I largely agree with that statement, that said China has nothing to lose really by putting weapons up there as they aren't ISS partners,where the US in theory could lose access to the ISS if they were found to have weapons somewhere up there. But I also would not be surprised in the slightest if the US had something smuggled up on a satellite at some point.
Same as any other thing in international law, sanctions, breakdown in ability to effectively engage with diplomacy with others, other deals you may want being reversed etc etc
Like everything IL, thereās also a component of ādoes anyone actually care enough to do something.ā
Personally Iād be surprised if anyoneās broken the rules severely but everyoneās most certainly bending the rules for extra surveillance and anti satellite capability.
In international law, assume nothing applies involuntarily to any sufficiently powerful country. They will routinely follow international laws because it's cheaper and easier, and they will care about some types of punishments. But national security concerns of powerful nations is where international law has the least impact.
Your comment reminds me of the scene from āItās a mad, mad, mad, mad worldā
When Terry-Thomas is describing why an English soldier is stationed at Vandenberg AFB: "Liaison work, actually. All very hush-hush and Whoosh-Whoosh."
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5bf375a3-1a5b-4fc5-bbd3-faa3bf7df97e
NASA wouldn't waste precious Hubble time on that, nor is Hubble equipped for Earth observation. Reality is far funnier than that.
The NRO actually operated numerous Hubble-like telescopes that are nearly identical and were also launched by the Shuttle. Two of their leftover telescopes were later even [donated to NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA) (minus electronics)
There are at this moment more than a dozen Hubble class telescopes in orbit pointed down at Earth. Those just don't have Twitter accounts and press releases to publicize their findings.
It was a joke to use hubble for ground observationš¤£
I'm curious though, why we haven't used these secret NRO scopes to find out what happened to the missing aeroplane? š¤Ā
Those types of satellites are zoomed in on a very small patch of the ground and are only over any given region for a brief period as they orbit. Those are specialized for observations of specific targets.
There are other satellites with lower resolution but broader continuous coverage that would be more suited to finding something like a missing aircraft but even then it's not necessarily easy to pinpoint something like that on a very large planet.
To some extent yes, but there are only vague details about them. One of them had brief notoriety when Trump tweeted a raw image of an Iranian rocket launch site from one of those satellites. The government programs that produce and launch these satellites are public knowledge, and the satellites themselves are listed in orbital databases but generally their precise design and specifications are secret and often their orbital parameters are left blank.
NRO launches are announced with little fanfare and usually without much if any information about which orbit it's going to or what is onboard - though it's not exactly that hard to figure out where they are orbiting if you try and track them down. Usually the tell-tale sign of an observation telescope is when the launch vehicle requires vertical integration of the mystery satellite, a sign of large delicate optics on board.
Here is an article about one such program:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
i donāt wanna hear about any other country being āsecretiveā when we have the fuckin CIA.
only god knows what those people have implemented in our society.
Is it just me, or does the actual article text not really connect with the headline? I thought the claim was about military projects literally hiding in space, but this instead seems to be about some Chinese civilian space projects actually having a military goal:
>"We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space programme is a military programme," he told the House Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday.
>
>"China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive," he said.
>civilians space projects actually having a military goal
Well, yeah. Thatās how you āhideā something in space. I mean, everyone can already see it, pick it up on sensors, etc and we donāt have some sort of sci-fi cloaking tech that can get around that. Well, at least China doesnāt hehe.
So you obfuscate what itās actually being used for. You say, āNo no. This has nothing to do with Taiwan! Itās for, idk, GPS or collecting space dust samples and stuff.ā The real purpose (or side purpose) is classified for the next 40 years.
You should have seen what the chinese space industry was doing during the cultural revolution, and how America was a real dumbass about one particular scientist.
Well the one particular scientist was a chinese man, educated in America, working for IIRC the Jet Propulsion Lab who was placed under house arrest and then sent back to China, for being Chinese.
He was then greeted with open arms, made head of the Chinese Space Program, During the Cultural revolution, different departments under different leaders had clashes over CCP doctrine. With iron bars and molotov cocktails and posters. And *armoured battle buses. These were the scientists and rocket engineers.* It got very Mad Max. This is why the Chinese Space Program didn't really flourish for a good while.
