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If they were carrying a national security payload, then having a gps feed of the second stage trajectory and target orbit would be less than ideal.
by rrmm 6y ago
If they were carrying a national security payload, then having a gps feed of the second stage trajectory and target orbit would be less than ideal.
- ceejayoz 6y agoAmateur astronomers are very good at spotting national security payloads after launch. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/mapping-clandestine-moons/485915/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/mappi...
- rrmm 6y agoYup. Easy to do for most adversary nation-states as well, but the NRO still doesn't allow the SpaceX livestream to follow stage 2.
- _Microft 6y agoMaybe it's possible to detect radio echoes off the rocket exhaust trail (passively) like it is possible to do with meteors [0][1] and roughly tell where the second stage is (just for the sake of doing it this way). [0] https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagation/meteor-scatter-burst-communications/meteors-trails-radio-signals.php https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagat... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_burst_communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_burst_communications
- ceejayoz 6y agoYeah, over-classification is definitely a thing. I suspect they don't want close-up video imagery of the payloads out there, either.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAnd if amateur astronomers can do it, a well-funded national space agency can do it even better. I'm 100% sure that any launch is picked up via radar and sattelites and the like when they happen, and various properties extracted and extrapolated to determine their target orbit. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if some known launches also contained some unknown payloads. Stealth technology on a satellite would probably thwart detection in space well enough.
- ceejayoz 6y ago> Stealth technology on a satellite would probably thwart detection in space well enough. Stealth is great for radar, but even the B-2 can be spotted pretty easily via the Mk 1 eyeball. Satellites also have to have radiators, which limits what you can manage.
- kchr 6y ago> Mk 1 eyeball I giggled.
- mrlonglong 6y agoI really want to upgrade to Mk 2 eyeballs, maybe with some new receptors to see extra colours, infrared and ultraviolet. Maybe the capability to see polarised light too.
- rrmm 6y agoApparently many people have some capability to see polarised light under certain circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger%27s_brush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger%27s_brush
- mindcrime 6y agoGreat, NCSU should be able to whip you up something like that soon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26400218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26400218
- sandworm101 6y ago>> but even the B-2 can be spotted pretty easily via the Mk 1 eyeball. It has a visual cloaking device too. It isn't terribly complicated. The bottom of the aircraft is a particular color. If you fly at an altitude that the sky above is the same color as the bottom of your plane, people on the ground cannot see you. So a tiny camera pointed up can be used to calibrate the altitude to best hide. Also see counterillumination, a trick used by many sea creatures to hide from things below them. I doubt the B2 uses this but the military has studied it as an option in the past. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29543/the-visible-history-of-the-militarys-hunt-to-realize-an-invisible-aircraft https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29543/the-visible-hist...
- stevehawk 6y agoyou can't classify something in the public eye