Amateurs Spy On US Spy Plane 172
arshadk writes with this excerpt from Wired's Danger Room: "The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the 29-foot unmanned craft — a kind of miniature Space Shuttle — for NASA. Then, the military took over in 2004, and the space plane went black. Its payloads were classified, its missions hush-hush. ... You can even see the space plane for yourself: The X-37B is traveling in a slightly elliptical orbit more than 200 miles up, swooping from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south."
Was that supposed to be a summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that just three sentences copypasted at random, with no attempt whatsoever made to explain what this article is about, or what?
Re:Was that supposed to be a summary? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a summary:
Each time the X-37B is launched a bunch of amateurs make a game out of finding it in orbit. It took a month to find it using telescopes on the first mission, but only 4 days on the current mission. It is currently in a very low (lower than the space station) non-polar orbit, which is unusual for spy satellites, because it will never cross large areas of the planet. So they presume it is used for spying on specific areas on this mission, likely the Middle East as it has good coverage of that area. Basically all that's known is its orbit, not what it is capable of nor what it is actually doing.
Re:Was that supposed to be a summary? (Score:5, Informative)
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If they wanted good coverage of the Middle East, they'd put the bird in a Molniya style orbit. This sounds like a circular orbit
Thanks for the wikipedia [wikipedia.org]-visit-causing post :-D (+1 informative, if I had mod points)
Re:Was that supposed to be a summary? (Score:4, Interesting)
A Molniya orbit has the disadvantage that the apogee is over the area you want to watch. The X-37B seems to prefer being quite low; I do not believe you could construct a useful Molniya orbit with such a low apogee. At perigee it would be extremely low and quite fast, which means lots of air resistance.
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Not to mention, the apogee dwell occurs at, well, near and at apogee, which is also not what you want for an imaging satellite. Unless you want it swooping by the earth at the perigee, where it is going it's fastest.
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I don't understand why you consider having the apogee over the area you want to watch to be a disadvantage. I would think you'd want a spy satellite to dwell over the target area as long as possible.
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For an imaging satellite, you don't want to be farther away. For a signals intelligence satellite, it might not matter as much, so the high dwell at apogee might be more beneficial. For that reason, the US has fielded spy satellites in Molniya orbits for spying on the s
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Early satellite TV systems weren't meant for direct reception by the population. If it works via regional receivers + terrestrial re-transmitters in fairly northerly country, Molniya orbit becomes quite attractive... especially considering how the sats are closer (cube law) and can be more massive (per type of launc
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I was under the assumption that the original plans were for a sub-orbital to drop a company of Marines any place in the world in less than an hour. Or OTOH, I may be wrong and that's a different model.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Informative)
This is space we're talking about. And There Ain't No Stealth In Space [projectrho.com].
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Its starting to look more and more like project Rho haven't really got a clue what they are talking about though:
http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/while_doing_some_poking_around.php [scienceblogs.com]
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They are very good at what they do!
I think I detect some sarcasm here.
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Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Funny)
When Wonder Woman sues you for patent infringement. Duh!
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It would not be detectable using visible light, infra-red or radio telescopes, and it would not occlude any other celestial objects like planets, moons or stars.
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The orbit is a perfect asymmetrical warfare battleground, steps towards its militarization are...insane. Any space capable entity can easily largely deny a productive use of E
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Nonsense. Until complete invisibility is achieved(and it hasn't been despite promising reports), it can be seen, regardless of how good they are. They can have deception, etc. on their side but they can't do a lot about rays of light.
They can release an inflatable decoy and then change trajectory. Or perhaps, maybe the actually observation platform is stealthy and designed to detach from the X-37B, and then a few weeks later the X-37B alters orbit to pick up the observation platform and return to earth? Not as complicated as you would think.