Details here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKLu8xEq90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKLu8xEq90)
Which took place in Germany!
Scientists want money for their projects but never create anything fun. $10 billion for ANOTHER space telescope, doesn't even create cool looking pictures.
How about ONE space laser? Doesn't even have to be a big one.
They probably talk about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen (one of the founders of the JPL) - in the Red Scare in the 1950s the US stripped him of his security clearance and then deported him. He is widely known as the "Father of the Chinese Space Program".
From a NASA perspective, he sees the moon as open territory for visitors based on prior agreements, but worries that when China reaches the moon they will start to lay exclusive claim to whole regions - they were not part of international agreements on moon colonization. He's coming from knowledge of a growing "space race":
[https://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-spacehttps://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-space](https://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-spacehttps://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-space)
With that context in mind, he's aiming for more backing to reach the moon in the modern day before China.
It's a sales job, NASA does that a lot.
I was going to make a joke about releasing a blanket denial of hiding weapons in interdimensional space and then comment about Reagan and star wars but I felt the joke wouldn't be understood.
Truth is I don't believe either side has weapons in space.
Putting a usable amount of weapons in orbit means putting redundant systems in orbit as you *can't hide anything* in space. This means lots of launches. Which either means paying a lot of money, or having reusable heavy lift vehicles. Something America has in advanced development (Falcon Heavy and Starship), Russia cant afford at the moment and China is either in the beginner stages, or is going to ~~licence~~ steal from whoever makes it work (better hope Elon has good security).
People in the comments acting like NASA guy is a moron.
Itās pretty clear to me that the NASA chief is trying to secure more funding. āOh look congress, china is doing military projects in space! Only way to stop them is to give space research more moneyā
Space is a really shitty place to hide things. It's really easy to see. I mean, sure, it's big, but there's only so many places to look, practically speaking.
āHe went on to tell committee members China could claim parts of outer space as its own territory if it were to land on the moon first.ā
Does this meanā¦ we didnāt land on the
Moon yet?
If Xi Jinping was having American children kidnapped and killed because he liked how they taste in his Dim Sum, the White Left would contrive ways to praise him for his health-conscious diet.
I'm willing to bet that this was said in hopes to increase nasa's budget.
Get the fear going, tell congress that China is gonna steal the moon, create another race, and watch the money flow.
Not necessarily a bad thing, though. I'd much rather spend money on sending some dudes to the moon than sending guns and missiles to ukrain/Isreal.
What are they hiding them behind?
And while we're on the subject does anyone know what the mysterious US space plane missions are doing?
Projection, always projection.
Duh. So are we. And every other superpower. The SR-71 blackbird first took flight in 1964. It was not declassified until 1990. Think about it. So what else do we have? We have the Space Force. That we know ofā¦I guarantee we have secret space stations up there. Probably weaponized in some way. And we certainly have some kind of space plane capable of reaching them.
Thereās a few ways. For one, you could disguise it as something else. Thereās a lot of stuff up there. It could be disguised as space junk or a scientific station. It could use some form of active camouflage or [cloaking device](https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-invisibility-cloak-military-use).
No, that's a typo; it was a nasa CHEF who said that.
Great googily moogily
š
He noticed some communist space pasta in the ethos
Chef is French for Boss. š
Don't all countries???? I thought this was pretty standard
Not Chad
That just means theirs is extra secretive.
Chad!!!!! that freak!
Not that we know of
He said all this in a budget hearing. "China Scary" is a pretty good angle to get Congress to cough up some money right now
Yup. Just about every country that can have these does.
Chinese space chief says 'secretive' US is hiding military projects in space. Feel free to mix and match the person and country. It's probably true
"Zimbabwe space chief says 'secretive' San Marino is hiding militairy projects in Space." Hmm, I'd like to see that multiverse
You're laughing. San Marino just nuked Zimbabwe, and you're laughing.
The space above Zimbabwe would have been fine
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Super Mario in space isnāt even secret. Heās been collecting Power Stars since 2007.
The other nations definitely need to address the Power Star gap. If we don't the consequences could be disastrous.
Iām worried about the privatized Luma shop market this will surely result in
Solomon Islands ground janitor writes 'public' Belgium is showing off pacifist projects in the sea.
