51–60 of 114 posts
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> that commands the other way Does Falcon 9 even have a command channel anymore? The trajectory is preprogrammed, guidance and control is automatic, and the flight termination system is automatic as well.
People who code still make mistakes. There's got to be an override of some sort
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Looks like this is just data from the GPS receiver, mostly about where the rocket thinks it is at the moment. This doesn't strike me as particularly sensitive. Data from, say, sensors embedded in the engines would be much more interesting.
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.
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> 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.
> Mk 1 eyeball I giggled.
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And 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 proba…
> 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.
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-hist...
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> Mk 1 eyeball I giggled.
I 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.
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Spoofing is extremely difficult when you are pointing a highly directional dish antenna up into the air at a rocket.
Not if you're SR Hadden. I have been curious on what it would take to do a Contact like signal fake. Would it be possible for a satellite to be launched into a direction in space that for all intensive purpose make it look like it is coming from somewhere else further away? Would it be easy to tell that it is originating much closer than what it is simulating? How far would it need to be away from earth before it was…
Anything is possible but it would be very hard. You would have to fake the doppler shifts. With massive scrutiny you might even have to fake some absorption lines. Then, if the signal was longer than a few days/weeks, you would need to place the emitter far enough away that parallax, relative motion against the stellar background, was undetectable. That distance is probably measured in light-years.
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> Mk 1 eyeball I giggled.
I 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.
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> 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.
>> 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 counterillumi…
> Modern stealth aircraft, such as the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet and B-2 Spirit bomber, are painted in matte black or dark grey and are flown at night to limit their visual signature.
Can't really do that in space; you've got a day/night cycle ever 90 minutes or so.
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>> 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 counterillumi…
The article would seem to indicate it helps, but certainly doesn't get you all the way there. > Modern stealth aircraft, such as the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet and B-2 Spirit bomber, are painted in matte black or dark grey and are flown at night to limit their visual signature. Can't really do that in space; you've got a day/night cycle ever 90 minutes or so.
The F117 is black and only flew at night, at lower levels. The bottom of the B2 isn't actually black, more a dark grey with a bit of blue in it. And the top of the aircraft is more sea blue than black at most angles. Someone thought long and hard about those colors, about not just painting it all black like the F117.
