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Special Ops Takes Its Manhunts Into Space
Wired reports on a cluster of mini-satellites that will soon be launched into orbit that will assist U.S. special forces personnel during manhunts. "SOCOM is putting eight miniature communications satellites, each about the size of a water jug, on top of the Minotaur rocket that's getting ready to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. They’ll sit more than 300 miles above the earth and provide a new way for the beacons to call back to their masters." When special forces are able to tag their target, the target can be tracked and located through the use of satellites and cell towers, but coverage is poor in many areas of the world. The satellites going up in September will help to fill in some gaps. "This array of configurable 'cubesats' is designed to stay aloft for three years or more. Yes, it will serve as further research project. But 'operators are going to use it,' Richardson promised an industry conference in Tampa last week."
Please Google: NASA secret space program
How am I supposed to monetize and strip the privacy from "NASA secret space program?"
Or, did you mean perform a web search for NASA secret space program?
We're getting closer to "Enemy of the State".
um thats MESSED UP. a man can't outrun a sattelite, thats simply not fair.
"In your face from outer space" - Motto of the USAF Space Warfare Center, Falcon AFB.
That's from 1996. SWC never really quite lived up to that motto, and their successor, the Space Innovation & Development Center, is more of an R&D operation. It's becoming closer to reality, though.
We'll know it's real the first time some space-based weapon zaps an individual on the ground.
Is it a time machine??? How can he promise a conference last week?
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
Since when have we accepted this term into our everyday language? Where is the justice in a "hunt"? Hunting ends with a kill, not with a prosecution. Honestly I don't know why we tolerate such dehumanisation. All I have to say is fuck Soulskill for posting this and contributing to the decline.
It's a way to save money.
It's a GPS for bad boys, so they can track all of them all the time and wait until they meet in some remote location where they need to use only 1 hellfire missile to kill several of them.
They killed several people all the time, but usually it was their wives and kids and cousins and they had to pay a couple of hundred dollars of blood money per capita for those.
Or plutonium nyborg.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Angel
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Kim Dotcom is already visible from space.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
At 300 miles high, eight satellites is not nearly enough for continuous world coverage, so this would only be able to provide semi-periodic updates. Good enough for research, and to supplement whatever they have now. I used http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm to calculate the footprint at 3142 miles in diameter, and the Earth is about 24860 miles around (going through the poles), so the coverage circles would be spread apart, and of course moving continually.
Weaponization of space will only encourage the deployment of more anti-satellite missiles. How many more can we frag before there's an impenetrable wall of shrapnel that prevents us from using any satellites at all?