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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.
And why would these be needed. There are already many structures easily visible form space and static, so why not just use one of those?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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..)
They're just using it as a controlled environment to test out some new radar based spy satellites and possibly to test countermeasures against similar satellites orbited by other nations. The quasi-random grid layouts are the most visually striking, but I think the fighter jet surrounded by carefully positioned radar reflectors is more interesting. In theory you could mess up the image enough to camouflage your planes from satellite based radar. I could imagine the same being true for some of the qausi-grid layouts as well, they could be testing for multi-path effects or any number of other things.
The 'structures' are lines painted on the ground used for target practice.
Its a documented bomb range with an airport and a simulated airport to bomb as well.
If you bother to zoom out on Google Maps you can figure it out fairly quickly, oh and a few Google searchs will reveal that we've known this for years.
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Free satellite calibration provided over China
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.
Thats what they want you to think. No one can stop me from imagining the most paranoid delusional scenario. It is a free country and I have the freedom to be fearful of future, gays, the 99% hippies, the mexicans. I will not be pacified, I will not be ameliorated, I will not be persuaded from using words like ameliorated, It is my time, It is my mind, and I'm gonna blow it on the most trivial stuff.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
you never repurposed anything? Perhaps the area once was a bomb range (cold war era perhaps) and they have repurposed these vast tracts of government owned land into satellite calibration areas. Hell, look at this:
http://g.co/maps/39mhb
That is near where i live. On google earth it looks like an air base mockup. from the ground, you can't even see the thing. That *was* an air base about 50 years ago. Now its a few foundations and a crumbling runway. Things look a lot different from above.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
If anything to me the interesting part is how much more poor the resolution on the Chinese sats are to the Americans since the Chinese targets are fricking huge and the bullseyes they have in AZ go down to some pretty tiny center targets. I'm sure in another decade though they'll have it tight enough they'll be able to read the license on a car, they'll just need a GUI in VB like the CSI guys.
Confirmation bias. The targets you see are only the ones big enough to be seen clearly on Google Maps. If we (or the Chinese or the Russains or whoever) had a spy satellite that could read the year off a quarter, the quarter would just be placed in the correct place and they'd take pictures of it. The fact that you can't see the quarter on Google Maps because GOOGLE doesn't have that kind of resolution doesn't mean nobody does.