[FPSPACE] Japan, spysats

[DwayneDay]

-----Original Message-----
From: Allen Thomson <thomsona at flash.net>
Sent: Aug 25, 2004 9:42 PM

>I'm not much given to conspiratorial thinking, but the Japanese spysat work
seems to be skating on thin ice when it justifies itself by wanting to "keep
a close eye on North Korea."  If that were actually the goal, building some
stealthy UAVs would be considerably more to the point and a lot cheaper.

I disagree.  This is a decent justification because it is apparently why they are actually doing it.  Remember that their spy satellite program started after North Korea launched a missile over them.  They were worried, they wanted more warning, and so they started this program.

I suspect that there are a lot of other people they want to spy on, such as China and maybe Indonesia.  And being part of the club means that you get extra benefits--for instance, I would not be surprised if they have or are working on a reciprocal deal with the United States whereby both countries share certain imagery.  But North Korea makes for a good, simple justification to their populace.

One thing that I find rather interesting is that there is commercial imagery better than one meter that is available to everybody, and yet several countries have one-meter systems that they keep fairly highly classifed.  Helios and Japan's system come to mind.  There is logic to this (France, for instance, never wanted imagery better than one meter commercially available anyway).  But it just seems slightly odd that countries treat these systems as sensitive when better stuff is available for anyone with a credit card.




DDAY