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If you put something like this in space, and pointed it down, would it be a useful espionage tool (more useful than the spy satellites the US and its allies alr
by thoward 11y ago
If you put something like this in space, and pointed it down, would it be a useful espionage tool (more useful than the spy satellites the US and its allies already have)?
- jasonwatkinspdx 11y agoI don't know the technical details of this project, but it's well known that Hubble's basic design matches the spy satellites being manufactured at the same time. They changed the size of the mirror so they could source the part from the same manufacturing resources as the spy satellite program. Another fun bit of trivia is that at one time the NRO (folks who operate the spy satellites) offered two they had in storage to NASA. So in general I'd say it's a safe bet most of this technology is dual use. It's likely the secret squirrel folks are ahead of what open science projects can use however, given the resources available. I suspect at this kind of resolution bandwidth getting the images down from space might be a big limitation.