[SpaceX] New Falcon Heavy rocket preparing for launch

Oops.

The second-stage booster section of the Falcon 9 failed, said a U.S. official and two congressional aides familiar with the launch, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The satellite was lost, one of the aides said, and the other said both the satellite and second-stage rocket fell into the ocean.

Howevah...

The Zuma mission was a success on at least one count: SpaceX successfully landed the rocket’s first stage for reuse in a future launch, a key step in its goal to drive down the cost of access to space.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...d-satellite-isn-t-seen-in-orbit-pentagon-says

 

Wow. An important billion dollar military satellite of some kind lost, with Space X and Northrop Grumman blaming each other for the failure (N/G was responsible for building not only the satellite, but the "fairing" that surrounded it, the thingy from which the critter would be deployed - the 1st stage worked as advertised and returned as planned. 2nd stage? part of what they're fighting about). That's if it really is a failure. Could this possibly be a "stealth" satellite? One undetectable by the usual suspects on Mother Earth? It's unlikely, but I would be excited if that turned out to be the case. Assuming we ever found out, of course.

 

I couldn’t help but think the story was odd in apparent lack of concrete evidence of the failure. They basically say they thought it deployed but they can’t detect it in orbit,,,”No new satellites”,,,so something must have gone awry.

If you were to deploy a stealth satellite, kinda makes sense that you’d fake a failure, since ppl would be wondering why they can’t “see” it if you say the mission was a success.

That said: what would be the purpose of a stealth satellite. It’s not like the whole world doesn’t already accept that we have satellites flying over everything.

 

It seems odd to me as well, which is why I mentioned it. As for why a "stealth satellite" would be valuable? I can think of some reasons. Our military, China's military, and Russia's military (along with our major allies) all know where those intelligence birds, ours and theirs, are at all times. The orbits are very predictable. Because they are predictable, and because no nation, at least at this time, has the ability to look at the entire planet in extreme detail 24/7, nations that are highly advanced can schedule certain things they wish to keep secret to be timed to happen when their "opponents" birds can't see them. And they do.

Example? Our nuclear missile subs, those carrying the heavy hitters, and the 4 Ohio class subs that no longer hold atomic weapons, but rather about 152 deadly accurate cruise missiles (that's 600+ cruise missiles we could conceivably launch at an adversary all at once, making it a bad day for someone), go on very long patrols while remaining, ordinarily (unless we badly want to frighten someone), submerged. Say a crewman gets seriously ill and needs to be in a hospital, or fresh supplies are needed for an unplanned extended mission. If we know where the intelligence satellites of our potential adversaries are, a sub can briefly surface by one of our warships, unload the sick guy, and/or take on badly needed supplies, disappear, and those other countries will have no idea that it happened.

 

I was thinking more in the lines of a stealth satellite would potentially allow us to "fly" one to "enemy" satellites and attach disarming devices onto them, like maybe a tiny EMP, without anyone knowing, to use later when needed. Then at any time in the future we can bring down all key satellites as prelude to an attack or as part of a defensive response to an attack.

I don't know the physics of how to deliver an unmanned satellite to get within touching distance of another, much less more than one target, but seems quite advanced and unlikely that a payload small enough to be put on a Falcon 9 would have the instrumentation for maneuvering like that. But it's fun to think about.

 

Something like this?

Spoiler

Interestingly enough, SpaceX launched one of these, the Boeing X-37, for the Air Force (yeah, right) back in September. Check the size of the guy standing by it, and then imagine the doors opening up and little arms placing one of those gizmos you mentioned on a Russian or Chinese intelligence bird. Why not? The problem is not that such a craft couldn't do a thing like that in my opinion, although it wouldn't be easy, but rather that "everyone" could see the X-37 do it. That's where the stealth would come in. Fun to speculate, anyway.

 

That is not true. Not all satellite have an orbit. We can track any satellite in the sky that is transmitting RF energy back to earth. However we (not just the US) have the ability to communicate from satellite to satellite, which then allows us to maneuver these 'stealth' satellites. Whatever data these stealth satellites pick up, they transmit the data to an adjacent satellite which then transmits back down to an earth station in order to mask their location.

The information the general public has access to is well over a decade old. What I can tell you is that if this 'stealth' satellite was anything special, we would have never heard about it, success or failure.

 

I knew you space dorks would eat this up.

Seriously, keep us posted.

 

My only question is how many origami Jose Altuve's can you put inside that thing?

 

Full-size or tiny origami-size?

 

I thought the whole definition of "satellite" was that it did orbit something.

 

This guy Elon is a trollionaire

Model S
Model 3
Model X
Then there’s SpaceX? You can’t not say “space sex” when saying that name.

 

Well, if you are deploying the Putie mind control ray, you'd want that on the down low.

 

I poorly stated that satellites are not in orbit. There are those out there not in geosynchronous orbit and I dont mean to imply they are zipping all over the place. We do try to mask the identities and locations of some satellites.

But yes, most NRO birds are in geosync orbit and while they are spy satellites, they are not a secret.

The Army recently halted the advancement of the WIN-T program because they are finally realizing its tech is dated and unable to meet its goals. While our current network may work in theaters in the Middle East, it wont cut it against countries like China and Russia. We have been advancing our technology beyond what can be easily found on a google search or information leaked by whistle blowers.

That said, the general public will not know the cutting edge nature of tech or secretive missions of these spy satellites.

 

Kerbal Space Program. That was hard as hell.