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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".
A much more realistic attack model for a small country would be to put the nuke in a truck or a shipping container and drive or sail across the border to a major city. If they need extra security, they can always pack the stuff in drugs and smuggling it across the border is no problem at all....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, or CTBT, wasn't ratified by the US, who, incidentally were the first signatories, because the Republicans were so consumed with their hatred of Clinton that they couldn't see straight to give in to even the slightest notion of a 'victory' to him. Partisan and short-sighted politics thereby diminished the US in the eyes of the world (once again), and severely reduced the level of security in the world. Realize that the US stands to benefit greatly from the CTBT; having already tested its weapons to a great degree, they would only become more secure when Pakistan, India, et al voluntarily gave up the ability to test (and thereby develop) their own deadly creations.
Between that, the Kyoto protocol, NMD, and now this discovery that we have been 'in error' on our satellite orbits (is Russia truthful about thiers?), our prestige in the world is reduced to that of a big bully with an attitude problem, rather than the shining beacon of democratic promise and economic prosperity through principled administration of a higher ideal. Plus the fact that W is arrogantly and defiantly ignorant of the issues, and needs Condo Rice to tell him that Mexico is part of North America...
slightly ot, but it puts it all in perspective, ya think?
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
"And I'm not saything this from necessarily an American standpoint - I fully respect the rights of all other countries to do the same thing."
Uh huh. So you wouldn't mind if some country assasinated Bush and supported a puppet dicator... Or maybe funded the Canadians to terrorize and wage a guerrila war against the US... Just because they don't like our method of government.
I mean, sure you'd be sad if your side lost, but you fully respect their right to do that sort of thing, eh?
It's heavens-above.com with a dash. I accidentally hit "submit" instead of "preview".
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Well, spy satellites are spottable by amateur astronomers... so we should count on that the rest of the world have calculated their orbits themselves.
The danger as I see it is the spy satellites crashing into important scientific satellites or even commercial ones like TV satellites. I would be really pissed of if I couldn't watch TV because of the stupid US government! The NSA,FBI and CIA reading my mail I don't care about, but when they start interfering with what TV channels I can watch, I get mad!
Well, perhaps they do already through sensorship already? Through sensoring sensorship, sensorship can be hold secret.
The USA think they can do whatever they want - and they can. They got most nukes, even though I bet Russia and China got enough aswell.
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
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.
The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, and needs to change his sig.
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.
:-) ), 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).
OK, let's stand on random point on a cricket field (though I'd prefer an icehockey rink, but whatever
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
What's next, a slow moving propeller driven spy plane taking down a faster, more maneuverable fighter jet ?
What happens when such "accidents" occur just while some hostile nation is amassing large amounts of troops and tanks on neighbor's border ?
Using the 'an accident might happen' line of reasoning, wouldn't the U.S. also then be compelled to disclose the locations of submarines, ships, armored vehicles and planes so they also don't collide with commercial vessels ?
Other nations hate it, but then they're inclined to hold disdain for any super power. It's the nature of power politics and warfare to be suspicious of the guy with the big gun. It's their purgative to try and get the information, just at it is the U.S.'s to say NUTS.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
These aren't the satellites you're looking for. Move along.
spoo
The Spy satellites orbits were computed using an array of pentium I's, which were then submitted to the UN. Ofcourse due to the high accuracy required they used Floating Point numbers.....
Satellite nerd: OK sir, we're ready to register the exact position of this here spy satellite with the UN.
Colonel Korn: (twirls moustache) That's top secret info. Classify it and "spill coffee" all over the UN paperwork.
Satellite Nerd: But you realize that any third grader with binoculars will instantly find out? How can we keep the brightest thing in the sky secret?
Colonel Korn: Hmf. Well, it'll at least be secret from all the second graders, and thats enough for me! Make it so!
Why is it that political or foreign-relations stories get all the responses with Bush-bashing and America-bashing?
I would like to have an accurate poll as to how many of these 'informed' slashdot posters actually voted. After all, I have found that the ones who complain the most do so since they didn't voice their opinion at the appropriate place and time; i.e. the polls.
p.s. 'i didnt like either candidate' is not a valid excuse; try again.
Are you awake yet? This has not a thing to do with war, nothing to do with pointing fingers or guns at whoever the media conspires to call the bad guy this week. This has to do with you being a willing, gullible toady of a patriot and failing to rub two brain cells together to check facts, read between lines, or think critically about what they're saying and why they're saying it.
