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French Threat To ID Secret US Satellites
SkiifGeek brings to our attention a story that ran on space.com a few months back but didn't get much wider notice at the time. "The French have identified numerous objects in orbit that do not appear in the ephemeris data reported by the US Space Surveillance Network. Now, the US claims that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist. The French insist that at least some of the objects they have found boast solar arrays. Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites. While they don't plan to release the information publicly, they do intend to use it as leverage to get the US to suppress reporting of sensitive French satellites in their published ephemeris."
Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites.
If they're referring to the moon, that's been ours for a while (finders keepers), and it's not exactly a secret. unless you're referring to man-made satellites only?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Wow, and the French though that your fat American fingers would never be able to crank out predictable trolls about their military with such speed :-P Clearly they underestimated you. Kudos.
So shooting a laser beam to blind something non-existent shouldn't be a problem. If you can knock this non-existent "thing" from the sky even better, now it would "doubly" not exist!
I personally know the REAL head of the NSA. We lunch daily and discuss the latest sat feeds over fresh ground coffee and scones. No shit.
Go ahead. I dare you to find and track a surveilance satellite with a telescope. It isn't impossible, but think for a minute what it requires.
There's a number of useful things you can know about a satellite, just knowing it's orbit.
* If it's geostationary, it's designed to look at or communicate with whatever is right underneath it. It's also unlikely to be a photorecon satellite, because your km-per-pixel sucks from 36,000 km away.
* If it's in a polar orbit, it's probably designed to look at big swathes of the Earth as the latter rotates under it. Polar orbits are too expensive otherwise.
* If it's in a low orbit with just enough inclination to get up to your latitude -- why, that sounds like it might be a photorecon satellite designed with you in mind...
* In which case, if you know when it's over you, and when it's not, then you have a rough idea of when you're in the crosshairs. That can be handy.
I don't necessarily disagree that the main way you keep your capabilities secret is to keep what the satellites do secret. But it probably helps, at least a little bit, to keep the existence and orbit of the thing secret, too.
"Pardon Moi, but does your secret satellite fire lasers?"
"No, it certainly does not."
"Oh...good. Then I'll just be orbiting this small camera platform over here next to it and...."ZZZzzzZZzzZzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzaaaaaaappppppppppppPPPPPPPP!!!!!!
"I thought you said your secret satellite doesn't fire lasers!!??"
"That's not my secret satellite..."
The gung-ho type we don't mind, they are consistent and wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They are honest and straightforward.
HAHAHAHAHA!
The current crop of jingoists are a bunch of cowards who think war is fine and dandy, as long as it's other people doing the dying. Damn near every top pro-war politician and commentator who was of age to serve during Vietnam found some way to stay out of uniform, and their kids aren't in any hurry to sign up for Iraq either. Oh, how "honest and straightforward" of them!
It's this new, smug, "I'm ashamed of my country" kind of American that I cannot stand
When your country does something wrong -- and when your country is a democracy, in which the leaders are theoretically responsible to the people -- it is good and right to be ashamed. Being ashamed isn't enough, of course; you should also do something to change it. Which, in the civilized world, includes bitching loudly and publicly. The idea that we should keep our mouths shut except to parrot platitudes of support for our Glorious Leaders is repulsive.
I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight
If you really think France surrendered "without a fight" I'd recommend reading some more history. They were beaten, on the battlefield, by an army which could easily have done the same thing to any other country -- yes, including both the US and Australia -- that had the misfortune to be right next door to Germany at the time. And, in fact, did. The Wehrmacht in its heyday was unstoppable, and it took the Allies years (and a whole hell of a lot of lives) to swamp it in a war of attrition.
BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
I served for ten years (two years reserve, eight years active duty, including Desert Storm) and I'm pretty sure that even as a fat old guy with a bum leg, I could still step up and defend US soil if I had to. The "rah rah USA" crowd would be screaming, crying, and pissing their pants.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Considering recent history, they probably suspect the worst case scenario for exposing a U.S. spy satellite is a pardon.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
I'm not ashamed of my country having a lot of power. And I'm not ashamed of my country using it- if you have power, you've got a responsibility to use it. With great power comes great responsibility, as Stan Lee said. I say, if a carefully planned, well thought out military intervention is the best option (not that war is ever a great option, but sometimes it is better than not going to war) then, well, bombs away.
What I'm deeply ashamed of is the shitty job we've done in using it. Bullying our allies, running secret prisons, detentions without trial, torturing people to death, losing much of the headway we made in Afghanistan, and making Iraq into a place so terrifyingly bloody that people actually long for the days when it was merely ruled by a psychopathic dictator... the past few years have been shameful. Anyone who could look at what we've done in the past few years and feel any sort of pride is either deeply in denial or a sociopath. I have no problem with America using its power to advance its own interests and improve the world, but we haven't been doing either.
Amateur satellite trackers have been the bane of US secret satellite projects for quite a while, actually. You don't necessarily even need a telescope to do it, you just need to live somewhere without too much light pollution. (Which is probably why a lot of the notable amateurs tend to be from Canada or Australia.) Of course what the amateurs publish probably doesn't come close to the precise ephemeris data that the French are gathering, and likewise doesn't include radio frequencies.