[HN Gopher] Small, cheap spy satellites mean there's no hiding p... ___________________________________________________________________ Small, cheap spy satellites mean there's no hiding place Author : known Score : 315 points Date : 2021-03-23 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.economist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com) | humbleMouse wrote: | There is a limited amount of orbit space and limited amount of | satellites that can be launched. Building too much infrastructure | around them is risky and not a good idea for long term stability. | geuis wrote: | Where's the article? On mobile it just cuts off at " HawkEye's | satellites could pinpoint these renegades by listening for faint | signals emanating from their navigation radars and radio | communications". | nfriedly wrote: | There's a paywall, but you can read the full thing at | https://archive.is/T8XtA | xwdv wrote: | Just go inside a building. | EGreg wrote: | Where your gait can be analyzed, and wifi analysis can | correlate you by your heart beat and other things. | | The thing is that after connecting all those databases, an AI | can quickly figure out where everyone has been and what they're | up to. And as the Five Eyes shares info, you can ask friendly | countries to spy on your own citizens. | xwdv wrote: | Both can be defeated by a long dress and a bottle of water. | ZanyProgrammer wrote: | How will a spy satellite tell me what's going on inside a | building or underground? | longsword wrote: | You can disable the Paywall by disabling JavaScript. | | (You can spot it, because the site initially loaded and then | paywalled itself) | josefresco wrote: | Or you could subscribe to the Economist for $189/year. | | Learn more about them here: | https://www.economist.com/news/2020/06/19/frequently-asked-q... | snypher wrote: | I'm keeping my $200, thanks. | | The current members of the board of directors of The | Economist Group are: Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman), Zanny | Minton Beddoes (editor-in-chief of The Economist), Lady | Suzanne Heywood, Brent Hoberman, David Bell, John Elkann, | Alex Karp, Sir Simon Robertson, Lady Lynn Forester de | Rothschild, Chris Stibbs and Baroness Jowell. | josefresco wrote: | > The current members of the board of directors... | | And? | slowhand09 wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0 | josefresco wrote: | Is this HN's version of being Rickrolled? | jpm_sd wrote: | Or by quickly hitting Esc: | | ---------- | | In the middle of last year, Ecuadorians watched with concern as | 340 foreign boats, most of them Chinese, fished just outside | the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around their country's | westernmost province, the Galapagos Islands. The law of the sea | requires such vessels to carry GPS-based automatic | identification systems (AIS) that broadcast where they are, and | to keep those systems switched on. Some boats, however, failed | to comply. There were more than 550 instances of vessels not | transmitting their locations for over a day. This regular radio | silence stoked fears that the boats concerned were sneaking | into Ecuador's waters to plunder its fish. | | Both local officials and China's ambassador to Ecuador denied | this, and said all the boats were sticking to the rules. In | October, however, HawkEye 360, a satellite operator based in | Virginia, announced it had detected vessels inside Ecuador's | EEZ on 14 occasions when the boats in question were not | transmitting AIS (see map). HawkEye's satellites could pinpoint | these renegades by listening for faint signals emanating from | their navigation radars and radio communications. | | HawkEye's satellites are so-called smallsats, about the size of | a large microwave oven. They are therefore cheap to build and | launch. HawkEye deployed its first cluster, of three of them, | in 2018. They are now in an orbit that takes them over both of | Earth's poles. This means that, as the planet revolves beneath | them, every point on its surface can be monitored at regular | intervals. | | Initially, the data the satellites collected were downloaded to | a tracking station on Svalbard, a Norwegian island in the | Arctic Ocean. But business has since boomed. HawkEye now counts | a dozen governments among its customers, as well as private | clients. The firm has therefore recruited the services of a | second ground station, in Antarctica, and it put a second | cluster into orbit on January 24th. It plans three more such | launches this year, and also intends to widen its network of | ground stations yet further. | | Given this success, it is hardly surprising that at least six | other companies are operating or developing similar systems. | Quilty Analytics, a research firm in Florida, expects the | number of radio-frequency (RF) intelligence satellites of this | sort in orbit to multiply from a dozen at the beginning of | January to more than 60 by the end of next year. | | Unmixed signals | | RF-intelligence satellites detect where a transmission is | coming from in two ways. One, trilateration, relies on | measuring minute differences in a signal's arrival time at each | member of a cluster. The other uses the Doppler effect--the | shift in a signal's frequency if the transmitter is moving | relative to the receiver. Together, according to HawkEye, these | can pinpoint a signal's source to within 500 metres of its true | origin. Kleos Space, a Luxembourgeois company that launched its | first cluster in November and hopes to put two more up later | this year, says its accuracy ranges between 3,000 and 200 | metres. | | A cluster sweeps a band of territory 2,000km wide so, circling | the planet every 90 minutes or so, it can revisit many areas | several times a day. Moreover, unlike spy satellites fitted | with optical cameras, RF satellites can see through clouds. | Their receivers are not sensitive enough to detect standard | mobile phones. But they can pick up satellite phones, walkie- | talkies and all manner of radar. And, while vessels can and do | illicitly disable their ais, switching off their communications | gear and the radar they use for navigation and collision- | avoidance is another matter entirely. "Even pirates don't turn | those things off," says John Beckner, boss of Horizon | Technologies, a British firm that plans its first launch in | August. | | RF data are also cheap to collect. Satellites fitted with | robotic high-resolution cameras are costly. Flying microwave | ovens that capture and timestamp radio signals are not. Horizon | says that building, insuring and launching its August mission | should cost no more than about $1.4m. | | America's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), one of | that country's numerous spying operations, is a big user of RF | intelligence. It employs HawkEye's data to find guerrilla camps | and mobile missile-launchers, and to track both conventional | warships and unconventional ones, like the weaponised | speedboats sometimes deployed by Iran. Robert Cardillo, a | former director of the agency who now advises HawkEye, says | dozens of navies, Russia's included, spoof AIS signals to make | warships appear to be in places which they are not. RF | intelligence is not fooled by this. Mr Cardillo says, too, that | the tininess of RF satellites makes them hard for an enemy to | destroy. | | Beside matters military, the NGA also uses RF data to unearth | illicit economic activity--of which unauthorised fishing is | merely one instance. Outright piracy is another. And the | technique also works on land. In 2019, for example, it led to | the discovery of an illegal gold mine being run by a Chinese | company in a jungle in Gabon. And in 2020 the managers of | Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo began | using HawkEye data to spot elephant poachers and dispatch | rangers to deal with them. | | There are commercial uses, too. Andy Bowyer, Kleos's boss, | reports interest among telecoms firms keen to locate rogue | transmitters, such as unlicensed ham radios, that are operating | within their domains. Regulators, meanwhile, would like the | firm to create "heat maps" of shifting patterns of legitimate | transmissions. These would help them select sites for mobile- | phone towers and also give them a better idea of the value in | particular places of licences to use parts of the radio | spectrum that are going up for auction. Some charities, too, | have an interest in Kleos's data. RF information can, for | example, flag up routes taken by migrants likely to need food | and other