Mystery surrounds fate of secret satellite slung by SpaceX
SpaceX and Northrop Grumman have refused to address rumors that all may not be well with the classified "Zuma" satellite launched on Monday. Speculation about the fate of the satellite arose after the editor of Space Intel Report, Peter de Selding, noticed that after the expected satellite deployment, there was no word from …
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 06:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: That's what they want you to believe
Gee, I don't know. Trump's stupidity is supposed to be pretty monumental, according to those who oppose him. I'm not sure even the USAF can prevail over thickness of that magnitude. Heck, if Hillary (world's smartest woman) couldn't do it, who can? Trump's weapons-grade density appears unstoppable.
And now we learn that he didn't even want to win! Just imagine what he'd have accomplished if he did!
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 07:01 GMT Francis Boyle
Re: That's what they want you to believe
Trump doesn't want to win? I'm not sure what you think I'm suggesting, but the problem with Trump has always been his need to win - his need for Donald J. Trump to win and his complete lack of concern about who get's hurt along the way whether it's a few people or a few million. I was joking about the USAF putting the satellite in orbit above North Korea. I assume all the US intelligence agencies have been watching North Korea at the highest priority ever since Trump started spewing out his nuclear armed schoolboy threats. But if you don't think the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea is something to worry about I don't know what to say.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 07:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea
That is indeed something to worry about. However, some of us may remember the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, which perhaps puts the current situation in a slightly different light (which is /not/ to say the NK situation should be regarded as trivial).
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 11:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: ... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea
'Exchange' is a little much I think, it kinda has 'MAD' connotations from the cold war. North Korea has buried and exploded some nuclear devices. It's also fired a few rockets. That doesn't necessarily give it the ability to 'exchange' with the United States. Ask Yodel : delivery is the tricky bit. I'm not saying that 'we wouldn't get our hair mussed' but we are not talking about a 1983 style end of the world in an 'exchange' with North Korea. I'm also not seeing a lot of scope for escalation. No treaties, no friends. I'm betting on Vladimir not pressing his button for the Norks. He's got oil to sell. And the Chinese too : wipe out the West, and who are you going to sell stuff too.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 13:55 GMT Francis Boyle
Re: ... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea
If the Norks managed to hit Guam with their tinpot missile and Trump responded in kind, then, yes, I'd consider that an exchange. No, it probably wouldn't escalate into a nuclear war (which is why I'm not particularly concerned about an On The Beach scenario) but I'd expect the Chinese to be very upset. Not nuke-the-US upset but certainly angry enough to spill blood.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 10:39 GMT Francis Boyle
Re: ... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea
"I'd expect the Chinese to be very upset"
But with whom? Maybe with Kim.
Quite possibly. The thing is, it doesn't matter who starts a war, or who responds to whom, ordinary people on all sides will die. And while I dislike the North Korean regime I'd like ordinary North Koreans to be liberated not killed.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 21:15 GMT Alan Brown
Re: ... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea
The Chinese have put up with Fat Boy Kim and his daddy for years, but it's mostly been "tolerated" - remember the Norks are a creation of Stalin.
The real threat that the chinese will be worried about is that of 11 million starving refugees heading north if the NK government collapses. That threat also seems to be one of the reasons they keep sending any escapees back (ie, KimBo saying "if you don't, we'll send a lot more")
It's going to be interesting what happens with the latest round of UN embargoes. China cut off power and oil supplies for 4 months a few years back but resumed them when it was clear the Pyongyang kleptocracy was taking everything and letting the peasants starve/freeze to death. If there's a refugee wave as a result of these embargos they have legitimate cause to ask the world to help out.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 16:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: That's what they want you to believe
> "Trump doesn't want to win?"
Not according to a new DC tell-all book by one Michael Wolff. Mostly leftist lies of course, but it's amusing to watch the media types try to claim Trump didn't really want to be President and colluded with Russia to achieve exactly that. Down the rabbit hole!
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 20:46 GMT Florida1920
Re: That's what they want you to believe
@Big John
You seriously need to find better sources.
