X-37B Found By Amateur Sky Watchers 109
otter42 writes "It seems that X-37B couldn't stay hidden forever. Launched a few weeks ago, The Flying Twinkie disappeared shortly after separation. Now it has been found in an orbit that takes it as far north as 40 degrees latitude. No additional information has been found about the spacecraft's capabilities or purpose, except for a US Air Force statement that the satellite has no space-weapons purpose. The X-37B is intended to fly for 9 months at a time, opening the door to possible space longevity experiments in addition to its spying tasks."
Space weapons.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Space weapons.. (Score:5, Informative)
want to see it?
go to www.heavens-above.com
for times/magnitude/etc.
From the NYTimes Article (Score:2)
> “If a bunch of amateurs can find it,” Mr. Weedon said, “so can our adversaries.”
True for some of our adversaries, but not all. Ten or fifteen years ago there was a big hubbub in DC when a web site or two went up to track our spy satellite launches. Pre-internet, it was generally just a few big governments who had the resources to track them. But with the amateur community helping, suddenly anyone with a web browser could get some idea of when satellite coverage would be avai
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You can't miss it. It says Hostess on the heat shield.
--
Better bread spacecraft.
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at least china hasn't shot it down yet
Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Funny)
Rendezvous with alien spaceships of course.
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"The craft is the manifestation of the Air Force's long-held, on-and-off again dream to operate its own space plane."
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Dropping a rock from space isn't as straightforward of an idea as it sounds. Apologies to the Jerry Pournelle fans out there, but there are some problems that significantly reduce the cool factor.
First of all, drop the perception that each "rod" is a cheap, unpowered, purely-kinetic weapon, because the orbital physics don't allow it. De-orbiting an object (in a stable orbit, anyway) is not a free manuever, it costs thrust and therefore fuel burn to "slow" itself down so it drops out of orbit. Usually, the o
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Also a kinetic weapon does not cause radioactive fallout.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
"I find it amazing they've created a spaceship that can stay up in the sky for up to 9 months at a time."
Really? There are craft up there that will stay thousands of years.
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And most of them are powered by solar arrays (though that's not what's keeping them up there)
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It seems like they could be though - solar panels could generate lift via a tether.
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Really? There are craft up there that will stay thousands of years.
That's like saying we shouldn't be impressed by subs being underwater for months because of all those shipwrecks doing it for centuries.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Informative)
But this thing is a very low earth orbit sattellite. It has a very fast shifting orbit, and it has much more athmospheric drag (though, granted, still not all that much). The orbit is "close" (certainly in space terms), low-latency, but a bit of a bitch to navigate in.
If we could deploy 100 of these quickly and cheaply we could have fast broadband with tiny latencies everywhere on the planet, from New York to Antarctica (worst case you'd need a roof antenna, and given performance of iridium handsets that's not necessary except in highrises in city centers). Since you have clear line of sight to just about any location on the planet, very high bandwidth applications are within the realm of possibility. Inter-satellite links can use the exact same technology used on fibers (except for the need to aim them), and thus COTS components will get you an inter-sattellite bandwith of 160 Gbit per transmitter, with no real limits on the number of transmitters.
This is the one technology that truly has the potential of getting high-bandwidth links into outlying rural areas.
LEO and this type of technology could be the future of the internet. Unstoppable, unfilterable, available anywhere and anytime (because of the possibility of having extreme directionality in the tranceivers, the only real option you have is taking out the satellite, you can't even find who's using this internet connection. Iran and other countries' censorship would be thoroughly fucked), usable with cola can sized devices costing $150 able to link up to playboy online right under the nose of Ahmadinejad. Able to tell any Chinese what happened at Tiananmen, and provide that same porn to increase the customer base.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
An all-wireless internet is not "the future" no matter how many times the "omg it has noe wiers!!!1" crowd say it is.
