Edge of space

Really? You point a satellite dish at a certain area of the sky. How could you tell that the signal is coming from a satellite, radio signal bounced off of the ionosphere, or a craft rotating around the hub of the earth like the sun and moon?

The problem is where is the sky it's going to be. People are going to get suspicious if the dishes are being pointed towards the poles when the satellite's supposed to be in geosynchronous. Putting something so it looks like it's in GSO would involve sending it a good 5,000 km (or wherever the Sun/moon is supposed to be) up into the sky, and putting a large number of objects up so there's one in the relevant direction wherever you are on the planet would involve huge numbers of such things.

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Maybe a pseudolite could fool the satellite TV customers, but it would not fool the customer who paid to have their TV satellite launched in the first place.  If I'm paying SpaceX $10 million or more to put a satellite into a particular orbit for me, they had better know that I have ways of knowing if they put up a pseudolite instead.

Really? You point a satellite dish at a certain area of the sky. How could you tell that the signal is coming from a satellite, radio signal bounced off of the ionosphere, or a craft rotating around the hub of the earth like the sun and moon?

Tom, it's my satellite.  I built it to my custom specifications.  I programmed it with my custom software.  I'm the one that told the launch company the orbit that it needs to go into.  I'm the one that tells my customers where to aim their dishes.  Do you honestly think that someone is going to be able to reverse engineer my satellite hardware and software and secretly replace it with a fleet of pseudolites (that they would have to build, test and maintain) in a manner that is transparent even to me (the one who built the satellite in the first place)?  Answer me this Tom, how long does it take to launch a single satellite into geostationary orbit (assuming that it's possible in the first place) and how long would it take to deploy a fleet of pseudolites that have been secretly reverse engineered to my exact specifications (assuming that's possible too)?

What if they launch these satellites and land them on the moon? Then they can just hang tight there and send signals. This is though contingent that the rocket gets to outer space unless that is, the moon isn't in space but on earth.

Tom, it's my satellite.  I built it to my custom specifications.  I programmed it with my custom software.  I'm the one that told the launch company the orbit that it needs to go into.  I'm the one that tells my customers where to aim their dishes.  Do you honestly think that someone is going to be able to reverse engineer my satellite hardware and software and secretly replace it with a fleet of pseudolites (that they would have to build, test and maintain) in a manner that is transparent even to me (the one who built the satellite in the first place)?

All they would need to do is take your antenna and circuit board an attach it to their pseudolite. It isn't exactly brain surgery.

http://www.ccnmag.com/article/nasa_space_telescope_gives_scientists_depth_perception

A stratellite couldn't possibly work like the Spitzer's Space Telescope. It is takes one picture when it is at one point in space and another and makes a parallax image. The more distance apart, the more you can focus on far away objects. A stratellite on earth couldn't possibly get the same distance between a round earth and then half way through the orbit. Here's an image of what I just tried to explain.

All they would need to do is take your antenna and circuit board an attach it to their pseudolite. It isn't exactly brain surgery.

I don't know. You'll have to replace the antenna and transmitter completely, as the signal strengths and FOV for a pesudolite would be different than that for a satellite. You'll  have to rebuild circuitry itself, as the power supply's would differ between the two devices, and you'll have to add some kind delay system into the mix so the signals don't seem to be covering the distance far faster than they should be. If the system also has some kind of method of compensating for the delay, you'll have to work that out as the delay won't exist and the thing would need to link to a conspiracy run place to retrieve fake data should the satellite be designed to collect data that would allow someone to tell the difference between a round or flat planet. Perhaps plenty of other stuff I haven't thought of as well.

What if they launch these satellites and land them on the moon? Then they can just hang tight there and send signals. This is though contingent that the rocket gets to outer space unless that is, the moon isn't in space but on earth.

The Moon isn't in GSO, so it wouldn't really work if you put something there.

It's also essentially impossible to reach the Moon in a FE model, which brings me to another point. Where would you put the pseudolite? The only place that would look like GSO in a FE model is around the Sun/Moons orbit, which is all but impossible to reach and involves the thing fighting against the rotational force once it gets up there.

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Tom, it's my satellite.  I built it to my custom specifications.  I programmed it with my custom software.  I'm the one that told the launch company the orbit that it needs to go into.  I'm the one that tells my customers where to aim their dishes.  Do you honestly think that someone is going to be able to reverse engineer my satellite hardware and software and secretly replace it with a fleet of pseudolites (that they would have to build, test and maintain) in a manner that is transparent even to me (the one who built the satellite in the first place)?