aid. | | Declustering | | Using satellite clusters to gather RF intelligence is clever. | But engineers at Unseenlabs, a firm in Rennes, France, reckon | it is already outdated. At the moment, Unseen has three | satellites in orbit and sells data to about ten navies, | including France's, as well as to maritime insurers and a | handful of big defence contractors. But its satellites operate | independently, rather than as a cluster, for Unseenlabs' | engineers have devised a detection system, which they claim is | accurate to within 5,000 metres, that requires but a single | satellite. | | How this system works remains a secret--and one that, according | to Clement Galic, Unseenlabs' boss, is protected by the French | state. After several attempts were made to steal it, he says, | the defence ministry's Directorate General of Armaments offered | its assistance in defending the details from cybertheft. | | Secret or not, though, Unseenlabs may soon have competitors in | the single-satellite-RF-intelligence market, for Horizon, too, | says that it has worked out how to perform the trick--a claim | backed up by the fact that its launch in August will loft but a | single device. Shortly after it filed an application for a | patent in America on the wizardry involved, the government | there classified it. Even so, Mr Beckner drops a hint. The | method involves assessing differences in the angles at which a | target's signals arrive during the satellite's arc across the | sky. Horizon says its system will be accurate to within 3,000 | metres. By the middle of next year, it, too, plans to operate | three satellites in different orbits--enough to scan most of | the planet every two hours or so. | | Horizon also plans to compile a library of unique radar-pulse | "fingerprints" of the world's vessels, for the tiny differences | in componentry that exist even between examples of the same | make and model of equipment mean that signals can often be | linked to a specific device. It will thus be able to determine | not merely that a vessel of some sort is in a certain place, | but which vessel it is, and where else it has been. | | Unseenlabs, for its part, has already catalogued the radar | fingerprints of many thousands of vessels, several hundred of | which have, subsequent to the events of last summer, spent time | in the Galapagos EEZ with their AIS beacons switched off. It | remains to be seen what Ecuador's authorities will do with that | information. But no one can say they weren't told. | Noxmiles wrote: | Why is quickly hitting Esc working? It's perfectly working | and that is strange. | formerly_proven wrote: | Aborts loading of the page, JS usually comes last - cant | execute what wasn\t loaded. | broooder wrote: | Have you tried the caves? | LinuxBender wrote: | and mines. With mines you would already have a good idea of the | rock composition and layers. I wanted to put a literal "man | cave" in a mine _by parking an RV in one_ , but I can't find | any good documentation on restrictions per state on personally | owned mines vs. claims. | mhh__ wrote: | The stories of NRO uniform patches giving away classified | information never cease to make me chuckle. | EMM_386 wrote: | More information here for anyone curious: | | https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/g2728/best... | simonh wrote: | This one's my favourite. It's rare you get a good look at some | of the best classified satellite imagery available anywhere | (there are some doubts whether this was actually a satellite | image, but it seems likely). | | https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/755994591/president-trump-twe... | hooloovoo_zoo wrote: | Startup idea #42123: Tactical Sombreros | calibas wrote: | This isn't a good thing or a bad thing, it's all in how we | respond. | | This could lead to greater transparency, openness, and | accountability, or it can be abused by a small group of people | for their own power and profit. Nothing hypothetical about it | either, both cases are already true. | idclip wrote: | Yeha thats gonna get regulated pretty fast. | | Israel is VERY uptight about its airspace and the drones here are | basically sharks with lasers. | | Good luck, comrad. | sandworm101 wrote: | Lots of little cameras up there. Ok. They can see ships. That is | a far cry from total surveillance. There are countless physical | limitations that prevent the concept of total space surveillance, | from lens diameter to the atmosphere's absorption of certain | frequencies. I remain far more concerned by the cameras in my | apartment building, or taps on my internet/cell connections, than | I am about space cameras. | | Be more worried about your local police operating airborne camera | systems. Drones hovering over cities are far far cheaper than any | space-based surveillance scheme. | dfilppi wrote: | Unless they are indoors, no true. | neilshevlin wrote: | On a good note, getting access to really high quality Earth | observation data is really good for geophysics and geoscience | research. | rexreed wrote: | And yet, MH370 is still missing. Yes I know satellites can't see | under water but the earth can still hide mysteries. | BelenusMordred wrote: | Reading about the two nacro subs captured in the last year it's | pretty clear you don't even need to go deep. | | For a long time I was under the impression that diesel subs | stand out like a sore thumb on sat photos and nation states | watch them all like hawks, but apparently not and drug cartels | can just roll around as they please in them. | CapitalistCartr wrote: | Diesel subs at 30 meters become nearly invisible. They're | hell to find. And if they stop, they're really, truly silent. | The best way to find one is don't lose it in the first place. | Track it from base it's entire trip. | BelenusMordred wrote: | Pardon my layman ignorance on this, but they still need to | surface pretty often right? And the diesel engines leave a | distinct signature when they surface to recharge the | batteries? | | Watched countries argue a bit over diesel vs nuclear | submarines and this is where I've been imprinted with the | idea that nuclear subs are the only actual true stealth | subs you can build. I may be wrong here, but the evidence | seems overwhelming based on usage. Diesel subs are for | homeland defense purposes and don't worry about the enemy | knowing their whereabouts, nuclear subs go silent for | months and everyone is completely clueless as to where they | actually are. | CapitalistCartr wrote: | Yes, diesels have to surface and recharge. Nukes can't be | completely silent because of the coolant systems. Each | has it's strengths and weaknesses. | petre wrote: | True. But they're stealth enough, can operate with a | snorkel without completely surfacing and modern li-ion | battery tech allows them to operate underwater for weeks. | | https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy- | ships/a281849... | goatinaboat wrote: | _may be wrong here, but the evidence seems overwhelming | based on usage. Diesel subs are for homeland defense | purpose_ | | AIP technology means non-nuclear subs still have lots of | uses. They can get closer in shore to gather signals | intelligence or drop off/pick up SF. | Xylakant wrote: | Nation states may just not be interested in exposing | information about their military capabilities for law | enforcement purposes. | teddyh wrote: | This assumes, of course, that nation states would _want_ to | stop the submarines of drug cartels. | DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii wrote: | Judging from this anecdote it seems diesels subs can be | stealthier than nuclear ones[0]. | | [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy- | ships/a197847... | hwillis wrote: | In many ways its harder to see something through water than | it is to see it through _rock_. Ground-penetrating microwave | radar can get through tens of meters of quartz but | centimeters of water. VLF and ULF penetrate 10-100x farther | through the ground than through seawater. The frequencies | that can penetrate more than a few hundred meters of water | are around the same as the ones powering your lights. | Antennas at those frequencies are _miles_ long. You need | special, non-conductive soils and bedrock to make them work. | In short it 's a real pain in the butt. | | After 200 meters the ocean is practically opaque. Objects | much deeper than that are reflecting a handful of photons. | Below 500-1000 meters you're talking about photons per second | at the surface. | | Water is one of a quite small number of general radiation | absorbers. To block alpha/beta/gamma radiation you need pure | density- more mass per volume to slow down high energy | particles. You can use heavy atoms like lead or uranium, or | very densely packed lighter atoms. Neutron radiation is | different- the actual number of atoms per volume is critical | to maximizing the number of scattering events. That means you | use things like polymers- hydrocarbons, so you have as many | small atoms (hydrogen) in a volume as possible. Water is one | of the denser liquids, while still being 11% hydrogen by | mass, vs 14% for pure polyethylene. That makes it quite good. | | Even sound isn't great underwater, relatively speaking- being | a fluid in motion, there's a constantly-changing distortion | on everything. The thermal conductivity also means thermal | signatures spread out quickly. | mr_overalls wrote: | Water is a poor medium for photons, but a great one for | sound. That's why the US and other countries surveil the | seas with linked arrays of underwater microphones, i.e. the | Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS). | | https://fas.org/irp/program/collect/iuss.htm | tgtweak wrote: | Small ones. Additionally, the military intelligence agencies | with access to spy satellites probably don't care about | blowing their cover or capabilities discovering makeshift | drug running submarines. | JulianMorrison wrote: | It's probably less about hiding and more about a needle in a | haystack. Narco subs are small. | kristianpaul wrote: | Oh sure, there caves and forests | partiallypro wrote: | But they do have a good idea as to the area it's in. It's just | very difficult to search such a wide area. | _trampeltier wrote: | Yes, that's sad. But on the other side it's strange, because I | did read, from at least one private company, they would have | every 20 Minutes pictures from the whole earth. And there are | several of such companys and many government agency who make | pictures nonstop. So I think there should be a pic from MH370 | somewhere. | oji0hub wrote: | There may very well be, but intelligence agencies don't want | to expose their capabilities. | ORioN63 wrote: | Disclaimer: My opinion. | | I am fairly sure, no one is taking pictures of the whole | earth, in 20 minutes intervals in a sufficiently high | resolution to pick out an airplane. Specially one, flying | over water. | | For reference, ISS at its height ~400km, can see roughly 3% | of the Earth's surface. This is without any kind of lens. | | If someone has any kind of evidence, showing it otherwise, it | would be great to see. | [deleted] | vaguesortof wrote: | In a few years Blacksky should have a capability close to | what you're describing | FractalParadigm wrote: | Theoretically, if Starlink satellites had cameras of that | sort of caliber on-board, pointed down with wide enough | lenses, they could capture the entire planet continuously | and feed that data back down at close to real-time. | parsimo2010 wrote: | Nobody is going to offer evidence otherwise. Here's a quick | estimate for what you're talking about: the Earth is about | 500 trillion square meters of surface area. An image where | each pixel was a meter would be a 500,000 GP (gigapixel) | image. Even with impressive compression the downlink | requirements alone are insane, even ignoring all the other | issues that would have to be worked out. | | The bottom line is that nobody is imaging the entire | surface of the Earth at any useful resolution daily (aside | from low resolution meteorological satellites). If you want | to track a plane you have to start with other means to then | point a camera and take an image. | | There is a huge difference between a company that has | enough satellites in orbit to be able to take an image of - | _any requested_ area within 20 minutes, and a company that | can take an image of _all areas on Earth_ every 20 minutes. | MH370 is very unlikely to be captured in an image by | coincidence. If there is imagery of it during its last | flight then it would be because someone knew in advance | that something was going to happen (it seems unlikely that | anyone would have known). | Zenst wrote: | The whole aspect of facial recognition upon satellites will sure | open up some messy legal cases in the future I feel. | duxup wrote: | Or just another state that you have no legal recourse in doing | whatever they want. | | How is your foreign social credit score anyway? | JulianMorrison wrote: | Faces no, as other people have said - except, what about | integrated systems that combine ground based CCTV with | satellites, or drones? You might only be able to see someone's | head and shoulders, but that's good enough to follow them as | they walk through a crowd, and you can use that to decide which | CCTV to use. Presuming it's all networked and accessible, but | that might be the case at some future point. | EdwardDiego wrote: | I wonder how gait recognition from space would work, if it | all. | JulianMorrison wrote: | Feet would be single pixels if they were visible at all. | And they don't project much in front or behind when | walking. | james-bcn wrote: | Do you need facial recognition when nearly everyone carries a | mobile phone? | SamuelAdams wrote: | Not to mention RFID is being added to state ID's, driver's | licenses, and passports. | | [1]: https://www.dhs.gov/enhanced-drivers-licenses-what-are- | they | gruez wrote: | You mean the ones that can only be read from a few feet | away at most, and can be blocked by putting them in easily | accessible "rfid blocker" wallets? | deepgrave4 wrote: | How many people are out buying RFID wallets to protect | themselves from spy devices they don't know exist? | walrus01 wrote: | Unless something dramatic changes in the field of optics, | lenses and how to deal with atmospheric blur at those | distances, resolving features smaller than 15-20cm from low | earth orbit remains a low probability. | | Take a look at some youtube videos of a Nikon P1000 at maximum | zoom looking through ordinary atmosphere at some distance away | for an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhQlwKX3LQA | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Presumably, orientation is also an issue - satellites will | tend see tops of heads more than faces full on. | jl6 wrote: | The obvious solution: pivot face-recognition algorithms | into top-of-head-recognition algorithms. | yuliyp wrote: | People can comb their hair quite differently | IceWreck wrote: | > Take a look at some youtube videos of a Nikon P1000 at | maximum zoom looking through ordinary atmosphere at some | distance away for an example. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhQlwKX3LQA | | This is unbelievable. | giantrobot wrote: | While that's an impressive zoom, the camera is moving | _much_ slower relative to the targets (~0km /s) than if it | were in even a low orbit. It's also imaging people at the | extent of its zoom at only a few km away. In orbit it would | be hundreds of km from its targets. | | CubeSats and other small satellites can capture useful | imagery but they're not spy satellites. There's optical | limits to their capabilities because of their size. | ceejayoz wrote: | I think the more likely use is supplementing existing facial | recognition. Recognize a face on a security camera, then be | able to track their movements out and about after that. | Before, too, if you store the satellite footage. | | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christianstork/spy- | plan..., but at scale. | walrus01 wrote: | Pattern of life analysis correlated with ground based | intelligence, where your car goes, where it usually parks | in the day and at night, etc. You would need a _lot_ of LEO | satellites to approach anything like persistent coverage, | however, current sun synchronous things have very long | revisit times for any particular site. | JulianMorrison wrote: | Also clouds kind of get in the way of anything optical - | unless it's a drone lower than the cloud level. | londons_explore wrote: | Atmospheric distortions are worse when looking horizontally | though the atmosphere (think marriage on the horizon). | | It's also only the bottom few miles of atmosphere that is | really thick. | | Looking vertically from 400km up, there actually isn't too | much distortion. The limiting factor is making high enough | quality lenses and getting enough light onto your sensor | without too much diffraction. | pintxo wrote: | But hard to get a face shot from a 90 deg angle, as people | tend to focus their attention on the ground rather the sky. | ta988 wrote: | If you need that