President Trump didn’t want to win the presidential election because he thought, if he lost, his family would have bigger opportunities ahead, according to an excerpt from a new book detailing his first year in office.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-didnt-want-to-win-the-election-because-he-thought-losing-could-offer-untold-opportunities-book/article/2644849“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” Trump told former head of Fox News Roger Ailes a week before the election, according to author Michael Wolff. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 06:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The other type of PsychOps?
As in, self sabotage to someone/thing they do not want. Say, getting insurance payment from SpaceX by launching a failed satellite?
Though I do subscribe to attributing to error before malice (not instead of ;) ), so it could be a mess up with the satellite, and who wants to admit that before they retire?
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 10:18 GMT rh587
Re: PsychOps?
Anything's possible. Does anyone know the rate of "just plain doesn't work" problems in newly lofted satellites? You hear it happening but it seems rare and therefore unlikely.
I don't know the rate, but it's certainly possible. Especially since the payload adaptor was apparently one of Northrop Grumman's design, not the standard SpaceX adaptor, which lends credence to the theory that the satellite didn't separate from S2 successfully (and it wouldn't be SpaceX's fault in this case).
The other, very tin-foil hat option - given that this is an unusually tight-lipped mission (we normally know at least which agency a sat belongs to - but no one is claiming Zuma) is that the satellite performed an immediate cross-range burn after S2 separation to distance itself from the launch trajectory and the lenses of observers, allowing it to run around unnoticed. This would be extremely naughty since satellites - however classified - are supposed to be in declared orbits for the safety of manned vehicles (ISS, Tiangong) and to ensure they don't smash through someone else's satellite.
This makes me think it's a US Navy project since they have form with throwing caution to the wind and turning off their anti-collision systems in busy shipping lanes...
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 13:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: PsychOps?
The tinfoil hat explanation is actually pretty reasonable. It isn't uncommon for military birds to maneuver out of sight of the competition in order to conceal when and where they'll show up next, to make the job of hide-the-good-stuff-from-the-sats that much harder (The X-37 spent more than a year on orbit, and is very likely to have done that several times). That only works until their radar paints your bird and your orbital elements become known again, but surprise is a volatile item and boils away rapidly when you shine a light or a radar on it.
Anon because Trump.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 07:40 GMT John Smith 19
Possibly a prolem for SX, possibly not.
Depends on the contract.
If it's a case of "We agree to get Zuma to orbital parameters <redacted>" and they have then job done. Everything else is down to Northrup Grumman.
OTOH if they didn't, or there is an "on orbit handover" period (IIRC that's common for comm sats before they depart for GTO) things could be a bit whiffy for Musk & Co.
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 16:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Pinky & The Brain
I think, if you went back and looked, that Pinky was the genius. There was, in fact, an episode dedicated to the fact that brain was the one who screwed up most of the plans and that Pinky was the only one of the two to successfully take over(Brain of course screwed this up).
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 10:39 GMT Blotto
Probably the work of SPECTRE
we need to send in 007 immediately to sort this out. He can use Q's new MELTDOWN tool delivered either by a code hidden on a music cassette or from some new fangled tech in bonds Omega smart analogue watch to infiltrate SPECTRE and stop them from their evil exploits.
we need an Austin Powers icon, also will be interesting to know if NK knew about SPECTRE and MELTDOWN before the exploits where published.......
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 12:08 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Probably the work of SPECTRE
I'm still bitter, because the bastards had run out of their View to a Kill 007 digital watches, by the time I'd eaten enough Shredded Wheat for the tokens to get one. It was waterproof, played the theme tune in really cheesy beeps, with about ten different alarms and had cool red buttons.
Back in the days when I thought digital watches were a really neat idea...
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 14:40 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Probably the work of SPECTRE
I thought digital watches were a really neat idea
Likewise. I had a (Timex? Casio?) red LED watch sometime in the late 70's or early 80's. The thing was, if you kept pushing the button to see the time (the display blanked after a couple of seconds), the battery life was somwhat similar to that of a modern Apple Watch.
Progress eh?
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 13:26 GMT cray74
Re: the 45th Space Wing?
How big is a "Space Wing" that they have at least 45 of them?