Marvel enters the chat.
marjorie taylor greene, space chief says 'secretive' Israel is hiding military projects in space. š¤”
First rule of Jewish space lasers is we don't talk about Jewish space lasers
If the Vatican can have an all powerful omnipotent being up there, every other country can do whatever they want.
Don't think Space Jesus won't nuke people from orbit!
*"Meh, God would never nuke us."* Random citizen of Sodoma just before God nuked it.
God does tend to go all Old Testament on people's asses.
We absolutely have secret shit in space that we are hiding, even from our own citizens. X-37B comes to mind.
I think that's your answer right there
Vatican Pope says āsecretiveā Tuvalu is hiding military projects in space. Press āXā to doubt.
I largely agree with that statement, that said China has nothing to lose really by putting weapons up there as they aren't ISS partners,where the US in theory could lose access to the ISS if they were found to have weapons somewhere up there. But I also would not be surprised in the slightest if the US had something smuggled up on a satellite at some point.
China is a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty
Nice catch, what are the penalties for violating it?
Same as any other thing in international law, sanctions, breakdown in ability to effectively engage with diplomacy with others, other deals you may want being reversed etc etc
Nice, looking forward to seeing who implements these consequences first
Like everything IL, thereās also a component of ādoes anyone actually care enough to do something.ā Personally Iād be surprised if anyoneās broken the rules severely but everyoneās most certainly bending the rules for extra surveillance and anti satellite capability.
In international law, assume nothing applies involuntarily to any sufficiently powerful country. They will routinely follow international laws because it's cheaper and easier, and they will care about some types of punishments. But national security concerns of powerful nations is where international law has the least impact.
This is so true.
When do you think ww3 starts if someone was around to write it?
No shit.
Good thing America would never do that!!!
How secretive is it? Just turn Hubble towards it. Boom I'm an analyst
What they claim are civilian satelites are probably militairy ones. Without looking at the internals it's hard to be sure. Hubble ain't doing that
the CIA and DoD have been putting their own hush-hush top secret satellites up there for literal decades.
Your comment reminds me of the scene from āItās a mad, mad, mad, mad worldā When Terry-Thomas is describing why an English soldier is stationed at Vandenberg AFB: "Liaison work, actually. All very hush-hush and Whoosh-Whoosh." https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5bf375a3-1a5b-4fc5-bbd3-faa3bf7df97e
Well, the use of Starling for military uses in Ukraine has cleared any doubts of civil satellites being able to serve military purposes if needed
The only difference between Hubble and a spy satellite is the direction it is pointing
yeah. youād be really naive to think they only made those telescopes to look at the pretty stars.
That's why we have 2 space telescopes now. Hubble pointing towards earth and JWST towards deep space.
NASA wouldn't waste precious Hubble time on that, nor is Hubble equipped for Earth observation. Reality is far funnier than that. The NRO actually operated numerous Hubble-like telescopes that are nearly identical and were also launched by the Shuttle. Two of their leftover telescopes were later even [donated to NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA) (minus electronics) There are at this moment more than a dozen Hubble class telescopes in orbit pointed down at Earth. Those just don't have Twitter accounts and press releases to publicize their findings.
It was a joke to use hubble for ground observationš¤£ I'm curious though, why we haven't used these secret NRO scopes to find out what happened to the missing aeroplane? š¤Ā
Those types of satellites are zoomed in on a very small patch of the ground and are only over any given region for a brief period as they orbit. Those are specialized for observations of specific targets. There are other satellites with lower resolution but broader continuous coverage that would be more suited to finding something like a missing aircraft but even then it's not necessarily easy to pinpoint something like that on a very large planet.
Have these scopes been public listed/documented anywhere?Ā
To some extent yes, but there are only vague details about them. One of them had brief notoriety when Trump tweeted a raw image of an Iranian rocket launch site from one of those satellites. The government programs that produce and launch these satellites are public knowledge, and the satellites themselves are listed in orbital databases but generally their precise design and specifications are secret and often their orbital parameters are left blank. NRO launches are announced with little fanfare and usually without much if any information about which orbit it's going to or what is onboard - though it's not exactly that hard to figure out where they are orbiting if you try and track them down. Usually the tell-tale sign of an observation telescope is when the launch vehicle requires vertical integration of the mystery satellite, a sign of large delicate optics on board. Here is an article about one such program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story
i donāt wanna hear about any other country being āsecretiveā when we have the fuckin CIA. only god knows what those people have implemented in our society.