you can send a drone though. | saberdancer wrote: | You don't need to look from 90 deg angle. Satellites | often times scan ahead/behind so they don't always scan | at 90 deg angle. | | Look at this image that is probably from a spy satellite. | It's almost at 45 degree angle. | https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29634/trump-tweets- | int... | pintxo wrote: | The previous post argued that the influence of the air is | less severe looking straight down. If we now go back to | looking at an angle, we are back to square one, the | problem of distortion due to the amount of air between | the observer and the observed. | andreareina wrote: | If I'm running the numbers right, then using the Hubble's | maximum theoretic angular resolution of 2.8e-7 rad[1], | something 400km up would still not resolve features smaller | than 11.2cm. That's the absolute best, diffraction-limited | case. Don't know how close we are to that on real-world | optics. | | [1] https://opentextbc.ca/universityphysicsv3openstax/chapt | er/ci... | Valgrim wrote: | There's probably a way to circumvent these limit by using | multiple satellites working together[1], combining images | to form a synthetic aperture[2], using an aperture | mask[3], or a combination of any or all of those. | Actually I'd be surprised if state-sponsored spy agencies | were not already using this. | | [1]https://hypertelescope.org/project/hypertelescope- | space/ | | [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis | | [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_masking_interfe | rometr... | mnw21cam wrote: | Yeah. See https://what-if.xkcd.com/32/ for an existing | analysis. | simonh wrote: | The highest resolution images we know are possible in theory | max out at around the 10cm level due to atmospheric effects. It | seems we can get quite close to this with the big spy | satellites the Hubble Space Telescope was based on. Fortunately | we have a really great example available to examine. | | https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/755994591/president-trump-twe... | ramraj07 wrote: | The "theory max" is not that hardcoded, superresolution is a | field and we don't know what all they are up to with billions | to burn. There were reports at some point about high altitude | drones stationary above cities that can read license plate | level data (not license plates themselves) at video rates | over the entire city so who knows! | baybal2 wrote: | It's known that the latest spy satellites have some kind of | folding mirrors, and adaptive optics - things not being sci- | fi anymore for a few decades at least. | williesleg wrote: | Ha! Satellite are so 1950's | nonameiguess wrote: | This is fundamentally wrong. I doubt the NGA is actually lying to | these writers and more likely just not saying anything and | leaving people to guess, but we have long had the ability to see | the entire earth and commercial imagery is still a tiny, | insignificant part of the national geointelligence enterprise | with capabilities dwarfed by the state-sponsored tech this writer | doesn't know about. Private companies gaining the ability to | track vessels that turned off their transponders is cute and all, | but this is not a new capability by any stretch. | splistud wrote: | The significance of the proliferation of such technology is | that there will actually be people and processes 'watching' the | screen. To my mind this is fundamentally different than the | knowledge that a few state actors had the capability but not | the manpower (or desire) to do so. | nonameiguess wrote: | Sort of and sort of not. I keep typing up long comments all | over this post and then deleting them and I better just stay | away. I'm not at all comfortable pushing the limits of what I | can actually say without getting in trouble, even if it isn't | technically classified. If you mean data like this isn't | already being collected on every vessel on earth and | accessible from a terminal somewhere, that is incorrect. | Creating the system that does that was exactly my job five | years ago. If you mean the Navy largely doesn't care what | you're doing and isn't really paying attention if you're not | a drug runner, pirate, or state actor, then yes, that is | true. | closetohome wrote: | Exactly. Focusing on capability gives you a very myopic view | of the situation. Capabilities are a moving target, with very | few truly revolutionary leaps between the first film-based | spy satellites and whatever we've got today. | | Proliferation is huge. I can buy a high-resolution satellite | photo of my neighbor's property _every day_ if I feel like | spending the money. That 's something that wouldn't have been | available at any cost a decade or two ago. | aerostable_slug wrote: | >commercial imagery is still a tiny, insignificant part of the | national geointelligence enterprise | | This is a false statement. | | Without getting into things that aren't talked about online, I | assure you that commercial imagery is regularly used in | .gov/.mil settings for a variety of purposes. This includes | gap-filling (both geographically and historically), the ability | to disseminate product widely without sanitization, etc. | There's nothing insignificant about its use. | nonameiguess wrote: | We may just disagree on what counts as significant for | whatever reason, but I have had direct access to the resource | management and capacity planning database of ADF-E and ADF-SW | showing exactly how many of each geointelligence product was | created and disseminated and for the RROC this included | products being created from commercial sources. To me, they | were not significant, but I understand this is not | necessarily the case at a tactical level, for many of the | reasons you're giving here like impracticality of downgrade | to a classification level that actually allows you to | disseminate to a forward-deployed commander only cleared for | Secret. | | For MDA specifically, though, we cracked that nut and can | downgrade to the point we're just giving out pngs with no | evidence of where they came from. | williesleg wrote: | Oh, the economist, this should be good! | ble wrote: | Interesting that ships turning off their AIS transponders can | still be picked up from their radio or naval radar signals from | orbit. | | It seemed a bit extreme that the single satellite RF detection | and localization technique referenced in the article would get | classified by the U.S. government -- it's presumably a beamformed | angle & doppler measurement going into a detection algorithm | which is aware of the motion of the satellite platform, which is | cute but not groundbreaking -- but at the same time it's probably | a very inexpensive technology for space-based surveillance of RF | emitters, which has obvious national security ramifications. | | smallsat = cheap | | cheap = affordable for smaller nation states | | RF emitters = many military assets | ImprovedSilence wrote: | Paywalled? | Symmetry wrote: | I listen to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast and they often go into | open source analysis of North Korean or Saudi or whoever's | current projects based on finding test sites with pictures from | this sort of commercial satellite imagery. Recommend if you think | that sounds interesting. | | https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ | phrotoma wrote: | That sounds interesting, are there specific episodes you could | suggest which dig into that topic? | zerkten wrote: | Wollo-Ri | (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1209730/the-wollo- | ri...) is one episode, but their descriptions are helpful for | finding others. | known wrote: | https://archive.is/IerJ9 | hnedeotes wrote: | "One day the magic was finally gone. There was no more wonder. | What before would make you question what sit beyond the veil, and | its impossibility in a linear universe, no longer did. Everything | was catalogued, every inch of soil, wrinkles around the corners | of your mouth, the reflection on your iris when you were happy, | or sad, circumstances you found yourself in. All of that had a | rational thread that could be followed back to the big silent | eye, data point by data point. There was nothing else to | question, no possibility of impossibles, of something unseen. | Just this never ending stream of letters that told you that's all | there is, all that you are" | hooande wrote: | pbronez had some great replies below. I wanted to add that more | data = more questions. The more we understand, the more we'll | have to find out and contextualize. There's