Phillip Clark answered, > On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 tlj18@juno.com wrote: > > I have a question regarding the recent launch of Lacrosse 4: Why didn't > > the US government release information on the launch? > > The answer is simple. Bureacracy and the military mind-set ! >I am aware that the case for releasing the orbital data for all classified >USA objects has been put to The Powers That Be on the basis that anyone >can get orbital data via groups like this and other on-line >sources. [snip] Speaking of such, the 15 May 2000 article in Time magazine has produced an interesting follow-up in http://www.syninfo.com/ian/PRIVATE/2000/06/16/2000061622044613.html Most of the article is a thoroughly ignorable mishmash, but it contains some comments from a congressional intelligence staffer (I think I know who it is -- a former NRO officer now working on the Hill who occasionally carries water for her ex-colleagues) that indicate Washington officialdom is still being fed the "evil amateurs endanger US national security" line. The fact that the putatively secret orbital elements are being discovered by less than a dozen people working part-time with star charts and stopwatches is carefully not addressed. Particularly startling is the staffer's statement, "Space war is a reality we need to confront. We know China and Russia are working on lasers that can blind our satellites. By publicly broadcasting their location, we make their job easy -- point and shoot." I, perhaps naively, would have thought China and Russia, having procured laser ASAT weapons, could have come up with a few sets of star charts, stop watches, and lawn chairs of their own. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 22 2000 - 08:27:21 PDT