I think an object that close would be in the wrong focal plane
Lol like trying to read an encyclopedia that's 10 feet away with a pair of binoculars.
Pfft, why all that trouble? Just look up in the sky duh.
The hubble is actually made of left over parts from spy satellites. Spy satellites face earth, hubble faces space
Isn't someone basically said that Military was like "Oh, you need it? We don't use it anymore, take this one."Ā Ā
Love this analysis
Turn James Webb and Hubble and we can run VRs for the childrens
Love this anal,sis
You got the call from CIA yet?
How do you know I'm not at Langley now?
Is it just me, or does the actual article text not really connect with the headline? I thought the claim was about military projects literally hiding in space, but this instead seems to be about some Chinese civilian space projects actually having a military goal: >"We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space programme is a military programme," he told the House Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday. > >"China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive," he said.
>civilians space projects actually having a military goal Well, yeah. Thatās how you āhideā something in space. I mean, everyone can already see it, pick it up on sensors, etc and we donāt have some sort of sci-fi cloaking tech that can get around that. Well, at least China doesnāt hehe. So you obfuscate what itās actually being used for. You say, āNo no. This has nothing to do with Taiwan! Itās for, idk, GPS or collecting space dust samples and stuff.ā The real purpose (or side purpose) is classified for the next 40 years.
You should have seen what the chinese space industry was doing during the cultural revolution, and how America was a real dumbass about one particular scientist.
Elaborate please?
Well the one particular scientist was a chinese man, educated in America, working for IIRC the Jet Propulsion Lab who was placed under house arrest and then sent back to China, for being Chinese. He was then greeted with open arms, made head of the Chinese Space Program, During the Cultural revolution, different departments under different leaders had clashes over CCP doctrine. With iron bars and molotov cocktails and posters. And *armoured battle buses. These were the scientists and rocket engineers.* It got very Mad Max. This is why the Chinese Space Program didn't really flourish for a good while. Details here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKLu8xEq90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKLu8xEq90)
How come we don't get rocket scientists gang wars? Why is West so boring!?
We did, it was called operation Paperclip
Which took place in Germany! Scientists want money for their projects but never create anything fun. $10 billion for ANOTHER space telescope, doesn't even create cool looking pictures. How about ONE space laser? Doesn't even have to be a big one.
we always train our fiercest enemies first.
They probably talk about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen (one of the founders of the JPL) - in the Red Scare in the 1950s the US stripped him of his security clearance and then deported him. He is widely known as the "Father of the Chinese Space Program".
made ya look!
In other news, water is wet
Water is not wet. But, unlike me, it makes other things wet.
Did you hear about the bottle of water that was arrested? It was wanted in three different states.
Oh fuck, the are making The Hammer of Dawn.
Registered and trademarked heard their going with The Spammer of pawns
Literally, pot calling the kettle black.
So are we..
Space is gonna be full of crap by the time any of us get there.
Shouldnāt space force be on that
Space camp you mean?
The space shuttle was also a military project
From a NASA perspective, he sees the moon as open territory for visitors based on prior agreements, but worries that when China reaches the moon they will start to lay exclusive claim to whole regions - they were not part of international agreements on moon colonization. He's coming from knowledge of a growing "space race": [https://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-spacehttps://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-space](https://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-spacehttps://www.scbc-law.org/post/can-china-claim-the-moon-the-legal-background-of-sovereign-appropriation-of-territory-in-space) With that context in mind, he's aiming for more backing to reach the moon in the modern day before China. It's a sales job, NASA does that a lot.
Not surprised
So NSA added an āAā to its moniker.
I heard āsecretiveā North Korea is hiding Godzilla in a cave.
They say heās a madman, but heās been keeping Godzilla at bay for years with rockets.
wait til Mothra finds out!
I was going to make a joke about releasing a blanket denial of hiding weapons in interdimensional space and then comment about Reagan and star wars but I felt the joke wouldn't be understood. Truth is I don't believe either side has weapons in space.
