'd rather have the Chinese or whoever have to pay for it themselves.
Um, I already exposed your contention that the Chinese are relying on American hobbyists with binoculars to locate spy satellites as a Straw Man argument. Please stop embarrassing yourself.
But go ahead, go report to your communist friends. It's your right.
Honestly...if you can't even be bothered to accept the most elementary facts of the situation, you're not worth responding to.
Good day, sir.
Re:There's only so much to see... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:well (Score:3, Informative)
Satellite registry (Score:3, Informative)
Pretending that a spy satellite is a different kind of satellite probably wouldn't work too well. First, different kinds of satellites use different orbits. Even more importantly, non-military US satellites have lots of publicly available information. Non-military satellites are usually either scientific instruments or commercial assets. The paper trail on a "real" non-military satellite would be hard to reproduce in a convincing way.
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe (Score:3, Informative)
GPS satellites are not geostationary (Score:4, Informative)
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)