Posted on 12/18/2011 8:07:43 AM PST by blam
This New Military Satellite Will Watch The Ground Like Nothing Else Ever Before
Robert Johnson
Dec. 18, 2011, 6:56 AM
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that its plans to pick up Scud missile launches from space in well underway.
The agency responsible for the new technology used by the military awarded a contract to Bell Aerospace for work on its Membrane Optic Imager Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE) program.
Graham Warwick from Aviation Week reports MOIRE will park in space over the earth, and once there will unleash a "micron-thin diffractive-optics membrane" to form a 65-foot super-thin lens to watch a wider swath of ground more closely than anything else before.
The membrane-lens will scrutinize an area about 62-miles in diameter; updating its video at about one frame per second, offering a 99 percent likelihood of catching a missile launch.
Each space telescope will cost about $500 million and is being built under a multi-phase program that paid out $36.9 million to Bell in September.
Image: DARPA
Darpa's Membrane Optic Imager Real-time Exploitation satellite and membrane lens
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
No, but that's what these are for.
Wow, I'm happy now. I was real worried about an Iranian strike on South Texas. Might upset the millions of illegal aliens living there, and we wouldn't want them to be unhappy, now would we?
The eyes in the sky never blink.
That's my thought too.
There has to be something more to it. We had satellites 30+ years ago that could read the logo on a bottle cap. I’ve always thought they would come up with a way to bend light waves via color bands? and radio signals?, so a satellite could beam down to ground and at eye level, look at objects horizontally not just vertically.
Does seem like an awful fragile array though... one speck of space debris and ..poof!? How I wish I were back as a fly on the wall in the Intel community...Having been there at one time, I know there are some mind blowing things going.
Yes, you could take a picture of a parking lot and read the logo of a bottle cap within that parking lot. But could you view all of Delaware at once, and notice if somebody set off a skyrocket anywhere in the state?
It's called field of view (the size of the area you can observe in one glance) and it's as important as resolution.
Visualize this on stakeout over Gaza, and able to direct an immediate ZOT to a Hamas rocket launch within the same second of the launch. (Of course, the Palis would just stick the rocket launch site on top of some disfavored person's house, set a timer, and be far away when it launches.
Proper orbit and mission design is the key.
It’s fun to see an old conversation in the hallway finally start to maybe work
I haven’t read further, but the mention of SCUD launches is a clue.
A mobile missile launcher survives retaliation by shooting, then quickly relocating the mobile launch pad.
Using this satellite as part of an integrated weapons system, we could obliterate the launcher within seconds after a launch. No time for the launcher to move.
One and done.
It is far more important to have a shoot down capability than an observational capability, but it’s best to have both.
In this case, if a SCUD launch is anticipated, and the launch itself is observed, it should be possible for a high performance aircraft to shoot down the SCUD with a modified air-to-air missile. As importantly, it is a LOT cheaper to do things that way, and there are a LOT of air-to-air missiles, compared to surface to air anti-missiles.
“But could you view all of Delaware at once, and notice if somebody set off a skyrocket anywhere in the state?”
I sure hope not or my use of “illegal fireworks” will come to an end here soon in our uber criminalize everything state.
sprayed by the material on Monica’s cocktail dress
Just wait til we have a REAL WAR then our enemies will knock down these fancy satellites in the first minutes of the conflict. They are as vulnerable as our carriers.
It would be so much cheaper and easier just to nudge a rain of small asteroids targeted to all the Moslem and Commie areas, and be done with ‘em. And, it would look like a natural event. Thanks blam.
“I worry that space junk will damage the membrane.(?) “
Either than or the Chicoms.
What could be more natural than to wipe out those groups by any means necessary?
What is unnatural is our unwillingness to do that.
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