All they would need to do is take your antenna and circuit board an attach it to their pseudolite. It isn't exactly brain surgery.

Tom, do you know how anything works?  The launch company would have to build and maintain a fleet of pseudolites to simulate my one satellite.  Do you honestly think that they are going to make a profit like that?  Besides, all I have to do is mount a camera into my satellite and any deception would be over with the first frame received.

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The best stratellites will only be able to cover a ground area with a 200 mile diameter.

Did you forget that a stratellite could see farther if the earth were flat?

I got that information from a company that manufactures a stratellite, it is not based on estimations, it is based on testing.  200 mile diameter is the maximum possible distance assuming there are no other obstacles (mountains) in the way.

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Let me put it this way, SpaceX is offering their service for anywhere between 8 - 11 million.  It would cost them FAR more than that to fake the launch and instead put up hundreds if not more stratellites (each twice as large as a blue wale) to give the same coverage.  Where did you get 50 thousand from?

These guys were able to make a stratellite and send it up to look down at the circular spotlight of the sun for less than a couple hundred dollars: http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/

That balloon is not designed for prolonged flight, if you read about stratellites, one of the biggest design obstacles is the fact that in order to exist in such low pressure without exploding, in addition, their electronics and flight systems have to withstand very low temperatures for an extended period of time.  They have to be large, lightweight, and very strong.  Right now they are about twice the size of a blue wale.

They also have to have sophisticated navigation systems that will keep it constantly over the same geographic location, allow for remote landings, takeoffs and maneuvers.  Similar to what you might find in a predator, which itself cost several million dollars.

You are trying to make this sound simple, but it is not.  Companies that are developing this technology are having all kinds of problems with them, one of the big problems is COST.

So once again, in order to fake what 2 satellites are capable of doing, SpaceX would have to have at least 2 multimillion dollar stratellites for every 200 diameter circular area in the US, one would have to be airborne at any given time.  That is a lot of fucking ships.  We are talking thousands of employees for maintinence crews, developers that can get PROPRIETARY software to work with their current hardware (it will not be compatible with the satellite hardware they put up).  As well as many different factories to make these contraptions. 

The only thing I will say is one stratellite will cost less than launching one satellite, but not by much.  In the long run, due to maintenance, the strats will cost far more.

No way they can do all that and make profit if they are only charging 8 - 11 million for a flight.  Sorry Tom.

markjo its very possible that NASA has advanced decompilers that make converting "real" satellites into pseudollites easy

markjo its very possible that NASA has advanced decompilers that make converting "real" satellites into pseudollites easy

The software isn't the only problem, although decompiling modern software into anything meaningful is a task in itself, and is hardly something that could be made 'easy'.

It is when NASA is earning billions in profits.

It is when NASA is earning billions in profits.

I don't see how having a lot of money will make decompiling any easier. Besides, it's not the only problem.

Come to think of it, what does this have to do with NASA in the first place? I though we were talking about the launching of commercial devices by private groups.

SpaceX has never successfully launched a "satellite", your point?

SpaceX has never successfully launched a "satellite", your point?

Yes, they have (if you believe them, that is):

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX made history when its Falcon 1, designed and manufactured from the ground up by SpaceX, became the first privately-developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

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Tom, it's my satellite.  I built it to my custom specifications.  I programmed it with my custom software.  I'm the one that told the launch company the orbit that it needs to go into.  I'm the one that tells my customers where to aim their dishes.  Do you honestly think that someone is going to be able to reverse engineer my satellite hardware and software and secretly replace it with a fleet of pseudolites (that they would have to build, test and maintain) in a manner that is transparent even to me (the one who built the satellite in the first place)?

All they would need to do is take your antenna and circuit board an attach it to their pseudolite. It isn't exactly brain surgery.

You are right it isn't brain surgery. Brain Surgery would be simpler. The key difficulty with brain surgery is to keep a steady hand, actually knowing what part to cut out is mostly handled by machines now, or by trial and error (during brain surgery they keep the patients conscious so they can actually test out what each part of the brain around the surgery site does, so they know what they are cutting into).

Brain Surgery is not Rocket Science you know.

