[AR] Re: say it ain't so elon
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2018 18:09:14 -0500 (EST)
On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, I wrote:
...the usefulness of a cloud of thousands of very small satellites that
work together, this is a way to deploy them and let everyone think it
was just a failed orbital insertion.
As with most "this was a cover for something sneaky" hypotheses, one
weakness here is that it's assumed nobody could tell the difference.
Those satellites would have to be awfully small to be reliably
invisible. I don't say it's impossible but it's quite a stretch.
Addendum: bear in mind that it's not enough that they be invisible to
naked-eye skywatcher or the occasional modest telescope in the hands of an
amateur satellite tracker. What happens if your swarm of stealth nanosats
happens to cross the line of sight of, say, one of the Keck telescopes?
A 10m mirror collects enough light to make even really small and really
dark objects pretty conspicuous. Astronomers have long since gotten used
to gritting their teeth and ignoring individual satellite tracks across
their images, but a huge formation of little ones is definitely going to
get noticed and reported.
Henry
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