What kind of black magic fuckery is this O.o
A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
21–30 of 95 posts
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#22In the 9ghz range, does that mean a sub-1mm wire mesh could mitigate this? Asking for a hypothetical house renovator friend. Thompson's adage of when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro suggests that the tinfoil hat crowd could be able to corner the emerging domestic Faraday cage market.
The dielectrics that you unavoidably will embed your wire mesh in will slightly change its reflective properties but yes, this should work.
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#23I wonder how intense those microwaves are in a room being scanned. Presumably it's also possible to jam these scans, but it seems that doing so would invoke the wrath of the fcc.
Corner reflectors are crazy effective for such application, as referenced in another comment thread here.
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#24In the 9ghz range, does that mean a sub-1mm wire mesh could mitigate this? Asking for a hypothetical house renovator friend. Thompson's adage of when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro suggests that the tinfoil hat crowd could be able to corner the emerging domestic Faraday cage market.
If you want to block SAR, just set up a big corner reflector near you. It'll completely blind the part of the image near you. It would also draw a lot of attention to you... So maybe not the best approach if you're trying to hide.
Big in home decoration fashion next year, upside down pyramids hanging from the ceiling. (edit: my bad, a corner reflector would have 3 corners at the base, not 4 as a pyramid would)
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#25The article itself says "some" buildings.
Can anyone tell me if 9.65 GHz waves can penetrate concrete / wood homes?
If commercial satellites have reached this capability, military ones are definitely far ahead.
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#26Combine this technology with the launch cadence and pricing of SpaceX and the implications are astounding. First of all, security. If your opponent has that kind of capability, you cannot meaningfully deploy tanks or any other vehicles anymore. Even infantry will suffer massively once the resolution goes up a notch. On a much smaller level, one could easily detect brake-in attempts on unguarded property. Second, indu…
I thought tanks and infantry were already basically done against equiv-tech opponents. They are not sufficiently mobile to dodge the various smart weaponry we have available today.
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#27What kind of black magic fuckery is this O.o
Synthetic aperture radar.
As an EE, I consider it important to understand that nothing at any level in your technology stack from silicon to SAAS to smartphones is black magic. This is just an application of the physics of high frequency electromagnetic signals.
I haven't personally done work with SAR, but I imagine it's much the same as dealing with EMI/EMC in PCB development: extend Maxwell's equations from a simple case to the general principle, simulate, test, and tune. I'd have to go back to my textbook and review to figure out the exact mechanisms and the limiting factors for resolution and power, I think I have Johnson's "High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic" on a shelf around here somewhere...
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#28Combine this technology with the launch cadence and pricing of SpaceX and the implications are astounding. First of all, security. If your opponent has that kind of capability, you cannot meaningfully deploy tanks or any other vehicles anymore. Even infantry will suffer massively once the resolution goes up a notch. On a much smaller level, one could easily detect brake-in attempts on unguarded property. Second, indu…
> governments [...] could easily inspect "their" people
Governments can now spy on their people via old fashioned surveillance: wire-tapping, informants, social media analysis, etc. If a nation has the checks and balances to prevent that, then it's very likely they'll be able to prevent satellites peeking into your home. If not, it could potentially be another tool in their oppression toolkit, but not terribly efficient compared to the mountains of tools they already have, like traffic light CCTV cameras, highway tollbooths, tracking of credit card payments, tracking of internet-connected personal devices, etc, etc.
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#29Can you build one of these in a non-satellite form? Like, looking inside my computer or similar, or my closed closet?
Re: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night
#30Combine this technology with the launch cadence and pricing of SpaceX and the implications are astounding. First of all, security. If your opponent has that kind of capability, you cannot meaningfully deploy tanks or any other vehicles anymore. Even infantry will suffer massively once the resolution goes up a notch. On a much smaller level, one could easily detect brake-in attempts on unguarded property. Second, indu…
I thought tanks and infantry were already basically done against equiv-tech opponents. They are not sufficiently mobile to dodge the various smart weaponry we have available today.
Just look at the Syrian civil war or the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. In both cases, Russia deployed (various quantities of) conventional forces and overwhelmed their (more or less) equally equipped opponents with tanks, vehicles, and infantry by employing better organization, tactical and strategical mobility and, to some degree, air superiority. In both cases, live satellite images at the tactical level would have made such an offensive practically impossible.