45? There's also a 460th Space Wing. A quick browse through the USAF Space Command org chart shows:
The 460th Space Wing,
The 233rd Space Group (Colorado Air National Guard),
21st Space Wing,
310th Space Wing,
50th Space Wing,
30th Space Wing,
And two full Air Forces involved in the USAF Space Command:
14th Air Force, and
24th Air Force
Reading all this just makes me realize I know very little about USAF organizational standards. I don't know a group from a wing; I don't know why there are the 21st, 30th, 50th, 310th, and 460th Space Wings, but not a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Space Wings; and I don't know why the USAF Space Command got tasked with running the USAF's IT department ("Air Force Informational Network," which I'm probably misunderstanding, too.) Much more reading to do...
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 13:52 GMT ThatOne
Re: the 45th Space Wing?
> How big is a "Space Wing" that they have at least 45 of them?
Don't forget US Military has a very liberal stance to numbering, to a point their numbers don't mean much. Take their tank models: In WW2 the model "M3" designated both a light tank (Stuart) and a medium tank (Lee) (Also a Scout Car, and a Half-track, but let's keep it simple). A platoon of "M3A1" could be as well a platoon of peashooters in a tin can, as a platoon of serious battle tanks...
My point is, "45th" doesn't imply there are at least 45 of them. As cray74 showed, they give anything any number they like.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 17:03 GMT cray74
Re: the 45th Space Wing?
So cray74 is not necessarily the 74th cray then? Is that what you are saying?
I'm not certain of the logic that resulted in the "74" suffix in my handle. In a prior millennium, I signed up for a Hotmail account while attempting to retain my dial-up BBS handle of "Cray" and was informed that plain "Cray" was taken. Since I was in a hurry to forward an amusing ASCII artwork message by that new-fangled internet email thing, I didn't bother exhaustively evaluating the availability of email addresses from cray1 to cray73 but rather immediately accepted Hotmail's suggested "cray74."
I usually attempt to use "cray" when signing up in internet forums but when that isn't available I next try "cray74." After 20+ years of usage, "cray74" is easy for me to remember even if I don't know the algorithm that appended the 74 suffix to "cray."
Therefore, I cannot say for certain that cray74 is or isn't the 74th cray, and the answer to your first question is, "Yes." The answer to the second question is also "yes."
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Tuesday 9th January 2018 14:47 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: the 45th Space Wing?
A platoon of "M3A1" could be as well a platoon of peashooters in a tin can, as a platoon of serious battle tanks
WW2 US[1] tanks were very much a case of quantity over quality. Who cares if you lose 10 Sherman tanks in order to kill one Tiger 2? We had thousands of the things and the Germans only had hundreds of theirs.
Bit of a bummer for the tank crews though.
Things did improve later (mostly post-Normandy landings) though.
[1] British tanks were not much better - you had the 'really heavy armour but only a peashooter of a main gun[1a]" ones that could barely manage 15mph or the "no real armour and a peashooter of a gun" ones. The best[2] UK tanks were made by taking some of the US designs and putting a BFG on them so that they actually had a chance of shooting back at the panzers..
[1a] As in the Matilda tanks.
[2] This is, of course, like every Internet comment, a gross oversimplification.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 02:02 GMT Jonathan Schwatrz
Re: CrazyOldCatMan Re: the 45th Space Wing?
".....WW2 US[1] tanks were very much a case of quantity over quality.....We had thousands of the things and the Germans only had hundreds of theirs....." Once again, for the hard of reading, the most common tank met by British and US tanks in the European Campaign was the Panzer MkIV, not the Panther, the Tiger nor the Tiger II. The Sherman was just as good as the Panzer IV and superior in some respects (sloped front armour for a start), and the ROQF 75mm-armed British tanks like the Churchill and Cromwell had few problems dealing with the Panzer IV as well. The British switched to the ROQF 75mm to gain better HE performance, not for hole-punching, as HE was becoming more important than AP. HE was more important as the majority of British and Yank tank losses from Alamein onwards were to anti-tank guns, not German tanks.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 12:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuma_(satellite)
No evidence or credible official statement for payload failure exists (above citations link to rumours not actual official statements). Zuma appears on SatCat as active and operational, therefore payload is likely successful. https://www.celestrak.com/pub/satcat.txt
down for me right now, even though https://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/isitup.cgi says it's up !
"Mmmm ... I do love the smell of a fresh conspiracy in the morning !"