Show me a stable 10 Gbps transatlantic connection using satellites that requires little to no maintenance and which doesn't risk randomly interfering with other links (or being interfered with by other links) and I'll believe it's getting close. Until then fiber is still king no matter how much some people scream about "wireless!!1" like it's the second coming of christ.
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That system might not be here yet, but it will be eventually. I doubt it will be in orbit due to the latency (even low latency is too much), but radio travels a
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I see, so instead of simply lying fiber and dealing with last mile how is appropriate for given area...you would like to see "wireless fiber", with lasers travelling through the air (coordinated in some magical way between moving users (going inside is useless, everybody can get used to little rain, snow and cold) and satellites), and all this at nice a cost of, say, trillions of dollars.
So we can transmit one HD video.
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Sshyeah. All you'd need is some way around weather patterns and LOS issues. Maybe you could set up some towers and fire the lasers through a glass medium so that they're undisturbed by local weather conditions....
But seriously, I'm on wireless and it's got a looooonnnggggg ways to go before replacing wires and fiber.
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Given that Iridium phones operate perfectly well in a snow storm [snowestonline.com] ... what weather conditions are so very detrimental to LEO communication if I may ask ?
We're talking extremely directional communication with only tiny amounts of interference very close to one of the tranceivers (ie. the one on the ground). This is not a hard problem.
The hard problem in wireless transmission is obstacles "mid-flight" (so to speak). Because the earth is round, and thus there is a "mountain" between any two points anywhere on t
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Interesting)
But this thing is a very low earth orbit sattellite. It has a very fast shifting orbit, and it has much more athmospheric drag (though, granted, still not all that much). The orbit is "close" (certainly in space terms), low-latency, but a bit of a bitch to navigate in.
The International Space Station has a standard orbit of between 181 miles and 189 miles and only needs a boost a few times a year, while the X-37B was spotted at 255 miles up where the atmopshere is significantly thinner - 9 month longevity should not be hard to achieve, especially as the X-37B includes the ability to boost its orbit.
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Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Informative)
What? Somebody still believes the fairytale that satellite access can be better & cheaper (and less wasteful...) from cables and cellular towers? O_o
In case you didn't notice, the business plan for Iridium was:
- go in deep debt building ridiculously overpriced communication network, valuable to few customers with much influence (military)
- go bankrupt
- debts dissapear
- rely on profits from said customers with much influence
Plus Iridium orbit is not much higher than this thing does now; 100 vs 70 satelllites also doesn't make much difference.
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You do realise transatlantic and transpacific cable have basically the same business model, right ? They've gone broke at least 5 times in the last 10 years or so.
Besides, even intra-US fiber is not exactly a goldmine of profits for their owners.
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Those are at mosy problems with weird implementations. Backbone where I live doesn't seem to have many; besides, does it need to be a "goldmine" to be insanely more viable from satellites?...
Transatlantic and transpacific cables give very tangible benefits for their cost, and could be rerouted through hardly any deep ocean to speak of; heck, "transpacific" one needing in practice not much more than 100km of underwater cable.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it amazing they've created a spaceship that can stay up in the sky for up to 9 months at a time.
How's that? There are no humans to feed or otherwise keep comfortable and alive. Small craft, electronics for spying, stable orbit. Sounds like it could stay up longer if needed.
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"How's that? There are no humans to feed or otherwise keep comfortable and alive. Small craft, electronics for spying, stable orbit. Sounds like it could stay up longer if needed."
Yet another demonstration of why remote-manned space systems offer far greater ROI than carrying expensive tourists.
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Spacecraft without human pilots aren't good PR.
"Look what we did, we sent these guys to ...." is a much bigger sensation than "Look at the chunk of metal we sent up."
From the PR standpoint, the ISS is a big deal, because there are people on it. There's little interest in the almost 1,000 operational satellites [ucsusa.org] floating around above us.
