Not a good year to be boeing hardware
Considering it’s Boeing and the same thing happened to the last one a few years ago… I mean, it’s not rocket science.
We have outer space pretty well mapped, tens of thousands of pieces of space junk are tracked daily, I have a hard time believing you could take out a satellite and have nobody know.
Nah, just Boeing being Boeing.
We have outer space pretty well mapped
An estimate from before this satellite broke up was that 97% of space debris is not tracked and that there are 131 million pieces of untracked debris in space.
Now that said, I think your point is valid because most of this untracked debris is much smaller than a satellite
Does debris in the geostationary orbit move relatively to each other and the satellites?
If it’s still in geostationary orbit, no. Generally debris aren’t in a perfectly defined orbit like that, though.
If it’s debris that used to be in geostationary orbit, they’re going to be in an array of slightly different orbits, and so will have an epicycle of some kind as seen from the earth.
Also, note that intelligence satellites tend not to be geostationary, because that would limit their collection area. I don’t know about this specific one.
Wouldn’t we know if anyone was launching a rocket into space.
They have one sigint satellite Olymp-K creeping around up there, why not a second that doesn’t have a Wikipedia article
Ah, ok. You mean another satellite on suicide mission. The russkis probably have some available. I was thinking of some anti-satellite rocket missile like it has been used for destruction of the satellite Kosmos 1408. However, as it is launched from an airplane, I doubt it produces a splash, like heavy rockets do, that would be visible from space by espionage satellites.
ASAT missiles are only suitable for low earth orbit, you’d need a rocket about the size of a falcon 9 to reach GEO where Intelsat was sitting. Think people might notice that. Wouldn’t need the satellite to be on a suicide mission, could just slap a gun on it like the good old days.
Well, if it means one more thing foils that one shithead from South Africa, i.e. force him to die never having achieved anything of meaning to humanity nor achieving his ultimate escape, then fuck it, I welcome Kessler syndrome as the last horseman of the current apocalypse.
This satellite was owned by Intelsat, a company created by John F. Kennedy, an American; built by Boeing, a company created by an American and currently run by an American; and launched by the European Space Agency, on a rocket built by a company from France, headed by a Frenchman.
I’m sure there’s South Africans involved somewhere along the way, but I don’t think the person you are spitting vitriol about had anything to do with this satellite.
Oh, absolutely. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. It’s not that he specifically worked on it, thought that would be more poetic, just that it prevents any mates colony efforts.
I’m still not sure I understand. You’re saying because one guy is a bit of a dick, we shouldn’t put anything in space?
