[HN Gopher] The US military launched 500M needles into space (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
The US military launched 500M needles into space (2019)
Author : martialg
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-06-01 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.todayifoundout.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.todayifoundout.com)
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Presumably it would have been even worse had everyone realized
| the United States had, a few years before this, planned to nuke
| the moon, more or less just because they could..._ "
|
| Do have to say, that was a glorious era of scientific tomfoolery.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My favorite has always been scientifically promoted medicinal
| use of leeches.
| wumpus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirudo_medicinalis#Today
| evilduck wrote:
| Nuking the moon was relatively mild compared to the proposed
| Project Orion.
| [deleted]
| cleerline wrote:
| half a billion needles put in orbit without consultation? pricks.
| mandmandam wrote:
| All those needles, and not a single moral compass.
| 4dahalibut wrote:
| This is a link to the original post:
| https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/10/that-time-t...
|
| written by Melissa Blevins
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/blevinsmelissa/
| dang wrote:
| Changed above from https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-
| history/us-military-la.... Thanks!
| benatkin wrote:
| I skipped the article and found the Wikipedia page, which
| satisfied my curiosity from the headline:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wumpus wrote:
| Yep, that's a very interesting Wikipedia article.
|
| One thing that surprised me is that most of the needles
| reentered within 3 years. They have a pretty large surface area
| per unit mass, so the effects of the very thin atmosphere up
| there is maximized.
|
| Normally a satellite at 3,500 km would take centuries to decay.
|
| There are some clumps of needles still up there. One not-well-
| understood thing is how many small clumps remain -- the clumps
| which are too small to be seen on radar.
| mabbo wrote:
| Curious: what happened to them?
|
| Sure, at this point none should still be in orbit because LEO has
| too much drag. But did they definitely burn up on re-entry? Or
| did the American Government cover the planet in a fine layer of
| tiny needles?
| panzagl wrote:
| Still there, look for SATIDs in the 2360s.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >would have to rely on the mood of said ionosphere.
|
| From launching needles into space to HAARP, lots of study in
| making the ionosphere more dependable.
|
| HAARP was fun fodder for consipiracy types back in the 90s. Even
| the wikipedia article doesn't touch but a fraction of the stories
| I've heard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| frequency_Active_Auroral_...
| derac wrote:
| The weather control theory is still very prevalent.
| arein3 wrote:
| Supposedly Mr. Trump asked about weather control when in
| office and supposedly was disappointed there was supposedly
| none.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/10/donald-
| trump...
|
| The guardian's commentary tries to ridicule Trump but he
| makes sense.
|
| If you can make tsunamis with bombs and can stop hail by
| bombing the clouds when they are still forming maybe there
| could be a way to stop/create hurricanes. No harm in asking.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They handed it over to the scientists.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The idea that HAARP caused the massive flooding of the
| Mississipi in the 90s by causing the jet stream to move is
| still held strongly today.
| AaronFriel wrote:
| I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the potential fast
| track to Kessler syndrome, the name for a phenomenon in which it
| becomes impossible to safely put things in orbit because every
| object placed in orbit is rapidly impacted and disintegrated into
| more debris in orbit.
|
| Purposely injecting debris into orbit, even if it's at a low
| orbit, seems not good!
| H8crilA wrote:
| This will really go out of hand when WW3 starts and all the
| intelligence gathering satellites will become targets. Not that
| it's the most important thing in a global war, but we might
| also successfully block all exit paths from this planet with
| large amounts of very fast and deadly debris.
| yodon wrote:
| WW3 almost certainly also means no more communications
| satellites and no more weather satellites, in addition to no
| more humans in space.
|
| It would likely also mean nuclear winter and many other bad
| things, but permanently denying use of satellites is likely
| the first global cost of WW3.
| robonerd wrote:
| Nuclear Winter has been generally discredited by modern
| modelling. The whole premise was likely politically
| motivated by scientists who wanted to make nuclear war less
| likely to occur, by dissuading politicians with this yarn.
| (A true noble lie.) Criticism of the hypothesis was muted
| by few scientists wanting to risk the perception of
| supporting nuclear war.
