[FPSPACE] Orbital Machines?

[gorski]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008, Peter Pesavento wrote:

}Not so fast, JimO.
}
}A little birdie told me,

A little Ptichka?  -- oh wait, that was Bart Hendrickx's email!



You're right that it's mighty hard to know what you're looking at in those
pictures.  And at a quickish read through what I could find at rense.com ,
I didn't see any real information that would indicate to me how big these
things actually are--big if he can spot them and photograph them, to be
sure, but we don't know how long it takes them to cross the sky, for
example, or how high in the sky these objects were when photographed as
opposed to when he photographed ISS.  All we really got was "See how big
this picture of the ISS is?  Now see how big this picture of this other
object is?"


I suppose I shouldn't let emotional first-reactions color my judgement,
but when I saw rense.com I mostly thought of tin-foil hats--I doubt
anybody with a camera and hobbyist telescope is going to get any
photographs that attract attention warranting mysterious helicopter
overflights.  (Surely any hostile governments have access to better images
than those provided by an amateur video camera and a Tasco or similar
telescope!)

Still, it's possible some of these are photographs of something actually
in the sky, instead of a model in his garage.

Unless there's a big list of satellite configurations while deployed that
I don't know about, that is.  (And here, a tip of the hat to JimO, who has
been at this for longer than I've been aware of it, to be sure:  even if
there's not a formal complete list, he may be aware of the configuration
of a lot of what's out there.)


Still, were I a betting man, I'd lay some pretty good money those aren't
"black ops, star wars, or ETs", any of the three.


73,

--Chris.