A custom designed Satellite/Psudeolite/Stratelite is extremely complicated. It is not like your home computer where you can pull out one board and plug in another. The entire system is designed to work together, change one thing and it can stop working altogether. Also, much of the chips and software needs to be encrypted so as to prevent people form reverse engineering them, or hacking them. So if NASA could decrypt these chips in the short periods of time they have between when they receive the "satel"lite and the launch, then they have computing power far exceeding the entire processing power of every single computer in existence (from when they were originally created to today) many times over (like millions of time that much processing power).

So they could not reverse engineer the chips and software of the Satellites, which means they can not have a fleet of them, as they can't have a fleet of them, then they must be using the same number of Satellites as they were given. As the coverage area of the Satellites was calculated as if the Satellites were in actual orbit (and is easily checked by the company by just paying a worker to go out and point a dish at the satellites at the edge of the coverage zone, so maybe just a few days wages), then it means the exact coverage area of the Stratelite must be exactly the same as the coverage of a Satellite and also provide the exact same time delays as a Satellite (as many of the communications Satellites are very exacting of the time delays they they produce and thus would easily be detected).

These commercial companies would have spent millions of dollars developing their Satellites, and then spent million more on the launch. They would make certain that they got what they paid for, and if they didn't the launch companies would have the pants sued off them by the companies developing these satellites.

Put Simply: Tom, you have no ideas what you are talking about.

Quote from: Johannes Kepler on December 25, 2008, 07:35:49 PM

SpaceX has never successfully launched a "satellite", your point?

Yes, they have (if you believe them, that is):

Quote from: http://www.spacex.com/F1-004-summary.php

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX made history when its Falcon 1, designed and manufactured from the ground up by SpaceX, became the first privately-developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

That's a rocket, designed to lift things into orbit and come back, SpaceX still has not put anything into space and left it there.  They have flown to and near the Karman line several times, but they have yet to put a anything of their own design into space and leave it there.

They (Sorry I forgot the exact date they were going to do it...) are about to or have recently lifted a DoD satellite into space, but that was not theirs, it was built by the government.

Quote from: Johannes Kepler on December 25, 2008, 07:35:49 PM

SpaceX has never successfully launched a "satellite", your point?

Yes, they have (if you believe them, that is):

Quote from: http://www.spacex.com/F1-004-summary.php

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX made history when its Falcon 1, designed and manufactured from the ground up by SpaceX, became the first privately-developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

Sorry, I forgot to say "commercial".

No one has ever paid money for a successful launch by Space X.

Arianespace is a french company that occording to wikipedia "As of 2004[update] Arianespace held more than 50 percent of the world market for boosting satellites to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianespace

Arianespace is a french company that occording to wikipedia "As of 2004[update] Arianespace held more than 50 percent of the world market for boosting satellites to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianespace

All of those launches have been LEO, well within the limits of possible flight. As far as I know, only the Apollo series flights had to be faked. 

Are you talking only about manned flights?

Are you talking only about manned flights?

According to your source, the Wikipedia:

"A Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth?s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km. Given the rapid orbital decay of objects below approximately 200 km, the commonly accepted definition for LEO is between 160 - 2000 km (100 - 1240 miles) above the Earth's surface.[1][2]

With the exception of the lunar flights of the Apollo program, and the sub-orbital flights of the Mercury program and the X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket planes, all human spaceflights have been in LEO, including all Space Shuttle and space station missions. The altitude record for a human spaceflight in LEO was Gemini 11 with an apogee of 1374.1 km."

Now, SpaceShipOne went to a maximum of 112 KM, according to the SpaceX site.  The sub orbital flight are even lower than LEO.  Only the lunar flights broke that distance.

These guys were able to make a stratellite and send it up to look down at the circular spotlight of the sun for less than a couple hundred dollars: http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/

The only diagrams FE'ers have presented us with that remotely match up with observation do not show the sun's spotlight as circular. Not only that, but curvature (even before the horizon) is clearly visible in all of those photos.

Quote from: grogberries on December 27, 2008, 03:23:38 PM

Are you talking only about manned flights?

According to your source, the Wikipedia:

"A Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth?s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km. Given the rapid orbital decay of objects below approximately 200 km, the commonly accepted definition for LEO is between 160 - 2000 km (100 - 1240 miles) above the Earth's surface.[1][2]

With the exception of the lunar flights of the Apollo program, and the sub-orbital flights of the Mercury program and the X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket planes, all human spaceflights have been in LEO, including all Space Shuttle and space station missions. The altitude record for a human spaceflight in LEO was Gemini 11 with an apogee of 1374.1 km."

Now, SpaceShipOne went to a maximum of 112 KM, according to the SpaceX site.  The sub orbital flight are even lower than LEO.  Only the lunar flights broke that distance.

What about all the probes to mars? I think Jupiter and saturn got some things to say hello to them as well. But not human. Is it important to have a human on board?

Quote from: markjo on December 25, 2008, 10:12:56 PM

Quote from: Johannes Kepler on December 25, 2008, 07:35:49 PM

SpaceX has never successfully launched a "satellite", your point?

Yes, they have (if you believe them, that is):

Quote from: http://www.spacex.com/F1-004-summary.php

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX made history when its Falcon 1, designed and manufactured from the ground up by SpaceX, became the first privately-developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

That's a rocket, designed to lift things into orbit and come back, SpaceX still has not put anything into space and left it there.  They have flown to and near the Karman line several times, but they have yet to put a anything of their own design into space and leave it there.

They (Sorry I forgot the exact date they were going to do it...) are about to or have recently lifted a DoD satellite into space, but that was not theirs, it was built by the government.

You really do need to keep up Ravenwood.  SpaceX (Falcon 1) is not Scaled Composites (Space Ship One/Two).  Please check the links that I provide before responding.  You will look a lot less foolish that way.

You really do need to keep up Ravenwood.  SpaceX (Falcon 1) is not Scaled Composites (Space Ship One/Two).  Please check the links that I provide before responding.  You will look a lot less foolish that way.

Which of those companies are government contractors, and which are not?

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You really do need to keep up Ravenwood.  SpaceX (Falcon 1) is not Scaled Composites (Space Ship One/Two).  Please check the links that I provide before responding.  You will look a lot less foolish that way.

Which of those companies are government contractors, and which are not?

What has goverment ordered from SpaceX ? Not that it matters because you have failed to respond to other arguments considering the financial feasibility of launching numerous pseudolites instead of satellites.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 27, 2008, 11:08:33 PM

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You really do need to keep up Ravenwood.  SpaceX (Falcon 1) is not Scaled Composites (Space Ship One/Two).  Please check the links that I provide before responding.  You will look a lot less foolish that way.

Which of those companies are government contractors, and which are not?

What has goverment ordered from SpaceX ? Not that it matters because you have failed to respond to other arguments considering the financial feasibility of launching numerous pseudolites instead of satellites.

They just signed contracts to suppy "ISS".

Also SpaceX has never launched a proprietary non-spacex satellite successfully.

RE is out of ammunition here...

Also SpaceX has never launched a proprietary non-spacex satellite successfully.

Again, only if you believe in conspiracies.

Looks like you're the one out of ammunition.

Quote from: Johannes Kepler on December 28, 2008, 01:43:11 PM

Also SpaceX has never launched a proprietary non-spacex satellite successfully.

Again, only if you believe in conspiracies.

Looks like you're the one out of ammunition.

Actually, even spaceX doesn't claim they have.

Quote from: jargo on December 28, 2008, 10:03:20 AM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 27, 2008, 11:08:33 PM

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You really do need to keep up Ravenwood.  SpaceX (Falcon 1) is not Scaled Composites (Space Ship One/Two).  Please check the links that I provide before responding.  You will look a lot less foolish that way.

Which of those companies are government contractors, and which are not?

What has goverment ordered from SpaceX ? Not that it matters because you have failed to respond to other arguments considering the financial feasibility of launching numerous pseudolites instead of satellites.

They just signed contracts to suppy "ISS".

Also SpaceX has never launched a proprietary non-spacex satellite successfully.

RE is out of ammunition here...

So what about Sea Launch?
http://www.sea-launch.com/

From their last Launch
"Sea Launch successfully delivered Intelsat's Galaxy 19 satellite to orbit on September 24, 2008, in a flawless mission. The first signal from the satellite was acquired at the Hartebeesthoek ground station immediately after spacecraft separation. Weighing 4,690 kg (10,340 lbs), this high-power C-band and Ku-band satellite will provide communications services to customers throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean islands"

So where is the time to reverse engineer and turn on the stratelites so it seems flawless