Slashdot Mirror
Giant Chinese Desert Mystery Structure Solved
Velcroman1 writes "Slashdotters read Monday about strange symbols in the Gobi Desert recently imaged and indexed by Google Maps. Alien landing zones? Some military thingy? Bizarre art project? Nope. The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets, according to one NASA scientist."
No, they don't match any other places. They're just for calibration. US has similar ones in Arizona.
No, they don't match any other places. They're just for calibration. US has similar ones in Arizona.
And Texas. (Although that one was a NASA photogrammetry calibration target, I think..)
Well, from reading the article, I gather that it's because they might have needed something bigger because the resolution on their spy satellites is not that good. FTFA: "The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution."
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Yes, they drop bombs there.
Its a bombing range. Used to practice bomb drops by the Chinese military.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Luecke is used for calibration, but it was not originally intended for that.
IIRC it was done due to a land dispute with the state.
Calibration is one thing, and actually seeing shit is something else. Maybe they just wanted to make calibration easy with a big easy target to calibrate against.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
So... they correspond to something on the ground they want to match, I betcha.
I betcha not. I betcha they send the satellite up with an image of what to look for on the ground and where to find it, the satellite heads above it, and then orients itself until the view on the ground matches the image. The purpose is for the satellite to calibrate its own position and orientation in space. Once that's done then they can just tell the damn thing where to go to look at whatever the hell they want to look at.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for gay martians. I swear to God.
Nope :) The official lyrics are "confidant", but if you listen closely to the GG theme song, they actually did say "cosmonaut" in the third season. That was an inside joke (Bea Arthur's husband at the time was, in fact, Russian (defected) and a cosmonaut)
Inflatable tanks were used in WW II. Of course, they also camouflage to hide their real tanks.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.