Fact check: the satellites aren't hidden at all. From a few weeks of observation or perhaps even less, you can calculate the orbital elements and track the movement for as long as you like or until the orbit changes again. The orbital elements of these satellites are public knowledge anyway, so why is the US lying? From recent experience, it's because that's all it does well.You don't have any idea what you're talking about. Shut up and listen for a change.
Maybe you'll get lucky and see the NOSS satellites, there are 3 flying in formation. I've only seen them twice.
SuperID
America is the rouge nuclear state it is trying to "protect" it self from. The irony is that no one can force it to do anything it doesnt want to. The UN might have power, but the US will use its power in ways that wont even be directly tied to it other then a bennifit.
See about the cia and the killing sprees they have had. America had a great ideal, but its time has passed because it can no longer be held true with out money. I am an american.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Geez...I know this is Slashdot and all...but PERL Harbor? What the hell? Come up for air now and then...can't think code all the time.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
And clueless slashdot posters... Spy sats change their orbits from time to time. These changes are obviously made to support a particular observational project. It would be foolish to routinely publish this information, as it can give away the goal or target the change was made for. This is called operational data, and its classified, hence not released to the public.
Let's use an example... Say we're monitoring Iraq's ballistic missile development. They've bought orbital intel from the Chinese or Russians or whomever, on American and British spy-sats. They know when they're overhead, and can plan their activities accordingly. When the spy-sats are overhead, they park mobile launchers in hangars, keep everyone indoors, and generally try and make a place look uninteresting. So, in order to avoid this rouse a subtle change in the orbit of a spy-sat might be made, to invalidate their intel over a period of time and increase the odds of catching them off gaurd. A larger change might be made to bring a close pass in range of the cameras/radars within an orbit or two, in order to catch some interesting event.
The end result is, whatever orbit data is available on the spy-sats, it's virtually always out of date. It's intentional, and actually a requirement for the spy-sats to get their job done. Get over it.
To be honest, I'm really shocked at the amount of Euro "anti-american" crap flying around here. We share much of this data with your countries. The people in the UN complaining about this are the third-world represenatives who's countries can't track the spy-sats themselves, and are sick of having their own imperialist tendancies thwarted by the bigger more advanced nations. Much of the world didn't learn the lessons of WW1 and WW2. This is one of those cases where they can't be allowed to learn them the hard way, no matter how much they complain.
Temkin
Any satellite moving slower than 18,000 miles per hour isn't going to be up there for long. Any satellite moving faster than 25,000 miles per hour isn't going to be in the vicinity of Earth for long. Within that range of orbital speeds, it really does not matter how small and maneuverable your satellite is. Evasive action is not possible. By the time you notice a collision might be imminent, it has happened.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
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.
Bjarke Roune
Umm
Call me strange but if i was going to spend billions of dollars on a network or spy sattelites and then put them in orbit would i then wilingly tell the world just where they really are ?
Hey saddam theres a spy sattelite that passes over this point of Iraq at this time of the day so dont put that bio weapons plant there.
Isnt the point of having these tools that no-one knows where they are ?
Just a thought
(im not commenting on the US govt and its spying - thats not something i can do as i dont live in the US)
The reason you want _everybody_ to tell where their satellites are is of course that you don't want any accidents. Having a satellite 'hidden' by placing it in a secret orbit defeats that. Sooner otr later some commercial or scientific satellite is going to get too close, and we will have a _very_ expensive incident - and if my memory doesn't fail me, according to international law, US would be solely responsible and would be obliged to pick up the tab.
Worse, if one state feels they can do this with impunity, other states will do so as well. If two reconnaisance satellites from different countries where to destroy each other, it would lead to a lot of tension as both sides would try to determine whether the incident was an accident or deliberate on either part. Having misunderstandings over this kind of thing is not good...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
"It's silly. These things are among the brightest objects in the sky," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based policy group. He says the Pentagon has grown arrogant, believing "we won the cold war, we can do whatever we want".
The brightest objects in the sky, even with all the light pollution? Seriously, I've never seen a satellite other than SkyLab. And then, only because everybody in the neighborhood knew when it was to fly by!
Those things don't need navigation lights or bright colors. I'm afraid, Mr. Pike, that the Pentagon can do anything they want in this matter.
-- sigs are like parking spaces - all the good ones are occupied
As others have pointed out, the US is deliberately not telling the UN the right orbits.
Hate to sound like a right wing wacko, but where does it say in the Constitution that the US listens to the UN? We can (not saying we should) tell the UN to pound sand. A significant number of Americans believe we should. Guess what, they vote that way, too.
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso