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I meant it had to be different to non-military satellites in some important ways. Otherwise it'd be just a non-military satellite. Imagine buying a consumer-gra
by meric 12y ago
I meant it had to be different to non-military satellites in some important ways. Otherwise it'd be just a non-military satellite. Imagine buying a consumer-grade computer. It's cheap to get one with 16gb ram, but if you want a 64gb ram one, it would probably vastly more than the 64/16=4 times as expensive. Each step you go out of the non-military satellite capability curve (with multiple dimension including features, reliability), it gets exponentially more expensive. If the a research-grade computer wasn't different from a consumer-grade computer in some aspect (by having a lot of ram, cores, processing speed), it would just be a consumer-grade computer.
A computer that is substantially cheaper would be hobbyist-grade computer.
Of course I'm only talking about traditional military rather than forces like A* Qda which might make do with whatever they can get their hands on, which is probably what you're referring to.
I suppose a very cheap satellite could be terrorist-grade. ;)
- eru 12y agoYou could argue the same the other way 'round. Just assume that military is the standard, and in order to qualify as consumer, you need to add extra features. So far your argument is symmetric.
- meric 12y agoYes, except currently military radars and GPSes are more expensive and more capable than versions you can buy in the shop. Same applies for Humvees, Tanks, guns, and even malware. All of the ones used by the military and intelligence agencies cost vastly more to buy and at the same time have more capability than their corresponding consumer versions. So it's only a symmetric argument if you view "military" and "consumer" as symbols in a program without any of the background context, which I did not intend for you to do.