|
| As for _" permanently denying use of satellites"_, this is
| only partially true. High orbits would be fucked for
| millennia, but LEO would mostly clear up before the century
| is out. I know that seems 'forever', but it isn't. Also,
| depending on the severity of the debris, interplanetary
| exploration would not necessarily be out of the picture; if
| the debris is severe enough that a GSO satellite has a 99%
| chance of being destroyed within a year, then that orbit is
| as good as ruined. But if you only plan to pass through
| that region for a few hours, not spend a whole year there,
| you might be able to do that if you can tolerate some risk.
| It'd be like running across a highway, except the cars move
| faster than bullets and won't brake for you. If you hang
| out in the middle of the road you are certain to get hit.
| If you time it right and run across, you have a chance of
| getting through.
| yodon wrote:
| If you go back a bit farther, I think you'll find the
| work on nuclear winter actually came out of work done at
| Cornell to try to model the result of a large object
| impacting the earth 65 million years ago to kill off the
| dinosaurs. Amazingly enough, one of the hardest parts of
| the dinosaur extinction work was figuring out how a
| localized impact like that could kill enough things to
| cause an extinction, and that part came from the
| atmospheric modelers. After doing that modeling work,
| they realized the parallels with a nuclear conflict and
| produced the nuclear winter projections.
| robonerd wrote:
| I think there's little doubt that tons of soot and ash in
| the upper atmosphere can cause periods of global cooling.
| The problem with the nuclear winter hypothesis is in the
| link between nuclear war and tons of soot in the
| stratosphere. These nuclear winter models make a lot of
| assumptions about the likelihood of a modern cities
| turning into firestorms and the amount of soot they would
| generate, the amount of soot lifted into the stratosphere
| by the fireball, and the amount of soot that stays there
| instead of precipitating out.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Then it turned out everything was cooked, not frozen.
| robonerd wrote:
| WW3 will likely make a mess of orbit, particularly LEO. However
| most of the debris that intersects LEO will decay in the order
| of years to tens of years. After the war (assuming anybody is
| in any shape to be sending stuff to space in the first place) I
| think communication satellites in LEO will become the norm
| (moreso than it already is becoming.) This would be the obvious
| response to higher orbits being ruined by debris.
|
| But such a war would be very bad in many ways, and if this
| happens I don't think worrying about space will be high on your
| list of personal priorities.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| LEO is too susceptible to interference (of the physical, not
| radio, kind) for any serious digital communications
| infrastructure to be placed there. I could see laser-based
| swarms of comms satellites being used (cubesat size, not
| starlink size), but I don't think the economics are there
| quite yet.
| robonerd wrote:
| It's not clear what exactly you mean by physical
| interference, but either way I think you're mistaken.
| Starlink is already proving the viability of launching huge
| constellations of fairly large (a ton or so) LEO
| satellites. If you're talking about debris grounding these
| constellations, that's a problem that resolves itself given
| enough time, as that debris deorbits naturally.
|
| If you're talking about intentional physical interference,
| aka anti-satellite weapons, the solution to that is having
| the ability to rapidly replenish the constellation (SpaceX
| is good at this, and with Starship they'll be even better
| at it; hundreds of replacement satellites with a single
| launch.) In the event of a war, a constellation could be
| kept operational through the brute force of launching more
| satellites faster than they're destroyed. Of course this
| will make a huge mess, but that's what wars do.
|
| Anyway, they're going forward with this already. The
| National Defense Space Architecture calls for a very large
| constellation of LEO communication satellites forming a
| mesh network using inter-satellite laser links. Starlink is
| likely dual-use technology and has been intended as such
| from the start.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I don't know, destruction is almost always easier than
| construction. And China demonstrated an anti-satellite
| laser already.
| jltsiren wrote:
| If you can launch hundreds of useful satellites with a
| single launch, you can also launch thousands of satellite
| killers for the same price. A simple short-lived
| satellite with some sensors, minor maneuvering
| capabilities, and the ability to turn into a debris cloud
| on a close pass should be quite effective when deployed
| in huge numbers. The economies of scale favor destruction
| if you really don't care about the consequences.