more to exploration | than mapping | npteljes wrote: | So, why do I like reading a story? It's already written. Yet | that fact doesn't suck out the joy. | hnedeotes wrote: | Unless someone spoils it out before you read it right? | folmar wrote: | There is a style of spoiler on the first page, for example | see Pharaoh by Boleslaw Prus where spoiler is literally the | first sentence. | oh_sigh wrote: | Most things worth reading aren't so plot focused that | merely knowing a bit of information about it destroys the | value. | NovaS1X wrote: | I don't think so. Reading a book or watching a show isn't | about the fastest route to a conclusion. To borrow a | phrase: it's the journey, not the destination. | | IE: I'm watching The Crown right now. I've been "spoiled" | on the outcome of the show through simple history and | cultural knowledge (I'm Canadian). It doesn't make the show | any less enjoyable when I know that Diana is going to die, | or that Mountbatten was killed by the IRA. | lotsofpulp wrote: | There's a different, maybe even better kind of enjoyment | from surprises (or non spoiled events) in my experience. | I won't watch any movie trailer or read a review so that | I go in as uninformed as possible. | NovaS1X wrote: | That's fair. There's also some stories/movies that are | absolutely critical to come into fresh. Shutter Island is | the first one that comes to mind. | meepmorp wrote: | Even if I know the destination well, I often still enjoy | the trip there. | npteljes wrote: | That kills a kind of a fun, but there are still others. Re- | reading an old favorite for example. | pbronez wrote: | This is poetic, but I don't think it's true. The world is too | complex to model perfectly. It's easy to feel like a digital | lens is the whole world, but it really, really isn't. Twitter | != Voters | | The small sat revolution is a big deal, but much mystery & | magic remains. | scarecrowbob wrote: | Consider the impact that simply believing the relevant | portions of the world has been modeled "well enough". | | If magic and mystery is the good thing, then simply feeling | like there's no place you can get to which hasn't been mapped | might be enough to choke off that feeling, regardless of the | resolution of the map. | jrlocke wrote: | Consider the things beyond this one planet. Surely we're | simply at an interregnum between two great ages of | exploration. | pbronez wrote: | Absolutely. It's self-fulfilling belief. If you believe | yourself to be trapped in an exhausted world, then you are. | It's usually better to choose an abundance mentality. | | The idea that the world has been mapped to the point of | killing all mystery is ludicrous. The Map Is Not The | Territory[1]. | | There are mysteries lurking in your own neighborhood that | you won't notice until you traverse it in a new way. Go for | a walk with a child or dog. Take a bike instead of a car. | Use a wheelchair. Volunteer with local advocacy groups. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_rel | ation | photojosh wrote: | > There are mysteries lurking in your own neighborhood | | > Take a bike | | I do this... and then I map my discoveries in | OpenStreetMap. I recently discovered OpenInfraMap [0] and | that inspired me to go find infrastructure that wasn't | mapped and add it too. | | It works a little in reverse for me; I find a random | thing that isn't mapped well and use it as a motivator to | go explore it on bike or foot and then map it. I did this | for a bunch of local creeks... ran along it, fixed up the | errors, and then added all the individual ways to a | relation. A lot of places that are accessible by foot | only often aren't mapped, so I'll go explore a suburb and | find the unmapped paths that shorten foot routes. Making | the map better match the territory. | | [0] https://openinframap.org/ | test6554 wrote: | Imagine a world with so much mapped data that it too | needs explorers. Data recorded generations ago that has | never been observed by anyone to study it. | Aerroon wrote: | We live in such a world. It wouldn't surprise me if most | security camera footage is never seen by a human. | Robotbeat wrote: | Additionally, the increase in space access is increasing | the scope of humanity to well beyond the Earth. It may | seem ludicrous now, but the same tech that makes cheap | satellites possible will open up other worlds, in | particular the Moon and Mars. | colecut wrote: | "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For | knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, | while imagination embraces the entire world, and all | there ever will be to know and understand." | | -- Albert Einstein | | With a little creativity we should never get bored. | sangnoir wrote: | > Consider the impact that simply believing the relevant | portions of the world has been modeled "well enough". | | That is dangerous belief to those caught-out by the edge- | cases, especially seeing how actual humans lazily defer to, | and others defend "the (application) system": see any HN | thread on AI bias and/or Tesla Autopilots deficiencies. | sdht0 wrote: | I was just reading about the future space missions [0] to | the outer solar system already planned within the next | couple of decades. | | "Whether it's Dragonfly going to Titan, Clipper going to | Europa, hopefully a lander going to Europa, hopefully a | mission that'll fly through the plumes of Enceladus, exo- | planets going gangbusters, SETI hopefully taking on a | broader and broader search and surveying those exo-planets. | Within the next few decades we could potentially answer | this primordial, age old question of, "Are we alone?" And | that's gonna revolutionize biology. It's gonna | revolutionize how we think about our place in the universe. | And so for all of the pains and agony of trying to operate | on these time scales, we do live in a beautiful time where | we might transform the universe in which we live into a | biological universe." | | Along with the commercialization of space travel, I'd say | there is a sufficiently large part of this universe we are | yet to "touch" but soon will be able to. | | I for one am tremendously excited about the future. | | [0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/04/13 | /92-k... | holoduke wrote: | More than 90 percent of all galactic systems are moving | away from us faster than speed of light. There is no way | we can ever reach them. The unreachable horizon is | capturing more and more of what we currently observe. | https://youtu.be/4iC9Qi3y9q8 | TLightful wrote: | With respect. The small sat revolution is a load boll@cks. | | Forgive me. | SonicScrub wrote: | Care to bring up any reasons why you believe the small sat | revolution is a load of bollocks? I work in this industry, | and can address questions or concerns that you may have. | salawat wrote: | I'll bite. Assume every person put a small satellite into | orbit, just once. What problems do we have to overcome | for what payoff? What revolutionary change do we open the | door to? | | Sat launch is at best an Engineering issue at this point. | More satellites open up avenues for more data collection | by well heeled interests, additional burdens on | municipalities when the bloody things deorbit, or worse, | if they don't. It already obstructs or complicates ground | based observation and launch/mission planning/tracking, | and adds excessive risk from debris based on current | propulsion methods. | | It does nothing to advance the State of the Art in manned | spaceflight (one of the species more pressing | challenges), and it'll become costlier and costlier to | get common fuels for rocketry as demand spins down for | fossil fuels elsewhere. | | I just guess I don't see the point in throwing more | autonomous junk into space beyond the minimum necessary | to get the job done, or to hyperfocus on any endeavor | that doesn't eventually culminate in people in space | self-sustainably. | | Maybe I've spent too much time mired in Cost-Benefit | Analyses recently and it's killed my ability to dream and | imagine, but I just don't sea more passive satellites | doing what everything else up there already does, but | better and with a queue fixing anything; it'd be a boon | for launch companies I guess, but do you really need to | be in orbitt to solve half the problems people generally | throw mini-sats at? I'm not sure the answer is yes. | | Love to hear your viewpoint though. | SonicScrub wrote: | I think you're downplaying the benefits of more small- | sats bring to multiple industries and giving too much | weight to certain