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I was hoping Shuttle taught us something (say, with the Hubble - it would be less expensive to have new ones; they are already relatively "mass" produced, as spysats... launched by expendable rockets; or what Zenit sats taught us - the most popular payload of "the most reliable
Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Interesting)
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Besides, don't you think they try to camouflage spysats already? Still fairly easy to spot. And with X-37B it's not like they even try that much; an expandable sat / mission package barely larger than the payload bay of X-37B - but with identical on-orbit capabilities - would be much harder to spot.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Informative)
Define 'black'. If you're using the definition from every day conversation, then you mean 'something that doesn't emit or reflect light in the narrow band of the EM spectrum visible to human eyes' and that's pretty easy to achieve. If you use a more scientific definition, it's much harder. If it's actually doing anything, then it will be generating heat. Every time it changes orbit, it will be firing a rocket, which has a huge IR signature and is trivial to track with very cheap equipment.
This is the problem with most stealth technology - it only protects against a narrow range of sensor technologies.
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Duh, just turn off the headlights!
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i remember this.... (Score:2)
Orbital clues (Score:5, Insightful)
The typical spy satellite has a polar orbit...
...The X-37B, on the other hand, is orbiting around the fat middle of the plane...
...The orbit lends credence to the idea that the space plane is an orbiting spy.
Just sayin'
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'middle of the plane' = 'middle of the planet'
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But of course! Because it's not acting like a spy, it has to be a spy!
It's so obvious! Or are you one of THEM trying to distract us?
Where to look (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.heavens-above.com/ [heavens-above.com]
Enter your coordinates (requires a login, otherwise it's 0 degrees N / 0 degrees E) and look for the X-37B link under "Satellites".
Metricate, damnit! (Score:4, Insightful)
29-foot
To 95% of world's population: that's 8.83m.
Re:Metricate, damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
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So, how many meters are equal to 29 feet in the US aerospace industry?
rj
Re:Metricate, damnit! (Score:4, Insightful)
Deducing from this mission [wikipedia.org], I'd say 29.
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Yeah, but we use mils, or 0.001 inch, so we're just as decimally as anyone. :-P
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just like when the military there use "klicks", unable to use that nasty FRENCH measurement openly, right? They mean kilometres.
Yeah, because computer scientists never say megs or gigs for short. If I said kilometers more than three times a day I'd also go with something easier.
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I was out geocaching with friends today, watching my iPhone measure dista
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Kilometers - four syllables
Miles - 1 syllable
Kilick - 1 syllable
and (as the poster below points out) K - 1 syllable
Never underestimate the laziness of spoken language. People almost always shorten long words used in everyday language. It has nothing to do with some conspiracy against the French language.
BTW, every elementary school I know of in the United States teaches the metric system. I was taught it back in the seventies and my kids were taught it in the nineties. I still can do the conversion from
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Yeah, it's funny that in the US at least, "kilo" is always short for kilogram, and it's always the weight of a drug shipment!
Incidentally, WTF is up with pronouncing kilometer as "kill-AWM-et-ur" instead of "KEE-lo-MEET-ur"? Is that some sort of whacked analogy with British English pronunciation of "ther-MOM-et-ur" (which should p
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Indeed. Although 'klicks' is a weird one. Metric countries don't usually repeatedly say 'kilometres' in full either. They just say 'k' (i.e. "kay").
"Where's the next turnoff?"
"Oh about 4 k down that way"
Of course you run the risk of confusing that with other measurements. I say 'k' for kilobytes too. Still context would normally make it pretty obvious when you're talking about distance rather than amount of data.
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Units of measurement are constantly being adjusted...
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Well, no, the idea of using fundamental constants rather than (say) platinum spheres is that you never need to adjust them. Even if you re-evaluate the constants, all things measured relative to them willl change in proportion, keeping the units of measurement effectively the same.
If you meant "new units of measurement are being invented", you might have a point. We don't use the Roman mile any more, and nobody has ever really used the American gallon (there's a lot of profit to be made through accumulated
Re:Metricate, damnit! (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's the "beauty" of the imperial system. Not only do you always measure things in two units (feet and inches, pounds and ounces), and use fractions which vary by unit, but your choice of measurement unit varies by what you're measuring and where you're measuring it. It's amazing we got any science done at all.