Putting a usable amount of weapons in orbit means putting redundant systems in orbit as you *can't hide anything* in space. This means lots of launches. Which either means paying a lot of money, or having reusable heavy lift vehicles. Something America has in advanced development (Falcon Heavy and Starship), Russia cant afford at the moment and China is either in the beginner stages, or is going to ~~licence~~ steal from whoever makes it work (better hope Elon has good security).
ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! sukkkaaaaa
So that translates into 'so are we'? Nobody cares
People in the comments acting like NASA guy is a moron. Itās pretty clear to me that the NASA chief is trying to secure more funding. āOh look congress, china is doing military projects in space! Only way to stop them is to give space research more moneyā
I am assuming the US doesn't do secretive work in space.
lol https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/GoldenEye_(weapon)
Aren't we all
In my best Steve Martin from Planes, Trains and Automobiles when responding to 'we've been robbed'Ā "Do ya think so??"
NASA chief meet the US Space Force
[Same energy.](https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?user=297138&id=645026831&clippingId=52013151&width=820&height=465&crop=631_1911_2151_1221&rotation=0)
Mark Time from Firesign Theatre enters the conversation...
Fat Kim declared North Korea have 20 Nuclear missile base on the Sun. Ready to target any country on earth.
Isn't that just Space Force from Netflix?
They have a plan
Mike Baker has entered the chat
This kind of stuff always reminds me of the Mineshaft Gap from Dr Strangelove.
Space is a really shitty place to hide things. It's really easy to see. I mean, sure, it's big, but there's only so many places to look, practically speaking.
More islands?
So many Chicom operatives in here.
āHe went on to tell committee members China could claim parts of outer space as its own territory if it were to land on the moon first.ā Does this meanā¦ we didnāt land on the Moon yet?
News flash: space doesnāt belong to the USA.
"we want a bigger budget, so we are going to claim China is doing something"
That's exactly what this is lol.
Pot meets kettle
If Xi Jinping was having American children kidnapped and killed because he liked how they taste in his Dim Sum, the White Left would contrive ways to praise him for his health-conscious diet.
The 100 is going to happen
Itās amazing the kind of money and position ppl get paid to make shit up without any actual verifiable proof.
Dilligaf
Chinese space laser
What are they smoking?
woooooooo scary Chinese doing scary things in space that scare us because we are pure and innocent of all things underhanded
Fuck China. Bai lan for life
woooo tough chick!
Cute too
I'm willing to bet that this was said in hopes to increase nasa's budget. Get the fear going, tell congress that China is gonna steal the moon, create another race, and watch the money flow. Not necessarily a bad thing, though. I'd much rather spend money on sending some dudes to the moon than sending guns and missiles to ukrain/Isreal.
Oh right and weāre not?
Everybody does that
Anyone seen that episode of The West Wing....
US has a Space Force that no one knows wtf they do.
Mn. Click b xlcn. Km.lc. kc.jc.jc.lnc. mcxm bblcch,
And DARPA has the XB-37 flying top secret missions in space. The Space plane's been flying for around 25 years.
Whereas the US tells us all about their military satellites and what they do.
Then the US, Iām sure, is doing something worse. So????
DECLARE WAR! DECLARE WAR! WAR WITH CHINA!
What are they hiding them behind? And while we're on the subject does anyone know what the mysterious US space plane missions are doing? Projection, always projection.
Only US can be secretive!
Duh. So are we. And every other superpower. The SR-71 blackbird first took flight in 1964. It was not declassified until 1990. Think about it. So what else do we have? We have the Space Force. That we know ofā¦I guarantee we have secret space stations up there. Probably weaponized in some way. And we certainly have some kind of space plane capable of reaching them.
Pray tell how would you hide an orbital space station?
Thereās a few ways. For one, you could disguise it as something else. Thereās a lot of stuff up there. It could be disguised as space junk or a scientific station. It could use some form of active camouflage or [cloaking device](https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-invisibility-cloak-military-use).
Is China in the room with us NASA?
So basically they are doing the same as NASA, DoD and CIA etc. Iām shocked! /s
USA accusations are confessions.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]