4 ms·

What's the point? Doesn't China, Russia, and EU have a lot of sats and what if they decide to broadcast like SpaceX? US will threaten them?

• oh_sigh 9y ago
  The whole point is to prevent giving away information to other countries who don't have it already, not some conspiracy to prevent Americans from seeing the earth. Other countries are free to broadcast their data to the world if they like. The US will probably learn nothing new about the Earth but would learn of at least some chacteristics of other country's satellite tech
  • bpicolo 9y ago
    > prevent giving away information to other countries who don't have it already Pretty easy for a nation-state to launch a surveillance satellite with much better optics, I imagine.
    • bitcurious 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_launches_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_laun... This is a list of nations that have managed to put something in orbit. It contains 10 nations, and the ESA. The vast majority of nations do not have the capability.
      • TeMPOraL 9y ago
        That's a list of nations capable of launching stuff on their own. Compare with this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite#First_satellites_of_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite#First_satellites_of_... Non-space-capable countries do routinely put their payload on the rockets of countries with launch capability (though I guess then it can't be an obvious spy satellite).
    • some_random 9y ago
      I suppose nation-states aren't the only ones who'd like information on US military bases/infrastructure/"nationalsecurityinterests", but I honestly think it's irrelevant. If we were discussing serious imaging systems then sure, but it's pretty clear that a webcam isn't going to give anyone any meaningful information.
      • grigjd3 9y ago
        The point is that you don't hand out the license trivially. Yes, spacex is just discussing this in the context of a glorified webcam, but webcasts aren't their only business. Such a license needs to consider the whole business. Now the NOAA perhaps should consider a type of limited license, but they can't assume the only imagery technology spacex is interested in is webcams.