No one would care if Glonass 712 fell out of orbit. It would make a blurb on the news, and that would be the end of it. Now, i
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This platform is nothing more than a RCS fuel tank with interchangeable payload bay. Highly maneuverable, more so than the permanent spy satellites. As for being weaponless, return to base, change out the payload, relaunch, target, boom.
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it would be a terrible waste of money.
When has the government been known to do anything economically? Remember, an elephant is a mouse with government design specifications.
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They don't want the warranty to expire.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't using solar panels for propulsion. It needs hardly any propulsion, once it's in orbit, since it will naturally tend to stay in its orbit, "flying" by its own momentum (though it will use a bit to counteract the tiny atmospheric resistance that exists even at that altitude). The panels allow it to go on long missions not by keeping it in the sky, but by giving it power to run its computers, comms, and its payload, assuming the payload uses electricity. This avoids the expense of launching very large batteries.
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though it will use a bit to counteract the tiny atmospheric resistance that exists even at that altitude
I'd say that it probably doesn't have to use any fuel for that. The ISS is at a similar altitude, and it is boosted to a higher altitude a few times a year, but the ISS is intended to stay in orbit for a long time. Since the X-37B is only intended to stay up for nine months, it is possible that it does not need any boosting. Besides, it is also possible that it can minimize the drag by using a certain attitude profile, such as pointing the nose forwards. If horizontal w.r.t. the ground (inverted or not), it
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Gliders don't use their wings to counteract the aerodynamic resistance, quite the contrary (somewhat; directed in a specific way). Fall all the time, and are way below the Karman line.
Re:Remarkable (Score:5, Informative)
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Forgot to mention that the ISS has been continually powered by solar panels since 1998.
The propulsion is not solar powered. On GOCE [wikipedia.org] of the other hand, it is. It is only 270 km (170 mi) up where the atmosphere is relatively thick and it will stay up for 20 months.
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Shuttle can have only short mission because it depends on fuel cells simply for powering ("keeping alive", up there) its systems; actually, it has a possibility to "steal" this power from ISS and prolong it's mission...a bit.
But several months alone is nowhere near impressive. Almost every damn spacecraft did at least that, "spacecraft"/"spaceship" not being somehow more real if it looks like the popular depiction of "spaceplane" - the latter (and hence X-37B) are actually very poor all around "real spacesh
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But that would not make it more "real spaceship"; just another contribution to the immense waste of US defense (nice newspeak) industry.
And it makes space warfare nowhere near practical. Weaponising LEO is moronic. At first sight of it, any entity which thinks it can "lose" will simply launch few dumb rockets with millions of ball bearings, triggering Kessler syndrome.
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Yeah, yeah, you will always have the rights & means to shutdown any rocket launch, heh...
You underestimate what millions of objects on erratic orbits would do. And it doeasn't have to be strictly metal ball bearings...or not ball bearing at all. Might as well be some fairly undetectable material, it doesn't matter - at those impact speeds, mass is the only thing that matters, any solid matter behaving like liquid anyway. Well, and this one type of spacecraft might have a chance at escaping, sometimes, q
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r. this thing has large engines to move from leo to meo if it needs to.
That's an understatement.
With a delta-v of 3.3, this thing can go to the moon, if needed. (Won't come back, though).
"Satellite"? (Score:1, Informative)
Does this spacecraft [wikipedia.org] look like a satellite to you?
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Not when it is sitting on the ground.
Being in orbit changes things.
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Looks more like a mini space shuttle to me.
Maybe it collects defunct satellites and brings them back for repair..
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Actually, it has a a robotic arm, so the X37B can be used to repair and refuel satellites in orbit. I'm not sure I believe the USAF when it says it has absolutely no space weapons purpose, however.
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It's meant to go up there, find a similarly-designed Chinese satellite, and play the world's most expensive and ostentatious game of Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots.
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> I'm not sure I believe the USAF when it says it has absolutely no space
> weapons purpose, however.
It's rather small for a weapons platform.