| robonerd wrote:
| Having thousands of boost-phase interceptors already in
| LEO actually puts a real damper on anybody trying to do
| something about it, the economics of the game favor
| whoever implements such a system first. They will be able
| to use large rockets to efficiently launch huge numbers
| of satellites, while the boost-phase interceptors in LEO
| (constantly replenished via that capability) prevent the
| enemy from doing the same.
|
| Big picture, even if Russia and/or China managed to turn
| LEO into an impenetrable barrier of debris before the war
| was lost for them anyway, what would they actually have
| accomplished? The satellites that previously acted as
| America's shield would now be debris that would
| _continue_ to shield America, _and_ America would still
| have Aegis BMD around the world. Symmetrical war with
| America is beyond stupid, there is no balance, no fair
| fight. The purpose of these systems is to ensure that it
| stays this way, so that nobody tries in the first place.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Boost-phase interceptors would be big expensive weapons
| systems. Because they have only a few minutes to hit
| before the target deploys the payload, they would have to
| expend lots of delta-v to guarantee intercept. Deploying
| such large-scale missile defense systems would be obvious
| to everyone. By the usual cold war calculus, such
| attempts would likely trigger a nuclear war. If you
| attempt to neutralize enemy nuclear deterrent, you are
| announcing your first strike intentions to everyone.
|
| As for why, maybe the reason wouldn't even involve
| America that much. Maybe China decides to take Taiwan,
| and to prevent America from interfering, they choose to
| destroy LEO for everyone. Maybe it would be an acceptable
| sacrifice for them, as they are more interested in
| controlling their neighborhood than projecting power to
| faraway places.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Boost-phase interceptors would be big expensive
| weapons systems_
|
| Not very big actually, not if the interceptors are placed
| in LEO. They're a hell of a lot smaller and cheaper than
| the missiles they're meant to intercept. The kill
| vehicles themselves are only a few kilograms, very small
| and light weight. For such light-weight interceptors
| positioned in LEO, you don't need much booster to get the
| job done. You can get away with a booster much smaller
| than an SM-3.
|
| > _Because they have only a few minutes to hit before the
| target deploys the payload, they would have to expend
| lots of delta-v to guarantee intercept_
|
| The more you have, the less delta-v they need. That's why
| Brilliant Pebbles proposed thousands if not tens of
| thousands of them. Launching such a huge number of
| interceptors would be possible with Falcon 9, but
| Starship would be much better at it.
|
| > _Maybe China decides to take Taiwan_
|
| Maybe they would, but they would have to be insane to
| start a symmetric war with America itself. And that's the
| whole point.
|
| > _Deploying such large-scale missile defense systems
| would be obvious to everyone._
|
| If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that
| China and Russia haven't been very secret about their
| interest in countering Starlink. It's not because they're
| afraid the US might give uncensorable internet to Chinese
| and Russian people, as I've seen some on HN speculate.
| They obviously perceive the strategic threat already.
| Besides starting the war first, there's not a whole lot
| they can do about it. If they start the war first, start
| it _now_ , they'll probably kill a lot more Americans
| than if they wait and do it later. But that doesn't
| matter because they'd still all die, so they aren't going
| to do it. Neither China nor Russia has a BMD system that
| could prevent America from killing them all.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think things like orbital decay and coverage per
| satellite are the more serious concerns.
|
| I mean, LEO is still harder to reach out to than almost
| anywhere on Earth.
|
| The main deterrent to attacking our assets in LEO or on
| Earth is that such an act would at least have some
| serious political fallout, and potentially start a war
| depending on how annoying it is.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A satellite killer would need the ability to rendezvous
| with a target. You're not getting that level of
| capability for the same price as a box with a radio.
| bluGill wrote:
| LEO has low latency though, which is important.
| Communications via satellite in higher orbits suck. Ever
| dealt with 600ms ping times? I have, you get used to it,
| but I'm glad to be on ground based internet now, things
| just feel faster. (and the web is still slow)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Does anyone actually believe in that? Surely most space debris
| doesn't form a stable orbit, but falls back to earth after a
| few collisions.
| [deleted]
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Armchair astonomer here. If the bodies involved in the
| collision are already in stable orbits around earth, most of
| the debris from the collision will remain relatively true to
| its orbit prior to impact, though the force of the collision
| will spread the debris apart over time. Any orbits remotely
| close to earth will decay eventually, but that would depend
| on quite a few factors: it is possible small debris would
| remain orbiting for quite some time. The small stuff is what
| worries me the most - objects less than a square centimeter.