negative side-effects. | | For starters, let's address some of small-sat | applications. In you comment you said "I don't see the | point... beyond the minimum necessary to get the job | done". What job specifically are you referring to? | Navigation aids? Communications? Because "the job" that | can be handled by small-sats has near unlimited scope. | I'm sure you've already heard about LEO communication | constellations (such as Starlink) that are bringing | world-wide communication infrastructure. Communications | infrastructure is a pre-requisite for industrialization, | and can greatly assist with providing education to remote | areas. Both of these have the potential to lift many of | the global poor out of extreme poverty. Communications | infrastructure is something that is very easy to take for | granted living in a developed first world nation, but the | net benefit it provides to society cannot be understated. | | People like to focus on the big extravagant projects | popularized by eccentric billionaires, but the CubeSat | space is filled with other valuable applications as well. | Here are some other industry applications that don't get | as much time in the spotlight: | | - Resource management / surveying (logging, fishing, | mining etc) | | - Poaching / illegal fishing detection and monitoring | | - Data collection for weather / climate models | | - Extreme weather forecasting / detection | | - Forest fire monitoring / detection | | - Space-based astronomy | | - Agriculture monitoring | | The above list won't directly impact your day-to-day like | the smart-phone revolution did, but that list indirectly | touches many aspects of our lives. So again, which "job" | are you referring to "getting the job done"? The list | above alone (even excluding the comms constellations) | could easily require 1000s of CubeSats. The interesting | thing about the CubeSat revolution is that because it's | so cheap to send something into space, every possible | niche is being explored as industry scrambles to carve | out their slice. This comment "but I just don't see more | passive satellites doing what everything else up there | already does" is not one at all shared within the | industry. The CubeSat revolution is doing things that | have never been done before. And is doing the things that | had been done previously cheaper, faster, and better. | | Now let's talk about the downsides. The space junk and | Kessler Syndrome problem is typically brought up in the | context of the CubeSat revolution, but it is largely | misplaced. CubeSat applications typically require low- | earth orbit. In low-earth orbit, atmospheric drag is | sufficiently high that junked satellites de-orbit | naturally in reasonable time-frames. In addition, placing | these satellites into such a low orbit does not create | large amounts of junk during launch/insertion. In | addition, with space now accessible to more than just | government agencies, the appropriate regulatory | frameworks for managing space traffic / space junk are | being drawn up. The commercial benefits of open, | accessible space create huge incentives for governments | to manage these issues. | | I also see you are disappointed that the CubeSat | revolution does nothing to advance manned space-flight. I | assure you; this is far from true. In the early days of | space exploration, space was very expensive. People focus | on launch costs, but it's much more than that. Supply | chains didn't exist. Nothing was mass manufactured. | Everything was custom made. This is changing. The space | economy of scale is ramping up, and government-led "for | the good of mankind" projects are directly benefiting. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | I swear people watch one highly dramatized movie and | think we're something in imminent danger of running out | of space up there. We certainly ain't, and it's not like | companies don't consider these issues. | spockz wrote: | I'm all for learning how to do space flight better and | getting all the regulations in place and getting | experience with space launches. The only thing that | worries me is whether we will end up in some situation | like we are now with plastics that appear everywhere in | our food supply chain and are a problem also because the | unknown unknowns. | | Will we still be able to operate society when we rely so | much on all the services provided by These smaller | satellites and there is a solar flare. Indeed, what if | some event does trigger the Kessler Syndrome. Just like | see radiation from Fukushima show at the us west coast in | fish. | | Will it be too late to do something with all the | knowledge we have gained? | SonicScrub wrote: | With the CubeSats revolution there aren't a lot of | unknown unknowns. The risks are clear, and the benefits | far outstrip them. Again, as mentioned above, Kessler | Syndrome is of little threat in the low earth orbit which | CubeSats operate in. | | I don't really understand the argument that coming to | rely on CubeSats puts us at risk because they could be | damaged by a solar flare. And therefore we shouldn't reap | the benefits of this new technology? That line of | thinking is like rejecting the advancement of electricity | because we will be worse-off in the event of a power | outage. Sure, black-out incidents occur, and sometimes | (like the recent Texas outage) people are ill-prepared. | But how is choosing not to pursue electricity because of | black-out risk the better alternative? Surely benefiting | from the technology in the far more common scenario of | normal operation is better than not having it at all. | mrzimmerman wrote: | Do you mind elaborating? | 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: | Like how do you make friends who can pay to put one into | orbit? Last I checked it was 100K. | unchocked wrote: | Indeed. I suspect it's generally true that the more you know, | the more questions you have. | [deleted] | kilroy123 wrote: | Sadly, I've felt this many times while traveling the world. | | There's no place to "discover". Anywhere you go, tons of others | have been there before you. You can easily look up pictures on | Instagram or wherever. | gen220 wrote: | You might find this reading interesting: | https://rolfpotts.com/walker-percys-loss-creature/ | | In a nutshell, you can intentionally choose to prevent | others' perception of a place from spoiling your own. One | step further, you can even use their perception to enhance | your own experience. | | You're standing in a place that your extremely distant | ancestors and cousins once stood, in a place where your | nieces and nephews and children might one day stand. You're | connected to the narrative of humanity. | | The concept of "first" is a red herring in the narrative of | humanity. It carries a lot less meaning than our current | culture leads us to believe. | qntmfred wrote: | there's a highway interchange near my house with wooded area | between the entrance ramp and the highway about a half mile | long until they converge. every time I drive that stretch I | wonder to myself when was the last time a person spent any | significant time getting to know that plot of Earth. | | https://www.google.com/maps/@35.8139424,-78.7400188,3a,75y,1. | .. | pmlnr wrote: | > There's no place to "discover". | | hm. Here's a story: on our second visit to China, one of the | main targets was Mount Emei, which is a well-known tourist | hotspot. On the top, because of the buses and cable cars, | there were probably thousands of people - we couldn't see due | to the ridiculously thick fog. | | And then we started to walk down. The shortest path down on | foot is ~50km stairs. We met roughly 10 people, including the | monks in the monastery we had to sleep midway. | | Had there been people there before? Yes. Is it secluded? Yes. | Did it feel like a discovery? Yes. And I'd even count it as a | spiritual experience, despite the fact that we never really | left the civilization. | | Another story: when we were in Uppsala, Sweden, we visited a | place called Norra Lunsen. The young lady in the ticket | office literally asked as why do we want to go to the middle | of nowhere - and indeed, we met a single person there. | | The point to "discover" at our current stage of evolution - | in the sense of we can't yet travel across star systems or | galaxies - is not to go to places where no human has been | before, but to find places that give YOU a new experience. | BurningFrog wrote: | I lived in Uppsala for 10 years. Never heard of Norra | Lunsen. | pmlnr wrote: | https://www.uppsala.se/kultur-och-fritid/natur-parker- | och-fr... | ehosca wrote: | the 4/5ths is calling... https://www.bbc.com/news/science- | environment-53119686 | browningstreet wrote: | Not sure I agree at all. | | I like to go to places and rent an apartment for a few weeks. | Then discover your neighborhood. It's fun when you move, and | it's also fun when you vacation this way. | | That said, I'm not out trying to discover a previously | undiscovered waterfall. | adflux wrote: | You have visited the wrong places, then. | | Plenty of truly "unexplored" territory in e.g. the Amazon. | You can go off the beaten path if you choose. | hnedeotes wrote: | "Wherever you go, there you are" - Dude | hindsightbias wrote: | - Buckaroo Banzai, 1984 | | - Hazelton Collegian, 1955 | | - Thomas a Kempis, 1400 AD | | https://panewsarchive.psu.edu/lccn/2018264052/1955-03-04/ed | -... | | https://www.figmentfly.com/bb/popculture4.html | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | There are a lot of places in Siberia or Antarctica where no | man has ever been closer than 10km. You are welcome to visit. | But the trick is, there is nothing of real interest there. No | old temples (if there is a temple, you are certainly not | first there), no sculptures, no food or lodging. Being first | to discover some exotic island in the Pacific sounds | romantic, but in the reality it is far less glamorous. Just | rocks, trees, maybe some sand. The main object of travel are | people and other cultures, and this is the only meaningful | discovery one can make. | pomian wrote: | Except for discovery of self. If you are fortunate to get | to a spot where no "man" has trod, you can feel it. A | feeling of amazement, a surreal loneliness. It is awesome. | Are you afraid? Alone? Teeming world is just, over there. | Yet here are no ghosts. Empty of human soul. But, rich in | nature's soul. Wonderful, contemplative experience. | nradov wrote: | Some of my friends explore underwater caves. This is one of | the only remaining ways that an ordinary middle class person | can discover places that literally no one else has ever been. | qchris wrote: | I absolutely agree that cave diving is a way to get where | people have never been before, and to explore the | extraordinary. | | But to remark on those people as "ordinary middle class" is | a bit misleading. I'd probably lean more towards | "extraordinary, and possibly middle class." Otherwise, I | think the appropriate label for any normal person doing | cave diving explorations is "dead." | | (Not serious criticism, hopefully you read in a playful | tone) | OnACoffeeBreak wrote: | But the others were not there when you're there and certainly | not with your state of mind. The world is not static and | neither are you, which presents infinite possibilities for | unique experiences and perceptions. | gherkinnn wrote: | That's just so not true. | | Few people are capable of *real* exploring anyway. Going | where no human has been before. Shackleton, Amundsen, | Mallory, Harrer, Bonatti, to name a few Euro-centric ones, | did so. To do what they did at that time was extraordinary | and way beyond any if our capabilities. | | And what Insta calls an "Adventure" is merely a tightly | controlled and carefully crafted theme park visit. It's a | joke. | | That said, any place is there for you to discover. Nobody | fucking cares if you visited the Grand Canyon or some fiery | hole in Iceland. And even less so if it has been trodden on | by humans yet. | | All that matters is having a jolly time in an alien place, | detached from anybody's expectations. Don't chase the next | Insta spot. | | Go early in the morning. Go in bad weather. Go off-season. | Take your time and the rest will reveal itself. | | It's not that hard. | at-fates-hands wrote: | I'm actually quite the opposite. | | With every day bringing more and more construction. Tearing | down of historically important buildings for new contemporary | condos and gentrification - cities have lost their soul to | me. Its not there's nothing new to discover, for me, its the | replacement of places people once _wanted_ to go to. | | I actively seek out abandoned places now. I try and think | about what it was like when it was new, people bustling | about. Or that abandoned mansion. How did those people live? | Can I imagine what it was like to live in a huge house like | that? | | We have such a disposable culture now - architecture | included, it has prompted me with a sense of nostalgia to | seek out what has been left behind and why. | | Vice did an incredible job in their series "Abandoned": | https://vimeo.com/182703618 | michael1999 wrote: | New Zealand and Hawaii are the most recent human settlements, | and those were more than 500 years ago. Anywhere else has | been home for somebody for millennia. You can't "discover" | somebody's home, but you can discover the creek around the | corner. | kaiwen1 wrote: | I often travel without a guidebook. To discover a temple | without a guidebook, and without having seen single source of | information on the location around it, that is real | discovery. Everything is unexpected, including finding that | temple. If you take this approach, you will inevitably depart | having missed many of the places listed in guidebooks. But so | too did the discoverers of the past who had no guidebooks. | You can't have it both ways. My advice is to forget the buck | lists. Just go experience a place. Stay awhile. Discover it | for yourself. And if you do have guidebook, travel to places | not mentioned. Far from having "no place to discover", the | world still has every place to discover. | ttfxxcc wrote: | This post is hilarious. You clearly have not gone exploring | if you limit yourself to what some travel guide tells you. | matonias wrote: | Experiencing a place is by far not comparable then just | looking at a picture. A picture teaches you one thing, an | experience 1000. | rjsw wrote: | You could choose to visit a "place" that has a different | reason for being significant [1]. | | [1] http://confluence.org/ | superzamp wrote: | Quoted from you, just now? | DiggyJohnson wrote: | I just pasted it into my futureculture novel I'm going to not | finish in a decade or so. | dandellion wrote: | It could even be one of those gpt3-generated replies. It's | getting hard to tell these days... | mejutoco wrote: | This is a very interesting quote, thanks. If I understand | correctly, Even if a lot more data is available, because of | chaotic systems this causality of events cannot become totally | deterministic. Otherwise we could predict the weather | perfectly. I find it comforting, somebody else might too :) | mckirk wrote: | What is the source of that quote? | dandellion wrote: | I don't know the source, but it made me think of Gattaca. I | should probably re-watch it. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | Do you often recite paragraph length quotes without knowing | the source? Am I being gullible? | | What a fascinating reply. | dandellion wrote: | I'm not the one who posted the paragraph, I don't know if | it's a quote from somewhere or something the grandparent | came up with, sorry. | zeepzeep wrote: | Check the username... | ALittleLight wrote: | What's ironic is that the person who posted the quote | actually can't remember where it's from, their comment | saying so is, at this writing, one comment down. | hnedeotes wrote: | Can't remember where I read it. | adamdusty wrote: | Google turns up nothing on anything from that quote. | otikik wrote: | Nah. | birriel wrote: | My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than | we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -J.B.S. Haldane | jxramos wrote: | in other words no space for mysteries here. | csteubs wrote: | Revisit is getting better and satellites have an edge when it | comes to total coverage of the earth, but the 120,000 flights | around the world each day typically fly predictable routes at low | altitudes near urban centers (takeoff and landing). This presents | a massive opportunity to leverage all of that "free energy" and | use aircraft for earth observation. Coverage can be supplemented | with satellites, but revisit of aircraft is far greater for many | terrestrial locations. | | 2x/day revisit for most of the world is probably sufficient for | the majority of use cases, but that assumes good weather (for | images). On the other hand, LAX for example sees hundreds of | takeoffs and landings each day, so if you were interested in | modeling retail foot traffic by parking lot volume, pace of urban | development, rate of containers moving in and out