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O RLY? [wikipedia.org]
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Someone else already pointed out the Davy Crockett, but as a matter of fact, no, no I don't. Even a suitcase-sized nuke could take out an entire city.
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From expensive sensors to really really secret sensors as needed per mission.
The sat killer units will wait until the US faces a real war.
Re:"Satellite"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Satellite. I do not think that word means [wikipedia.org] what you think it means.
Does this [wikipedia.org] look like a satellite to you? Does this [wikipedia.org]? What would have to change about the X-37B to make you think it's a satellite, anyway? Put it in orbit? Well, you can check that off your list, because it's already there.
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Does this look like a satellite to you? Does this?
Yes, and yes.
What would have to change about the X-37B to make you think it's a satellite, anyway?
Maybe take the wings off, and make it non-reusable? Would you consider the space shuttle a "satellite" in any conventional sense of the word? I realize that a satellite is anything that orbits the earth, but you're missing the point here. The GP is implying that this is something MORE than a satellite.
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Yes, of course I would. Why on earth (or in low earth orbit for that matter) wouldn't you?
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Yes, of course I would. Why on earth (or in low earth orbit for that matter) wouldn't you?
Because I realize words aren't just things we all look up in the dictionary and that's the "right answer". Words are defined by usage, and dictionaries are always incomplete. If you asked the vast majority of people whether the space shuttle is a satellite or not, they'd say "No! It's a space ship". That's why I don't think it's at best confusing to use the word "satellite" for the space shuttle, or for this thing.
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If you ask the vast majority of people to give a general idea of how orbit works, they wouldn't even be able to do that.
Opinions of the general uninformed public does not override well defined technical definitions [wikipedia.org] (satellite = object in orbit) in technical discussions (slashdot).
Besides, this thing, unlike the space shuttle, stays in orbits for very long periods of time, is unmanned, and apparently regularly goes in orbits generally not used for manned space flight. Saying that it is "not a satellite" sim
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Opinions of the general uninformed public does not override well defined technical definitions (satellite = object in orbit) in technical discussions (slashdot).
This is a technical discussion? I thought it was a discussion forum.
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*looks up at the top of the webpage and notes the "News for nerds" logo.*
Yes, on slashdot we generally engage in technical discussion. Sufficiently technical anyways that redefining "satellite" to exclude things with wings just because we feel like it is very silly. If you can't handle this, then you should go back to digg.
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*looks up at the top of the webpage and notes the "News for nerds" logo.*
Yes, on slashdot we generally engage in technical discussion. Sufficiently technical anyways that redefining "satellite" to exclude things with wings just because we feel like it is very silly. If you can't handle this, then you should go back to digg.
Hmm...
*looks at Sir_Lewk's user number*
*looks at Vellmont's user number*
Yep.
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> Words are defined by usage
An excellent reason to discourage misuse.
> If you asked the vast majority of people whether the space shuttle is a
> satellite or not, they'd say "No! It's a space ship".
Which, while it is in orbit, is a type of satellite.
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Does this spacecraft look like a satellite to you?
Yeah, one that can return with all kinds of goodies.
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Satellite:
1) man-made equipment that orbits around the earth or the moon
2) any celestial body orbiting around a planet or star
Why, yes, it does, once it is on orbit.
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I had someone from the Beeb prepping an interview on the Japanese solar sail probe last week who kept calling it a "space shuttle"., apparently under the impression that that was a general term for anything that went into space. Sigh. I propose the following correct astronomical and astronautical senses of 'satellite':
1) Any object in closed orbit around another object of larger mass (the most general sense, considered a loose usage: "the Earth is a satellite of the Sun" is rare, although "The Ikaros pr
How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:3, Insightful)
When it won't carry people, and has no more the cargo capacity of a pickup truck?
Re:How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:4, Funny)
Re: How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:5, Funny)
Have you seen pickup trucks nowadays? Some of those things look quite capable of hauling space telescopes around.