|
| A head on collision would be incredibly violent and would
| disperse a large cloud of debris over a large area - some of
| that would fall back to earth quickly. This would be
| incredibly unlikely, given that most objects above Earth
| orbit in a relatively similar set of planes and inclinations.
| A more likely scenario would be two similarly inclined orbits
| overlapping, with the satellites or debris impacting
| shallowly and at relatively (to orbital velocities, that is)
| low energy. It wouldn't take much to shred apart much of the
| more delicate instrumentation orbiting above our heads, which
| would similarly endanger more sensitive equipment, and so on.
| airstrike wrote:
| That "unstable" orbit can take an awful long time...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgxWuFj7d9I
| bagels wrote:
| How often do you think an individual piece of debris is
| impacting other objects? Most space debris starts as
| something in orbit, and if it's at a high enough altitude,
| most pieces do indeed stay in orbit. There is clear
| precedence for this.
|
| https://swfound.org/media/6575/swf_iridium_cosmos_collision_.
| ..
|
| "Analysis by both NASA and outside experts indicates that
| more than half of the Iridium debris will remain in orbit for
| at least 100 years, and much of the Cosmos debris will remain
| in orbit at least 20 to thirty years."
| mcguire wrote:
| Objects in orbit are primarily cleared by atmospheric drag,
| with two major variables: height of perigee (lower causes
| more drag) and object mass (lighter objects are slowed more).
| Following an impact, some of the debris will be cleared
| quickly, but some will not.
|
| " _On 11 January 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite
| missile test in which one of their FY-1C weather satellites
| was chosen as the target. The collision occurred at an
| altitude of 865 kilometres, when the satellite with a mass of
| 750 kilograms was struck in a head-on-collision by a kinetic
| payload traveling with a speed of 8 km /s (18,000 mph) in the
| opposite direction. The resulting debris orbits the Earth
| with a mean altitude above 850 kilometres, and will likely
| remain in orbit for decades or centuries.[18]_"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Anti-
| satellit...)
|
| Kessler syndrome requires the rate of debris creation be
| greater than the rate of clearing and the rate of clearing in
| higher orbits is _very_ slow.
|
| https://amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2012/Orbital_Debris/NIK.
| ..
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > will likely remain in orbit for decades or centuries
|
| How much debris though? If I put orange juice in my coffee
| mug, after a few runs through the dishwasher there may
| technically be a few particles of orange juice left, but my
| taste buds probably won't collide with it.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| I'm not sure the analogy holds - again, most of this
| debris would be occupying a relatively narrow region of
| space surrounding Earth, and it wouldn't simply decay
| after a few orbits. Thinking of kessler syndrome as some
| impenetrable shell of bullets misses the forest for the
| trees, i think. It doesn't take much debris to render a
| region of space unsafe for humans or multi-million dollar
| satellites.
|
| To attempt extend your analogy: you might be confident
| that most of the juice was washed out of the mug after a
| few cycles set to scour, but if you are deathly allergic
| to any exposure to oranges, what's your risk tolerance?
|
| Make sure you clean the dishwasher trap, as well. :)
| robonerd wrote:
| > _what 's your risk tolerance?_
|
| That's the key question the whole matter hangs on, but
| there's no objective answer for it. Neil Armstrong
| privately estimated his chance for successfully returning
| to earth at 90%. That's alarmingly low! That's barely
| safer than Russian roulette.
|
| Determining how much risk can be tolerated means figuring
| out how badly you want the thing. The more you want
| something, the more risk you can tolerate. Satellites are
| extremely important to our society, so governments would
| continue launching the satellites they value most, even
| if the expected lifespan of the satellite due to space
| debris was very short.
|
| Of course, superfluous and casual use of space would
| grind to a halt. One of many casualties of war.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article briefly mentions it... not sure how many per
| 'clump' though:
|
| > "Going back to the needles, in case you're wondering, despite
| the planned obsolescence, as of 2019, a few dozen clumps of
| them remain in orbit and are closely tracked..."
