Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04562.html --- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 00:50:48 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhallat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Re: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030313101911.02773cf0at_private> Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0303170016350.1237-100000@irk> > When it come to "space control," for space situation awareness, the > general said, "We need to know what's happening in our space > environment, not only for what we have, but what other countries may > have." He said the United States has a ground system that can read > the lettering on a basketball out about 25,000 miles. But it's > weather dependent. Declan, This seems like quite the exaggeration or astronomers have a lot to do to catch up with the military! Right now, (at least in un-classified research [1]) we think it's practically impossible to read the lettering on a basketball farther than 108 miles away... and that's with a 10 meter telescope [2] in good weather. We could detect a planet roughly the size of the Earth around the closest star, Alpha Centauri, with the system spoken of above... (This calculation assumes that basketball lettering is 1" tall... and you would need higher resolution to actually "read" the lettering) [1] http://shorl.com/hifrykugryfiju [adsabs.harvard.edu] [2] http://www.astro.caltech.edu/mirror/keck/ take care, Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph Lorenzo Hall jhallat_private Graduate Student astron.berkeley.edu/~jhall Astronomy Department 601 Campbell Hall voice: (510) 643-8592 University of California at Berkeley fax : (510) 642-3411 Berkeley, CA 94720-3411 face : 753B Campbell Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. Why? See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- From: Rod Van Meter <Rod.VanMeterat_private> To: declanat_private In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030313101911.02773cf0at_private> X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.8 (1.0.8-10) Date: 26 Mar 2003 08:19:54 -0800 This implies probably roughly 0.001 arc-second resolution (assuming you're talking about reading the two-inch high "Spalding" on the basketball). The Hubble Space Telescope has a resolution of roughly 0.1-0.05 arc-seconds, depending on camera and wavelength. So, this resolution capability is 10-100x that of Hubble. Extraordinary, but not beyond the bounds of physics. And yes, it's VERY weather dependent; turbulent air will reduce that by at least one order of magnitude, maybe as much as three. And it isn't basketballs you're reading -- it's license plate numbers, faces, maybe a map laid on a table. --Rod --- From: "JayHolovacs" <holovacsat_private> To: <declanat_private> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030313101911.02773cf0at_private> Subject: Re: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 21:06:57 -0500 One wonders if some exaggeration is occurring. The Raleigh criterion (which has been the object of intense study by astronomers for centuries) limits resolution as a direct effect of the wavelenght of the media, even with perfect optics. To resolve a basketball at 25000 miles would require (for green light) a 450" mirror, far larger than any single mirror earth bound scope (which way many tons, and have to be supported within fractions of a wavelength). I find it unlikely that a mirror that large (the Keck miror required two massive diesel trucks simply to pull it up the mountain) has been launced into space, even in secret. That is before you account for all the cloud cover and atmospheric turbulence. jay --- From: "Paul \"Evil Genius\" Music" <evlpawlat_private> To: <declanat_private> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030313101911.02773cf0at_private> Subject: Re: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 11:30:20 -0600 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Declan McCullagh" <declanat_private> To: <politechat_private> Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 11:23 PM Subject: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away > > "I don't believe that many of them understand how powerful we are," > the general told reporters. "All countries respect the power of the > United States and they respect how dominant we are in this region." > ..................................... > When it come to "space control," for space situation awareness, the > general said, "We need to know what's happening in our space > environment, not only for what we have, but what other countries may > have." He said the United States has a ground system that can read the > lettering on a basketball out about 25,000 miles. But it's weather > dependent. > I'm sorry, Mr McCullagh, but that is pure disinfo BS. The Laws of Optics make that impossible. You're a professional photographer, right? Film grain size, or even the smallest digital camera pixel-element would make it impossible to resolve an image that small, through atmospheric turbulence. "Aperture synthesis", with computer enhancement, still can't do that, but it would be usefull for credulous enemies to believe so. Regards, Paul Music, BsC Physics. --- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:11:53 +0100 From: Arturo Quirantes <aquiranat_private> X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.62i) Personal Reply-To: Arturo Quirantes <aquiranat_private> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <971746854.20030317091153at_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Politech on 25.000-miles-away snooping -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dear Declan, Concerning claims that the US can read the lettering on a basketball 25.000 miles away in space: IŽve done some calculations on the subject. The ultimate limit in the resolution of an optical system comes from the Rayleigh criterion. Two objects separated by an angle theta can be resolved (that is, seen as two different light sources) only if theta>=1.22lam/D, where lam is the wavelength of the used light, and D is the telescope's aperture. For an object of size l at a distance r, that means D>=1.22*lam*r/l r=40.000 km, lam=500 nanometers, l=1 cm yields D>2.440 m That is, you'd need a mirror -or other optical surface- with a diameter of 2.4 kilometer !!! There's an alternative called interferometry. If you have two small telescopes at that distanced, and combine their signals, you have a system with a resolution equal to that of a telescope as large as the distance between the small telescopes. That is a technique long used in radioastronomy, and allows radio images to be taken with a resolution equal to that obtained by a radiotelescope as large as Earth itself. However, the largest optical interferometer I know of in civilian life has a baseline of less than about 100 m. Is it possible that a large-bugdet organization like the military has done better? Yes, it is. But they'd need the best technicians and a very large budget to overcome the technical problems associated with optical interferometry, the atmosphere's degradation of light, accurate aiming at a far away and fast-moving target, etc. Too much trouble just to read a basketball lettering 25.000 miles away. On the other hand, did the US try such systems to improve the resolution of their earth targets from space? Again, possible. In any case, the program would be so sensitive that I doubt that a an Air Force general would pop out in a press conference talking about it just to show how cool they are... Declan McCullagh tenía muchas cosas que hacer, y a pesar de ello, el día 17/03/03, a las 9:01, escribió que: D> U.S. Dominance in Space Makes General 'Pity the Enemy' D> When it come to "space control," for space situation awareness, the D> general said, "We need to know what's happening in our space D> environment, not only for what we have, but what other countries may D> have." He said the United States has a ground system that can read the D> lettering on a basketball out about 25,000 miles. But it's weather D> dependent. - -- Salu2. Arturo Quirantes (PGP key 0x4E2031EC) - --------------------------------------------------------------- Manifiesto 12 de Octubre: no a la LSSI http://www.ugr.es/~aquiran/cripto/tc-lssi/lssi_12o.htm - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5i iQA/AwUBPnV1QdPjg85OIDHsEQKh7QCfWPLMH6AahncEgHE2Q0z/vRKu35MAoKiu b4qXQn2rj9SBefsjZ2QnHAXC =Bk8v -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- Subject: Re: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 10:12:00 -0500 x-sender: vze2m8dzat_private x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: John Verity <john.verityat_private> To: <declanat_private> Mime-Version: 1.0 >He said the United States has a ground system that can read the > lettering on a basketball out about 25,000 miles. But it's weather > dependent. This is rhetorical hyperbole, I believe--in other words, technically not true. Perhaps some US satellites have sufficient resolving power to "see" a basketball and even to resolve the ball's large (inches-long) logo, but I do not believe for a microsecond that these cameras can read the small lettering on a basketball, which is what this military person's deliberately vague and exaggerated statement leads one to think. 1) What means "a ground system?" 2) The resolution of the best US spy satellites is a closely guarded secret. As anyone familiar with even consumer cameras will tell you, the defining resolution is a complex technical subject, too. Looking at these pages below, you will find some (apparently) reliable data. While it appears that 4-cm resolution has been achieved, this is not from a distance of 25,000 miles; it is more on the order of 100 miles, from non-geosynchronous satellites that swoop in for a brief look at a target. Fed of American Scientists offers some useful numbers: http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/imint_101.htm and especially: http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/resolve5.htm here are some other interesting links: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JeannelleLouis.shtml and this: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020916/aw23.htm John Verity South Orange, NJ --- Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:32:49 -0800 (PST) From: tack <tackat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Cc: politechat_private Subject: Re: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away > have." He said the United States has a ground system that can read the > lettering on a basketball out about 25,000 miles. But it's weather > dependent. What does he mean by 'ground system'? That distance is close to the circumference of the earth. If he's talking about a system on the ground, that statement means sometime's the fog's so thick, he can't read a basketball he's holding in his hands. --- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 03:38:33 -0600 Subject: "read lettering on basketball" at 25K miles; but not shuttle tiles? