4 ms·

You lost me on the timing. We are looking for small black rocks way past geostationary, and it's 100% at or inside that. Being a point source is what I want (si

You lost me on the timing. We are looking for small black rocks way past geostationary, and it's 100% at or inside that. Being a point source is what I want (since they all are). If it's in orbit, the speed bounds are already known, it's somewhere between 0 and as slow as practical, the lower the faster; faster is worse for an earth pointing platform. Once you know something is there, isn't that all you really need? Why does the speed matter for detection? An adversary can (presumably) almost immediately target that location if they are willing to admit they saw it. I don't feel like I'm saying anything non-obvious. It's way easier to hide in the atmosphere than outside of it. If Zuma made it, and it's not found by the people looking with the right tools, wow. But I doubt it. It's too hard to hide with standard assumptions. I would love to see the function for magnitude vs optical cross section, no doubt one can calculate that from first principals. It's just observable star density.

craftyguy 9y ago
You need to determine velocity and distance in order to determine if the thing you just saw blink out a star is in orbit around the Earth (or not). There's a lot of distance between the Earth and the star, and literally anything between your eye and the star could obscure it from your perspective. We aren't even close to detecting/tracking all of the objects in the solar system that could do that. I'm also assuming the thing is not reflective (per the comments earlier I was originally replying to). > An adversary can (presumably) almost immediately target that location if they are willing to admit they saw it You'd be late to the party. If it was in orbit around the Earth, and since you don't know its direction or distance from Earth, your impact object would have to do a lot of searching once it got into space. If you had a giant laser to destroy it and could fire instantly upon detection, it will have likely moved quite a bit in the fractions of a second that it took the light to reach it. And, again you don't know the direction it is moving.., you can't compensate.
- jakeogh 9y ago
  Ah, ya I was assuming if it blinked it is most likely in orbit around earth. Not sure how true that is, although far enough away similarly sized objects get diffracted around. I should try to math;) As for target I just meant light it up, properly diverging hp radar or laser pulse in an atmospheric window.

craftyguy 9y ago

You need to determine velocity and distance in order to determine if the thing you just saw blink out a star is in orbit around the Earth (or not). There's a lot of distance between the Earth and the star, and literally anything between your eye and the star could obscure it from your perspective. We aren't even close to detecting/tracking all of the objects in the solar system that could do that. I'm also assuming the thing is not reflective (per the comments earlier I was originally replying to). > An adversary can (presumably) almost immediately target that location if they are willing to admit they saw it You'd be late to the party. If it was in orbit around the Earth, and since you don't know its direction or distance from Earth, your impact object would have to do a lot of searching once it got into space. If you had a giant laser to destroy it and could fire instantly upon detection, it will have likely moved quite a bit in the fractions of a second that it took the light to reach it. And, again you don't know the direction it is moving.., you can't compensate.

jakeogh 9y ago
Ah, ya I was assuming if it blinked it is most likely in orbit around earth. Not sure how true that is, although far enough away similarly sized objects get diffracted around. I should try to math;) As for target I just meant light it up, properly diverging hp radar or laser pulse in an atmospheric window.