Well, to be fair, that's also sort of a filter for allowing only sufficiently smart to enter the field of science or engineering (or even "digging ditches", but with "ditch digging", you're often going to have to take who you can get, so construction work rarely goes according to the plans). If you can't do unit conversions, you should probably do something else, such as management...
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Ew. If there's one thing that strikes me as even more ridiculous than the imperial system, it's this "milliard" bullshit.
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The word 'kibibyte' itself might sound silly, but I don't think anyone could argue that there isn't a need to be able to distinguish binary vs. decimal measurements in computing. Especially since certain things (e.g. RAM) is generally measured in binary and other things (hard drive size) is generally measured in decimal. Not to mention that in communications, bitrate has always been in decimal specified (1 kilobit/sec has always meant 1000 bits/sec, not 1024).
In the absence of any other agreed upon standard
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It's just occurred to me I may have misinterpreted your post. I thought you were expressing a sentiment against the 'renaming' of kilobyte to kibibyte. That is, you felt that the binary measurements should remain being called by the kilo - mega- etc units.
However your post could equally be interpreted as saying that the whole binary measurement system (1024 bytes to a kibibyte) was ridiculous, and that it should have been kilo = 1000 from the start. In which case, I apologise, as my reply was misguided.
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And while I'm on a rant, can we ditch the term "octet" to describe 8 bits. The word is byte. B-Y-T-E, byte.
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No. We already use it for any serious scientific or engineering work (with the exception if this idiot blunder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter [wikipedia.org])
Why does it make you so upset that we use SI for our recipes and street signs?
Re:Metricate, damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but that 95% doesn't have an X-37B, so it really doesn't matter, does it?
Our super-secret spy space-drone, our units of measurement. That's how we roll up in this bitch.
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How do you know? Perhaps the other 95% are better at keeping their secret spy planes actually secret? :p
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Last I heard, the Swedes were working on a Stealth Frigate, a ship effectively invisible to radar and sonar (carbon fibre hull, ultra-dark materials, non-ferrous engines, that sort of thing). Haven't heard anything on that since. If they actually developed such a vessel, then between that and Google Earth, I'm not sure they'd need any spy planes.
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The Danes have already built it.
And it's fully loaded and ready to do battle with the Swedes.
--
BMO
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Shouldn't they be preparing to fight the Dutch [wikipedia.org]?
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Heh. I didn't see that one. I'll have to dl it later. My bro is a bigger Simpsons fan.
There's a lot more bad history (wars) between Sweden and Denmark than Denmark and the Netherlands.
http://satwcomic.com/pacifist [satwcomic.com]
http://satwcomic.com/nordic-brothers [satwcomic.com]
--
BMO
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Oh, I know about the history (around the time of the 30 Years War, if I recall), but that Simpsons episode makes references to "Brave Danish Sailors", and I just couldn't resist.
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Touche.
That's Italian for "you win, wiseguy".
And if the "other 95%" are such smarty-pantses, why can't I use a diacritic on Slashdot so I can spell touché properly? It's almost 2012, one would think they'd have figured this out by now.
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Its probably a nine metre space plane and the 29 foot figure was made up for public consumption.
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Well when the less advanced 95% finally can make something as cool then they can publish their specs in that commie measuring system.
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It's French , IIRC, not "commie" unless, well, um, . . .
The metric system was first used in France under the orders of the revolutionary government. While they predated Marx by some time, they did believe in social equality (at least in theory) and worker ownership of the means of production. Calling them communist is not too far off (at least, no further off than calling the USSR communist).
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Would frog or surrender monkey then be the correct slur?
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Mesopotamia?
Egypt?
Peru?
The idea that a ruling elite is bad for everyone else isn't new. Finding something elegant to replace it has been the difficult bit.
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It's an American spycraft, so it only uses feet.
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What does it matter what a unit of measurement is based on? Any unit of measurement is just an arbitrary designation. Does it matter if the standard yardstick is based on the distance between the Equator and the North Pole or the length of a monarch's arm? Or that a unit of weight is based on a platinum bar sitting in some vault? Either gives me a way of defining distance or weight. And as far as convenience goes, perhaps it is not a bad thing that an inch be based on the distance between a knuckle and
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Another handy thing about English units is the ability to divide things by three, or other non-base-10-friendly divisions.