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v543) From: Jim Davidson <davidsonat_private> To: declanat_private Dear Declan, I'm impressed with the rated capability of one of the military's ground systems which can supposedly read the lettering on a basketball orbiting at 25,000 miles (distance to geosynchronous orbit is 22,500 nautical miles). This article made me wonder again at the stupidity of NASA's management for not asking the military to task that system to look at the _Columbia_ shuttle's wing. I think such an obvious omission functions as negligence. Regards, Jim http://www.houstonspacesociety.org/ --- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 07:21:43 -0500 (EST) From: Stormwalker <bruenat_private> Reply-To: bruenat_private To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Re: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away Hi Declan, A better comparison might be 22,000 miles, the distance a satellite needs to be for geosychronous orbit. Geosynchronous orbit has been in use since (at least) 1965 with the Early Bird Communications Satelite. This story just sounds like an upgrade to the optics. Arthur C. Clarke of Sci-Fi fame first proposed geosynch in Wireless World Occtober, 1945 (although he may have spoken of it as early as April 1945). cheers, bob --- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:12:26 -0600 To: declanat_private From: Scott Schram <scottat_private> Subject: Re: FC: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away It would have been useful to look at the damaged shuttle with that telescope. The NASA emails indicate that it was requested by engineers, and cancelled by management. Roger Simpson (NASA) wrote to the telescope people: "Thank you for the enthusiastic response to the request for Shuttle support yesterday. ... we ... appreciate the effort and apologize for any inconvenience the cancellation of the request may have caused. ... Let me assure you that ... the Shuttle was in excellent shape ..." Scott http://schram.net --- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavittat_private> To: <declanat_private> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030313101911.02773cf0at_private> Subject: Re: U.S. spy gear can "read lettering on basketball" 25,000 miles away Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 06:23:55 -0800 Organization: B40 MIME-Version: 1.0 What a fascinating glimpse into the info-warfare mentality... I wonder what Patton would make of jargon spouting generals like this? We are all well aware of the fragility of modern civilian communications networks... there was one point during the mid-1990's at which I was completely confident that, should he have desired to do so, one of my more brilliant and talented employees was fully capable of taking down the entire Internet single-handedly ... and I'm sure he was not alone in this capability, or that the tactic he could have used was the only method available to do so. Hell... technical issues aside, back when an ungodly percentage of the world's Internet traffic flowed through MAE-West, I could have exploited the incredibly lax physical security of that facility to do this myself. In fact, I'm sure that even today, equivalent approaches, both sophisticated, and otherwise, exist and are well known to a few people (probably several folks on this list)... and, while nothing ever matched the ability of Yahoo's stock price to induce amazement, the fact that this hasn't yet happened comes in a close second. Says a lot about the how most humans, in fact, are basically responsible individuals. I wonder how much more difficult it would be for a motivated attacker to induce widespread disruption in American military networks? If we're so space dependent, what do we do if China decides to use its launch capability to flood orbital regions with large quantities of high speed debris, perhaps in combination with a few targeted EMP pulses? What is the response to a massive campaign of sabatoge aimed at military and civilian communication and information distribution networks in the United States? How would they deal with information overload from widespread and co-ordinated attacks against civilian and military infrastructure designed to stress and break management and co-ordination capabilities by giving the humans in the loop too many things to deal with, and flooding remaining communications capability with high priority messages? Regards, Thomas Leavitt -- Thomas Leavitt, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire Resume at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/personal/resume/ Phone: 408-591-3342 / Email: thomasat_private / Fax: 815-371-2804 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH evening reception in New York City at 7 pm, April 1, 2003 at CFP: http://www.politechbot.com/events/cfp2003/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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