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Amateurs Spy On US Spy Plane
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."
Is that just three sentences copypasted at random, with no attempt whatsoever made to explain what this article is about, or what?
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'
http://www.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".
29-foot
To 95% of world's population: that's 8.83m.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Well of course it's easy, they don't send people up. Being man-rated makes the space shuttle vastly more complex.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Here's a handy chart to aid in identification.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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 from Egypt from the comfort of your reddit bookmark.
One thing you can be sure of - if you see a flying object, and it's unidentified, then it is a UFO.
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.
When Wonder Woman sues you for patent infringement. Duh!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Looks like the current orbit will take it right over Tripoli.
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=37375
yes, yes, that's interesting but what we really want to know is when it will become self aware and start killing humans?
"I think this line is mostly filler"
A matte black satellite against the black background of space is going to be hard to spot.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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. 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? 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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is space we're talking about. And There Ain't No Stealth In Space.
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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