I cant understand why people get so upset about units. Google makes it easy to convert if it really bothers someone. Somehow I use mostly metric at work and imperial units in the rest of my life and survive.
Classified != Secret (Score:3, Insightful)
The X-37B is partially classified. It is not anywhere near secret. There is a huge difference.
Classified projects are frequently used for promotion and propaganda. Secret projects are actually kept secret.
Re:Classified != Secret (Score:4, Interesting)
Checking out Libya? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=37375 [n2yo.com]
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The real question (Score:4, Funny)
Getting on the X37B has earned him a Pro title. (Score:2)
Was I the only one who initially missed the S, and thought the headline was, "Amateur Spy On US Spy Plane" ?
Clearly that spy can't be considered a green-horn anymore; Getting a seat on an unmanned space flight is no small feat!
Possible uses (Score:3)
It's amazing what you can do when you've got an object in space that you can set up with minimal overhead. I mean, hey, its not like those big expensive spy satellites have a limited fuel or anything. Sure, Libya had always been kind of a nuisance, but I assume there weren't that many spy satellites within range before. One of the features of this thing was that it had oversized engines for what it was, meaning it could make drastic orbit changes at short notice. Anyone know how long its been in this orbit over Libya?
It's been speculated (more assumption...) that the X-37B could be a test platform for new surveillance equipment. Could be they have some new cameras with some awesome resolution to test out. Might be some kind of new sensors, or maybe some kind of a mirror or laser communication relay, to bounce a signal for someone covert down in Tripoli. For all we know, it could be some crazy new concept we won't hear about for another 20 years.
Anyone know if its orbit brings it within close proximity of any other satellites? Some people have said it could be used to interfere with the satellites from other countries. Maybe, its secretly plotting to activate SkyNet in conjunction with another satellite that recently went up [airforcetimes.com] and we have no idea what its doing..
Or, for all we know, its just a camera, the same one they've been using on the other spy satellites for years. Just one that has lots of fuel, and thus, lots of orbit changes before coming down to be refueled and given newer tech cameras.
The world may never know. Or may already know, and just not know it.
Its real mission... (Score:2)
The Crossbow Project. There's No Defense Like a Good Offense
Picture of X-40A in article of X-37B :) (Score:2)
Picture of X-40A in an article on an X-37B launch?! :)
http://citynewspost.com/x-37b-launch-delay-due-to-bad-weather/855019/ [citynewspost.com]
I doubt if that was the intention...
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the people that wanted to work for NASA as kids are now working for the military, and its various contractors.
ain't it grand.
Re:Where's The Money From? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well of course it's easy, they don't send people up. Being man-rated makes the space shuttle vastly more complex.
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No, I find it absolutely wonderful that our military is broad and powerful enough to nearly 100% guarantee that our scientists and engineers have the time to spend on civilian pursuits like medical breakthroughs, discovering the far edges of our universe and creating sweet shit like velcro. It's pitiful that people like you think freedom costs nothing. A few hundred years ago, you'd be a shit shoveling peasant in some god forsaken hell hole. Look at you know though, you can follow the oust of Mubarak fro
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US doesn't seem to do any of these things. Your military is a parasite that feeds off worthwhile projects.
FYI, Velcro was invented by a Swiss.
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US doesn't seem to do any of these things. Your military is a parasite that feeds off worthwhile projects.
The US Military is a jobs project that employs 2.5 million people - 1.55 million active, 850,000 reserve, 100,000 Department of defense. The education system in the US is severely dysfunctional, and the military is now the only place where young people can get all-expense paid vocational training.
So it's not all bombs and bullets.
FYI, Velcro was invented by a Swiss.
Interesting, thanks. :) Velcro [wikipedia.org]
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I'm quite sure that if the education program had the military's budget it wouldn't be as bad as it is now.
