Spy Satellites? What Spy Satellites?

mutantcamel writes: "This story at Yahoo says that the actual orbits of US spy satellites are not the same as the ones that the UN thinks that they are. The errors include a launch of a satellite that was never registered, and only two of the last ten satellites have been correctly registered. The errors are bound to cast doubts on what will really happen with the Son of Star Wars programme." Heh, "errors".

Comments

The article's obvious bias is funny.

[unitrcn]

No matter which side of the missile-defense debate you're on, you really have to laugh at the way it is written. Look: First paragraph: 1-sentence summary. Second paragraph:

The errors will add to concerns over George W. Bush's plans to place weapons in space. If today's satellite orbits cannot be trusted, opponents reason, how will we verify the numbers of future space-based anti-missile lasers and anti-satellite weapons?

And that quote comes unattributed, apparently the product of the author of the story at New Scientist. WTF happened to objectivity in journalism?

On the other hand, since it lets us know its bias straight-off, we can dismiss it without having to wade through the crap that follows.

Look Mr Harvard-Liberal-Academic-Kennedy-Wannabe, we all know you hate Bush. But are you really that naive to think that any nation capable of putting a satellite in space wouldn't be able to make the same kinds of observations you did? I have a feeling most nations understand that spy satellites are, well, for spying, and that unless they want to start a war they'll let us have ours and we let them have theirs. The U.S. Space Command is more than capable of keeping track of all man-made satellites in earth-orbit, so arguments about collisions are irrelevant. And the fact is that the treaty says that contents of each country's satellite registry is comnpletely up to that country, so the U.S. is not in violation of the treaty.

The only way I can explain this article is that this "respected space analyst" is either extremely arrogant and naive, or (more likely) an anti-Bush liberal democrat. The other thing to remember is that New Scientist is based in Europe (in G.B. I believe), and to fill a weekly magazine with "cutting-edge scientific journalism" they have to choose a few dodgy topics as filler, the more controversial, the better.

Re:Now that is stupid...

[JanneM]

First, the choice of orbit isn't random; some orbits are better than others (land or sea coverage springs to mind). These orbits will tend to crowd faster than others (there is a real shortage of geostationary orbits by now, for example). Second, they'd be circling in similar orbits for years.

OK, let's stand on random point on a cricket field (though I'd prefer an icehockey rink, but whatever :-) ), and toss marbles. This time, however, we toss them in similar directions. Also, we do another toss about every fifty minutes for the next ten years (or around 100.000 times).

/Janne

Hiding spy satellites is hardly evil...

[Bjarke Roune]

Using the words of George Carlin: "how can it be a spy satellite, when on the news they say it's a spy satellite?" The point being, of course, that spy satellites naturally are supposed to spy on people, and it's not very productive to spy on people if they know exactly where you are and what you are seeing. So, of course the owner of a spy satellite will try to conceal it's whereabouts. In case of war, shooting down a satellite you know where is is also a hell of alot easier than if you didn't know.

If you still think the US are evil here, think about how successfull a real, human spy would be if he walked around with a big sign saying "I'm a spy!" That wouldn't work very well, now would it? In fact, it would simply be silly, not to say stupid, right? It's the same thing with satellites (of course not completely, but the analogy is sound).

If anyone is worried about bias, I'm Danish, not American.