Thread

The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)

306 points · 162 comments · Bluestein

Almondsetat · 1790809198 · focus · HN ↗
The incredible and futuristic technologies the US managed to deploy decades before the competition reminds me of the story of how the NRO gifted NASA a couple of their old decommissioned satellites in 2012 and they turned out to be basically upgraded Hubble telescopes pointed at earth. The US from the 90s to the 2000s had multiple Hubble-level telescopes just for spying while NASA was fighting for scraps to study the entire cosmos.
1. shevy-java · 1790809556 · focus · HN ↗
  I am not entirely convinced. Was not Hubble damaged and got an upgrade lateron? I mean it could be possible that NASA is starved, but the repair involved other countries too, and I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run. And NASA often wants more money - just take the whole search for life on planets. This is so pointless - life exists already here. What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet? Other than, of course, getting more money, which is understandable, but it doesn't answer the question. (Not that I am against better technology; the rationale just does not convince me at all here.)
  1. addaon · 1790809867 · focus · HN ↗
    Hubble wasn’t damaged, the mirror was mis-shaped (by design) to be near-sighted, needing a corrective lens.
    But if you were looking at nearer objects…
    r58lf · 1790810589 · focus · HN ↗
    probably what you mean, but to be clear there was an error in manufacturing the mirror. There was a calibration piece that was slightly larger then the design called for.
    zippyman55 · 1790827391 · focus · HN ↗
    The testing of the mirror was insufficient.
  2. esseph · 1790811783 · focus · HN ↗
    > I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run.
    The US has a history of keeping vehicles, weapons, and operations hidden for decades, even things in the past decade.
    > What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet?
    Knowledge. Trade. Technology. Weapons. Religion. Science. Sex (lol).
    "to explore strange new worlds
    to seek out new life and new civilizations
    to boldly go where no one has gone before!"
  3. spartanatreyu · 1790812675 · focus · HN ↗
    > I am not entirely convinced. Was not Hubble damaged and got an upgrade lateron?
    It was made wrong (the mirror was shaped incorrectly).
    Luckily the HST was designed to be serviced (it had components within it that would degrade over time, and some components could realistically be upgraded as technology became better), so they swapped out the optics so that it worked with the incorrectly shaped mirror.
    ---
    > I don't think the USA could keep mega-super-duper technology hidden from others in the long run.
    The only things being hidden are basically trade secret stuff, e.g. better materials, better software, better sensors, etc...
    The US had a geopolitical advantage keeping their sensor tech secret. Other nations didn't know how good they were and only hid their actions to the degree they thought shielded themselves. When the knowledge eventually came out, other nations knew if they wanted their sercets kept, they would have to invest in better obfuscation.
    ---
    > And NASA often wants more money - just take the whole search for life on planets. This is so pointless - life exists already here. What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet? Other than, of course, getting more money, which is understandable, but it doesn't answer the question.
    Since you're not behind the rationale of curiosity, I'll present you with a utilitarian justification:
    Ancient Rome had steam power (see: Aeolipile). But it was basically seen as a useless toy. It took almost 2 millennia until the Industrial Revolution happened and steam power took its rightful place in our history. Humanity got there, but it took a lot longer than it needed to.
    Imagine what would have happened instead if Ancient Rome could have looked across an ocean and seen a civilisation harnessing steam power to its fullest. It would not have taken almost 2 millennia for them to catch up. They just needed a hint as to where to focus their attention.
    History is littered with missed paths that could have accelerated our progress.
    Newton was playing around with shaped glass and investigating optics. What if he heard of someone else seeing weird lines when they left their prism in the sun? He had everything he needed to stumble upon the ultraviolet catastrophe himself and we would have ended up with quantum mechanics centuries earlier.
    Going back further, what if the Antikythera Mechanism's gearwork technology became widespread? What if the ancients had their own Babbage and created programming millennia before?
    Penicillin could have been discovered even earlier.
    All that's needed is a little observation of "Huh, that's weird" and everything spills out of that.
    Investigating a line of inquiry doesn't guarantee that we're going to end up with something. So we have to investigate wide, rather than deep.
    But imagine if we find an alien civilisation and make another "Huh, that's weird" observation. All of a sudden we have a higher confidence that an investigation down a specific path does lead to something new.
    - An exoplanet not moving elliptically or hyperbolically? That'd focus a large amount of attention into overcoming previous assumptions about inertia.
    - Lot of lensing effects and bursts of shifted light? That'd focus a large amount of attention into bending space.
    - Seeing spectral lines that don't match known matter? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the strong nuclear force, exotic matter, magmatter, etc...
    - An impossible star? That'd focus a large amount of attention into the processes powering that star.
    - etc...
    TL;DR: Finding another civilisation doing something basically changes the rate of return calculation for research.
    someonebaggy · 1790813241 · focus · HN ↗
    They actually didn't fix the optics, they swapped out one of the sensor modules for a bunch of extra optics to cancel out the first broken optics.
    wildzzz · 1790822217 · focus · HN ↗
    Tracking objects in space is something China and Russia can do just fine today, it's hard to keep the presence of a satellite a secret. But trying to determine what a satellite is doing is a bit harder. You can infer based on altitude, orbit shape, and inclination. EO birds generally fly at low altitude or in highly elliptical orbits to capture higher latitudes. ELINT and space observation birds fly near adversary satellites. Generally, satellites don't move too much so you don't need to spend a lot of resources tracking them. However, things like the X-37b and the GSSAP satellites are reported to be highly maneuverable which not only allows for flexible missions but also more difficult track and requires more resources to do so.
    Bluestein · 1790837005 · focus · HN ↗
    > Ancient Rome could have looked across an ocean and seen a civilisation harnessing steam power to its fullest.
    I understand your point, just wanted to mention that that civilization would be leading the known world at the time, methinks ...
  4. Procrastes · 1790818606 · focus · HN ↗
    > What is the addiction to want to find life outside of the planet?
    Another perspective on this. We currently study life with a planetary sample size of 1. Just a single additional example, especially one with a completely different origin, would almost certainly change many of our most basic assumptions about what life is and how it works.
    x______________ · 1790820149 · focus · HN ↗
    > Just a single additional example, especially one with a completely different origin, would almost certainly change many of our most basic assumptions about what life is and how it works.
    It would also lead to a significant power shift in the religious world where individuals have proclaimed their version god as absolute for thousands of years.
    An event like this would end up kicking us out of this era, and into another joint-species belief system... Only time will tell if it'll restart the cycle over again or if something new comes from it.
    kulahan · 1790827588 · focus · HN ↗
    Are any still-worshipped gods actually still just "really powerful dudes"? I doubt this would have any effect on religions outside of, like, ancient Greece and Egypt... but I'm not up to date on all the non-Abrahamic ones I guess.
    eks391 · 1790897264 · focus · HN ↗
    I can't think of any religion as a whole that would be impacted by the discovery of life on other planets, but on a sect or individual level I could definitely see friction with certain, specific belief systems that sect or person firmly held.
    It would be interesting if a survey existed that linked religious affiliation with belief of extraterrestrial life though. I tried to find one but was unsuccessful finding satisfactory research

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