of port, etc. | you could get a massive boost in temporal resolution using | aircraft and far cheaper than launching + maintaining a satellite | constellation. | edrxty wrote: | Maybe, but aircraft tend to follow much stricter paths than one | would normally believe. Particularly around urban centers | (airports) they queue up and only really fly a few routes | through the area. On clear nights you can often see the lines | of nav and landing lights forming as aircraft approach the | city. | WhyKill wrote: | Underground. Under the sea. Under the ground under the sea. | Pfffft. The sun was already trying to kill you that's why living | underground is smart anyway. Frankly there should be no | expectation of privacy for things you can observe from space... | GnarfGnarf wrote: | Kessler syndrome here we come: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome | EGreg wrote: | Human manufacturing seems to pollute everything. Plastic in the | bodies of water etc. | | It's the tragedy of the unmanaged commons! People don't care | about exponential growth issues until it's a few seconds to | midnight. Except in the case of Kessler syndrome, it's even | worse because it grows AFTER you stopped. | | Bitcoin mining electricity use is another big example. | ansible wrote: | I am worried about many things. And I think we are already in | serious trouble with regards to pollution and climate change. | | For this one thing, spy satellites in low Earth orbit, I am not | so worried. Without active re-boosts, these orbits tend to | degrade quickly, and the junk gets dragged out on a relatively | quick timescale. | | Medium orbits, however, can last a super long time, and junk up | there is a very serious concern. | | BTW, as the average global temperature rises, the atmosphere | expands, which will degrade the orbits of the lower satellites | even quicker! | Symmetry wrote: | A lot of these are in orbits as low as possible to maximize | resolution. Orbital debris is less of a concern there because | it tends to de-orbit quickly. In contrast to SSO where debris | stick around like with that NOAA satellite just broke up. | | https://spacenews.com/decommissioned-noaa-weather-satellite-... | ble wrote: | I see a few comments where people refer exclusively to satellite | imagery despite the fact that this story is about RF-detection | satellites. | | Has Hacker News ever flirted with a "commenter did not read the | linked story / page but is pretending they did" vote feature? | There's obviously room for abuse even if it were limited to | "reputable" users but I would use it on some comments on this | item. | cj wrote: | From HN guidelines: | | > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did | you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened | to "The article mentions that." | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | simlevesque wrote: | Those of us with over 500 karma can and do downvote. But right | now you can try to explain to them that they are wrong. | rootusrootus wrote: | I think that for a lot of regular commenters, it's more about | the discussion than the article that started it. Fealty to the | original content is secondary to conversation. | ble wrote: | I suppose you're right, though I'd call it less "fealty" and | more "relevance". | | In this case, it looks like the discussion in the comments | flies to a subject that people feel they have familiarity | with (satellite imagery) instead of what is actually | contained in the article (satellite RF detection) and thus | the conversation on the article strongly suggests that the | community is _not_ assimilating any information from the | article. | | I suppose I should be the "candle" and just talk about RF | detection rather than "cursing the darkness". | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Is there a good history of spy satellites anywhere? It ought to | be amazing - I remember watching Ice Station Zebra as a kid, | where super-spies fought to the death over a canister of film, | and now Google gives away better resolution photos. | | The US downgraded moon photos to prevent Russians getting an idea | of the quality, Russian subs were analysed with one photo and a | scratch on the titanium plating. It would be great to see that | playing out - technology, analysis and politics shown together. | e12e wrote: | You might find the fictional novel "Zenith Angle" by Bruce | Sterling entertaining as well. | arethuza wrote: | I had assumed that US missile infrastructure would be hidden in | Google Maps, but apparently not: | | https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/07/31/336847318... | ocdtrekkie wrote: | Presumably for any military capability the US has that's well | known about, they probably have a backup plan less well known | about. | nindalf wrote: | I believe some US military bases are hidden on Google Maps. | But it's not an issue if you're trying to find them. You can | derive their location from soldiers doing laps around the | base and uploading their run data to Strava. | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness- | tracki... | swiley wrote: | That would require publishing a set of polygons covering all | of it: literally a directory. I'm not sure that's a great | idea. | implements wrote: | There's a treasure trove of related material on YouTube: | | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=minuteman+missi. | .. | cronix wrote: | My dad was a Capt. in the USAF in the mid 60's. He was | stationed at Minot AFB, ND., and launched a new test | Minuteman, but of course he didn't know it was a test at | the time he and his partner were ordered to turn their keys | during the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union. I | have a plaque with the key he turned (the teeth were filed | off though) along with a poster-sized color photo of the | missile coming out of the ground and his issued 38 special | S&W revolver. Since he was locked away underground with 1 | other person for days at a time with no contact with the | outside world, I was wondering why they had guns. He said | it was in case your partner didn't turn their key after | ordered to do so... | | One thing he got a kick of before he passed away, was using | google earth to check out the old base. He was surprised at | how much you could see. | neolog wrote: | Seems like that would reduce the effectiveness of having | two keys? | panzagl wrote: | Why not Minot? | elzbardico wrote: | This is due to arms control treaties. The ICBM bases and | other critical infrastructures can't be hidden, because the | other side needs to be able to verify with their own eyes | that you're complying with your part of the treaty, and vice- | versa. | arethuza wrote: | As the Russian saying goes: _Trust, but verify_ | CabSauce wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scott+manley+sp... | | Scott Manley does great, approachable space videos and has done | a few on spy satellites. | crmd wrote: | Scott's content is great. He's my second favorite[1] Scottish | technology YouTube channel. | | [1] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA | black6 wrote: | You gotta do some digging through the archives at The Space | Review[0], but Dwayne Day has some outstanding articles over | there on NRO projects. Keywords to look for are HEXAGON and | NRO. | | 0: https://www.thespacereview.com/archive.html | haldora wrote: | The nonfiction book Into the Black by Rowland White has a | portion about the Space Shuttle's use launching NRO satellites. | This is a fascinating use of the shuttle not many talk about. | pjmorris wrote: | It's about rocketry, but it winds up touching on spy satellites | more than i expected: 'This New Ocean', Burrows. | intrasight wrote: | Very excited to hear that they'll be able to track these bad | actors who are damaging the commons. Also VERY cool that they can | discriminate and therefore identify ships based on small | variations in the electronics even for a specific model of radio. | Also - curious how the French govt is going to keep this tech | under wraps. | edrxty wrote: | The author is a lay person, they're just trying to report what | they've been told. In reality, single satellite detection with | the described resolution is extremely simple and the tech has | been flying since the 60s. There isn't a lot of magic new tech | in RF, just advances in processing. | angry_octet wrote: | I wouldn't say that, track before detect for example. Also | multiple antenna synthetic aperture systems are almost magic. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-23 23:01 UTC)