Also known as "Penis Compensation Vehicles".
Re: How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:4, Funny)
Re: How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:4, Informative)
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Agreed for the most part, but the number of people I know who drive their Dodge Ram to work everyday would seem to suggest that the majority do no in fact use them to their full capabilities. There's no way that even half of the trucks being driven around Houston are used as trucks.
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> There's no way that even half of the trucks being driven around Houston are
> used as trucks.
There are a lot of trucks in the world that are not being driven around Houston.
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I drive my Ram to work every day.
I also drive it to the feed store, the dump, my family's house to move shit, etc.
And while it may be asshattish I charge people who ask me to help them move. Specifically:
I fill the tank and when we are done moving I fill it again. They get the bill for the second fill.
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Or, you know, a practical vehicle for moving cargo or tools from place to place and/or getting through adverse conditions including snow and undeveloped terrain. Granted, many people go too far and get a 1-ton truck with dual rear wheels and a heavy-duty diesel engine and matching transmission and then never one pull a trailer or haul a load, but they are the minority of pickup owners. Most people with that mindset just end up with a Hummer H1 or Corvette.
Except in Southern California. And according to another poster, Houston.
I especially like the ones that raised the body way up, but still have the suspension / drive train at the original height.
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That is particularly funny.
Then you see them go "off roading" and smack their transmission pan into something and their truck actually bleeds.
You can tell the really dumb ones because they try to drive out.
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You can always tell, because they all have a cartoon of that Calvin kid peeing on either a Ford or Chevy logo in the rear window, and often a plastic scrotum hanging from the trailer hitch.
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putting people in space add huge unnecessary expense to a job that can be done by machine.
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remote control is also possible. The jobs the air force have in mind don't require such ability, and the savings of not having resource-wasteful human beings is enormous.
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Humans think (not very well), but they think.
Largely true...
Machines only act on a specific set of commands.
Depending on what you mean, this is either flat-out false, or true, but equally true of humans (who, like the machines in question, have pre-coded instructions, and any decision-making that occurs beyond that is occurring in accord with those instructions -- they think because they're programmed to).
Reprogramming a machine takes longer than a human can change his/her mind, based on the situation in real time.
As a generalization, this is also just plain false. It can be true of particular machines, but it's certainly not always the case.
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Machines are digital with analog components, humans are analog with digital components.
Re:How can they call it a shuttle replacement (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait - who is calling this a shuttle replacement?
I mean - someone who just wanted the shuttle for sending little military spy satellites up can do so with the X37 - so it replaces that one function of the Shuttle.
Other than that, I haven't seen anybody claim hat this is a replacement for the Shuttle.
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Not worth the cost? (Score:2)
So they're saying the benefits of the mission, which "probably centers at least partly on testing" sensors , aren't worth the cost. They don't have a clue what the mission is or it's b
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I believe that unless the sensor is changed by the sensing, the observer changed by the observation that most sensors would be cheaper to put up on single use rockets. The sensor could also be the only working prototype and or made of unobtanium.
But since this is a technology demonstrator for a lot of next gen vehicle technologies those arguments are bunk.
The airframe and everything on it is a test bed, not only will the flight data be important but the returned airframe with its not shuttle based heat shie
So have they found the The Prompt Global Strike? (Score:3, Informative)
The Prompt Global Strike, a prototype that can hit any target around the world in less than an hour, was also launched the same day.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7106714.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
Have they found that yet?
Still edible after 8 months in space too (Score:1)
Golden Hard Vacuum Resistant Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling
On board: Colonel Cochrane to test a 'warp drive' (Score:2)
Of course, if the public knew, they'd find out about Cheyenne Mountain too.
Nine months? It's obvious.... (Score:1)
They are breeding satellites to save on launch costs. Just raise the new satellite babies in orbit. Only the female sats need to stay aloft for 9 months though....