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The education system in the US is severely dysfunctional, and the military is now the only place where young people can get all-expense paid vocational training.
We have an all-volunteer force now. Do you really think that what you pointed out is NOT by design?
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Nylons were engineered in the U.S.A.
Then why are they named after NY and London?
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That's what I thought too, but here is wiki's explanation:
"In 1940, John W. Eckelberry of DuPont stated that the letters "nyl" were arbitrary and the "on" was copied from the suffixes of other fibers such as cotton and rayon. A later publication by DuPont explained that the name was originally intended to be "No-Run" ("run" meaning "unravel"), but was modified to avoid making such an unjustified claim and to make the word sound better.[6] An apocryphal tale is that Nylon is a conflation of "New York" and "L
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Medical breakthroughs - mostly the Brits, French and allegedly Amsterdam but the investigator there has failed to return.
Astronomy - mostly the Brits and Russians
Velcro - the Swiss
Freedom does indeed cost nothing. Enslavement is the expensive option. Almost every peaceful revolution has resulted in a peaceful (comparatively-speaking) government, every violent revolution (without exception, the US included) has resulted in a violent system of governance and a violent populace.
As for Mubarak, he was mostly in
Re:Where's The Money From? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear earns nothing but violence and destruction. Fear and violence are the acts of despots determined to keep what is not theirs.
The Borgia crime family - one of the greatest mafiosa gangs in history - presided over the Enlightenment and largely caused most of it. True, there was a lot of fear, but centralized justice and peace on Earth there wasn't.
Scotland and the outlying islands achieved a murder rate average of 0.00000045 per thousand people per year over its first four millenia of occupation. It also had very very little scientific or technical development (well, ok, they invented the stone circle, the method of raising monoliths, and for some reason apartment complexes, but not a whole lot else).
And these guys don't seem too afraid of central justice. [guardian.co.uk] Oh, and the ATF being busted for smuggling guns into Mexico for 6-10 years? Yeah, right, those're the guys I'd trust to defend my freedom. Not.
Cambridge University, one of the leading institutions in the world for scientific research, is one of the most left-wing and has some of the greatest protections against retribution and indeed any kind of central justice system. It was even founded by criminals. Many top US universities for science could say the same, except for perhaps the being founded by criminals bit.
The US military recently admitted death-squads in Afghanistan went out killing civilians for fun. C'mon, the "one rotten apple" gets old after the first few hundred.
Freedom from getting stabbed by my neighbor? How about freedom from shoot-outs over where the dog chose to go? [wwltv.com] Besides, the US has a higher murder rate than almost any other country in the world.
It also has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western world, a preventable death rate double that of the next-highest Western nation, one of the poorest ratings in education and basic literacy, a low rating in overall happiness, the highest rate of incarceration outside of China, an execution rate comparable to North Korea, and a military budget in excess of the rest of the top ten combined. So I'm not seeing a whole lot of this freedom that all this money is supposedly buying.
Well, outside of Wachovia bank that is. They seem to have bought a whole lot of freedom, albeit at the cost of a Mexican civil war and a few hundred thousand lives.
The Victorians once believed as you did. Earned them a crime wave. Then they discarded retribution and threats for moderation and civility, resulting in a rebirth of British democracy.
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Tell me, how is it that in one important metric of "freedom" (oh how long people fall for this catchphrase...) or "civilian pursuits" - social mobility - the US is at the bottom of developed countries? (together with few others, UK for example; at the top are often derided "nanny states", witho
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Yeah, watching nudist beaches is indeed more specialized, but I dispute the claim that this makes them less useful to scientists. If anything, geeks need devices like that more.
Re:Let me assure you (Score:5, Funny)
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The irony being that they used to try to cover up their spy balloons by pretending they were UFOs. Jokes on them because now nobody believes it when they really are basically weather balloons with cameras.
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And, amusingly enough, the fake UFO stories got them way more scrutiny than they would have ever gotten if they had simply told the public "Sorry, we can't discuss classified aircraft or missions."
Re:Let me assure you (Score:4, Funny)
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