| spicy_tendies wrote:
| >Today in our digital world, of course, a similar electromagnetic
| pulse would have much more catastrophic effects, especially if
| near more populated centers, potentially even revealing the
| Lizard people's Matrix, which would be catastrophic to our
| Draconian overlords' (may they reign forever) plans...
|
| I loved this joke they threw in there
| jmmcd wrote:
| I also enjoyed the phrasing:
|
| > To begin with, the ionosphere's composition changes most
| drastically at night, primarily because, of course, the Sun
| goes missing for a bit.
|
| I can imagine Bertie Wooster saying this.
| [deleted]
| mig39 wrote:
| > consider that also smack dab in the middle of this time, the
| United States was busy accidentally nuking Britain's first
| satellite, among many, many others.
|
| Woah... anybody have more info on that?
|
| Edit: more info here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
| mushbino wrote:
| >Scientific Discoveries: The Starfish bomb contained Cd-109 as
| a tracer, which helped work out the seasonal mixing rate of
| polar and tropical air masses.
|
| Ah, totally worth it
| elliottkember wrote:
| Finish the article. It's fully explained in the very next
| paragraph.
| gwill wrote:
| great article! I loved the tidbits at the bottom too. found a
| good list of wake up songs from nasa here:
| https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/s...
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Great article! The needles formed a passive repeater, which would
| be a cheap alternative to a comsat. To me, the more interesting
| part of the article was the history of exo-atomospheric nuclear
| testing and the consequences to the satellites that were
| operating in that era.
|
| It's also interesting that the scientific community's objections
| to further launches actually had an effect. That doesn't seem to
| be the case anymore -- at least not with Starlink.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Starlink is a private company that doesn't concern itself with
| the concerns of others. I don't think comparing a private corp
| to a gov't body should have expectations of similar results.
| Private corp doesn't
| jcims wrote:
| The FAA and FCC are government bodies that have and exercise
| authority over SpaceX's design, implementation and operation
| of Starlink.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And have done nothing but rubber stamped everything they
| have requested regarding Starlink. No robust discussion of
| affects on others has been given serious thought other than
| "we'll paint them flat black" as a PR spin is not serious.
| wumpus wrote:
| I'm an astronomer who's been following the situation, and
| this comment of yours is entirely false.
|
| For example, there was only one satellite painted dark,
| and it didn't work well enough. The next mitigation after
| that worked well, but not well enough.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sorry, you think I was making a comment in support of
| Starlink? What are you saying is false? Do you think that
| I believe Starlink's PR spin (what is confusing about
| those words?) to paint satellites black would fix the
| problem they created? Do you think that I belive the
| FAA/FCC have told SpaceX that they could no longer go
| ahead with their plans until a solution was in place?
| Where's the disconnect?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| As much as people may hate the prospect of putting that
| many satellites up, the service is so darn useful.
|
| What's the alternative? Force anyone who wants to
| participate in the modern world to live in a city or
| suburb along a fiber line? Neither public nor private
| groups have expressed much interest in actually getting
| internet connectivity to everyone.
|
| My parents live in a rural area in Northern California
| and only about 5 miles away from a fiber drop point.
| However, there are only about ten houses on their street
| and the local ISP and the big one that actually owns the
| fiber wants $10k USD a pole to bring a fiber line over to
| them (there's about 80 poles that would need work) plus
| connection and maintenance fees after that point.
|
| Needless to say, they're _loving_ their Starlink
| connection.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Perhaps the Starlink team didnt use Vantablack
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack) to hide their
| existence? Maybe Surrey NanoSystems could help out or
| there again maybe scientists would end up spotting
| numerous black holes much like they thought they had
| discovered something more interesting than an impatient
| scientist!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)
|
| This is still consigned to coverup/conspiracy theory but
| these Ionosphere Heaters
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater) have
| the ability to heat up the Ionosphere creating something
| akin to the bulge on a balloon or car tyre wall where the
| upper atmosphere pushes out into space.
|
| This has two effects, it push's atmosphere into the low
| earth orbiting satellites path aking to driving through a
| sudden bank of fog, only this bulge of atmosphere can
| bring LEOB satellites down as they are not designed to go
| through atmosphere.
|
| It also affects the Jet Stream winds in the upper
| atmosphere circulating the planet which in turn affects
| the weather of continents, its less predictable but its
| an alternative to the very localised and resource hungry
| cloud seeding.
|
| The BBC Horizon program did a episode on "Space Weather"
| and in the last 5mins of the episode they focused on the
| EISCAT heater near Tromso in Norway. In the episode the
| operator/scientist explained what it does to the upper
| atmosphere, which is explained above. Obviously this also
| has military applications because any LEOB satellite can
| be bought down if these IH's are on a ship somewhere in
| the middle of an ocean away from prying eyes!
| [deleted]
| wumpus wrote:
| Don't forget the ITU, that's where the regulation starts.
| Retric wrote:
| Many governments are currently regulating Starlink
| operations in their countries. The while the FAA and NASA
| have an outsized role, the US alone isn't enough to make
| Starlink commercially viable.
|
| You personally may not benefit, but LEO internet
| constellations really do solve a major issue for many
| people.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| America is unconcerned with the opinions of other
| countries (I don't blame them the reality is that might
| makes right) and I really don't see what the rest of the
| world can do to stop Starlink launches that wouldn't
| involve WW3.
|
| But I'm sure that if it all goes tits up the US will fix
| it all and humbly apologize.
| Retric wrote:
| Starlink satellites are dependent on Hall-effect
| thrusters to maintain orbit, so the constellation will
| quickly burn up if Star link fails.
| wumpus wrote:
| There's a treaty that everyone signed, and it says
| Starlink launches are fine as long as the country they
| launch from says OK. China can OK Chinese launches.
| Satellites aren't supposed to interfere with each other,
| but that's not strictly defined. You aren't supposed to
| create debris, but the standard for that isn't strict at
| all.
|
| There's a good discussion going on about extending that
| treaty: stricter rules on deorbiting failed satellites
| and stages, light pollution, excessive numbers of
| satellites in narrow orbital bands, and so on.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not the ground based operations that get me, it's
| those on the ground looking up seeing nothing but
| Starlink
| Retric wrote:
| It's straightforward to kill Starlink, just solve the
| "last mile" internet access problem and they fail.
|
| The idea we could setup mail service to everyone then
| wire up electricity and finally landlines to effectively
| every home in a vastly poor societies but can't solve the
| internet issue without satellites is disgraceful.
| bozhark wrote:
| It should, when it comes to space.
|
| There is nothing private about space
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| just buy your own planet bro
|
| /s
| dylan604 wrote:
| Mostly, but we have no idea (confirmed) what the Air
| Force's space plane does. We know it exists, we can track
| it while in orbit, but what it does do while there is not
| public. Also, the software and other capabilities of a lot
| of satellites are inferred but not 100% known.
|
| So these birds are privately doing things in a public,
| ahem, space.
| robonerd wrote:
| It's nothing new. There were numerous classifieds Shuttle
| missions 30+ years ago that are still classified. People
| have more or less figured out what these missions were,
| but they're still classified and and a lot of the details
| still aren't known.
|
| Interesting anecdote from one of them (STS-27):
|
| > _The day after Atlantis landed, the 1988 Armenian
| earthquake killed tens of thousands in the Soviet Union.
| At an astronaut meeting Gibson said, "I know many of you
| may have been very curious about our classified payload.
| While I can't go into its design features, I can say
| Armenia was its first target!" As military astronauts
| laughed and civilians cringed, Gibson continued, "And we
| only had the weapon set on stun!"_
|
| (Turns out it was actually a synthetic aperture radar
| recon satellite, not an earthquake machine.)
| bozhark wrote:
| Is that the one that was up for over a year?
|
| https://www.livescience.com/x37b-secret-space-plane-
| facts.ht...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. They park it up there so it won't sit in a hangar
| decaying, obviously useless.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| I wonder if those needle clumps that remain in orbit are still
| useful for communication? The article mentioned that a nuke
| launch damaged some satellites at the time. Wouldn't needles also
| have the advantage that they have no circuits that could be fried
| from EMPs or radiation? I'm not sure to what extent you can
| shield satellites today - but it is something to think about.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-01 23:00 UTC)