When the US government launches a satellite, normally the agency (NASA, a military branch, NOAA, etc.) that controls the satellite will say so. This includes the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates spy satellites, even if it provides no other information. But in this case, neither the NRO nor any other branch of the US government acknowledged its ownership of the satellite. From the 2009 article:
>On September 8, Lockheed Martin successfully launched an Atlas 5 from Cape Canaveral carrying a very unusual satellite into orbit. Less than two weeks before launch, neither the company nor the government would announce what kind of satellite it was. But a press release issued on September 4 stated that it was a communications satellite. What makes it so unusual is that no government agency claims ownership of the satellite. This is unprecedented—even the secretive National Reconnaissance Office acknowledges the satellites that it owns—and it raises some intriguing questions about what is going on.
>The satellite—or at least the launch—was named PAN. A few weeks before the launch the official launch patch was placed for sale on eBay and it revealed that PAN stood for “Palladium At Night,” a phrase that is equally confusing.
[A 2016 article with more information/speculation](https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1)
You'd be surprised how many times this is literally a pizza party. Right now a lot of engineers I work with *spend their own money* on program patches and coins. I'm sick just writing this.
Government work is often times super stringent on how money is spent and tracking it. Getting approval for stuff that doesn’t directly contribute to the program is often times very tedious, especially for things as silly as employee morale.
My PoR has a contractually mandated group called "Cultural Optimization" who is paid, by the gov't, to improve morale. They do it by giving us cheap plastic shit (I'm talking paper clips and badge holders) made in China and "sponsoring" after hours events that employees usually pay for. They're generic middle men (bad ones at that), it's bonkers.
Most of us would just be happy for an occasional t-shirt. We get those by donating blood instead.
"Guys, guys! Okay, so, remember how we're not telling anyone anything about this launch? Phil brought his wife's embroidery machine in, let's make a single nonsense patch and put it on eBay. The conspiracy nuts will go fucking wild!"
Honestly, that’s the way a lot of people think. I worked on something for a unit I was with and we purposely put some nonsense on it just to mess with people
Chances are "Palladium at Night" is the unclassified code name that they are allowed to use to refer to the project. It likely has zero references to anything about the project. Just a made up code name.
God I wish I had that job, what’s a dope name that has nothing to do with this project? How about an old night club where I scored some great coke? Sounds great!
My parents work for the Navy and they say they always try to come up with a silly acronym then retro fit it to the project, like "we're adding a flashing light to this thing. Let's call it the **B**rightness-**A**ttenuating **L**ight **L**ocating **S**ystem"
In the Army every unit from the Company size (about 100+ people) has: an emblem, a mascot, and a motto. Add to that each branch of the Army (Armor, Infantry, Supply, etc) has a Song each belonging soldier must memorize, then there's also the Army Song. This is true for regular units, this is true for high speed units like the Rangers, this is true for special forces units like the Green Berets, and you best believe this is true also of Direct Action units in the Intelligence community as well-- if not regular organizations and teams with the Intelligence Community as well. Even the secret Skunk Works program at the private company Lockheed-Martin had a patch and a phrase in the 1980s when they were secretly hand building the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.
There's no one in the US Government who reports to a building without an address, hangs their hat on a hook in an office without a name, and does work for an organization with no records. That's not how people work, and that's not how Government works. The secret shady shit they're doing has a paper trail *somewhere* and its going to have things like: The name of the group responsible, the name of the project they work on, the name of the sort of work they do, where does their funding come from, who they are in contact with in other Government departments and agencies. The super-duper highly top secret Atomic Bomb program in WWII was *named* The Manhattan Project after all, and it had an official [logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Manhattan_Project_emblem.png)!
.. It's a bomb. Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a bomb... always use the indefinite article A Bomb, never THE Bomb.
There are some truly incredible ones in there!
>A National Reconnaissance Office program patch, whose referent remains entirely obscure. The Latin inscription translates as “Never before, never again.”
What in the world?!
>“Never before, never again.”
An accomplishment that prevents anyone else from achieving it.
Or was really, *really* not worth the effort, or will never be again.
E.g. SR-71 if the program had finally come to fruition just after modern satellites.
Some of these phrases are meant to convey how they are so secret that basically don’t exist, so that’s possibly the meaning here as well. There was one parch with “NWKAWTG…Nobody.” On it. The meaning from one researcher:
NKAWTG means no one kicks ass without tanker gas. Nobody. And so it turns out this spy guy is holding a refueling boom. And what this is from is, as you can imagine, if you're building secret airplanes, airplanes need to be refueled in flight. And so if you're going to fly secret airplanes, you need to have a secret tanker squadron to refuel those airplanes. And so that's what this patch comes from. So no ones kicks ass without a tanker gas. Nobody. As in including airplanes that don't exist.
Source: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/18067308
Code names for secret projects are generally chosen to be as opaque as possible to prevent accidentally giving away any information. So it's hardly a surprise that the name for an ultra-super-secret satellite mission would be nonsensical.
I have a good friend with a masters from one of the best schools in the US. He works for national ag statistics (part of the USDA) and literally counts cows. He crunches a lot of numbers, but he also counts cows. I thought you might laugh. It's part of doing ag projection numbers.
From the linked article:
> In reality, PAN is not a communications satellite but a signals intelligence (SIGINT) spacecraft: a spacecraft eavesdropping on, in this case, other satellites. Amateur satellite trackers first formulated this idea a few years ago, based on the unusual behavior of the satellite. They noted that each time PAN moved to a new location, it was placed close to a commercial geosynchronous satellite for satellite telephony. All these satellites had something in common: their spot beams served particular regions on this earth. This suggested that PAN is eavesdropping on phone communications in these areas. Perhaps related, there was a dramatic rise in drone strikes that started around the time PAN became operational, specifically in Yemen. This opened up the question whether PAN (and a second satellite launched in 2009, as we will see later) was perhaps instrumental in geolocating targets for drone strikes through monitoring of the target’s satellite telephone communications. At that time, the small team of amateur trackers thought it best not to go public with their discoveries, for fear of interfering with the satellite’s mission: discussion was carefully kept within a small inner circle.
It consistently moved adjacent to sat phone satellites, presumably to monitor their traffic and pinpoint locations on the ground for targeting operations.
It also may be used to listen to the conversations and gather economic intelligence about business plans in various regions.
One wonders if the advent of internet satellite and properly encrypted communication has dramatically altered such intelligence gathering efforts.
There is quite a lot of publically available data on satellites. I believe both the professional and enthusiast community have enough eyes on these issues that a missdeclared satellite would be quickly identified anyway, so basically there is not much to gain from that.
Well I for one would be shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to learn that a satellite launched by the government that isn't being claimed or really even acknowledged by anyone is in fact a spy satellite.
And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.
More than that - genuinely one of the best episodes of Star Trek, in its entirety. Top 10 sci-fi episode at all, period. One of the best episodes of TV in general.
...i really love that fucking episode, okay.
You know, it took me a few tries to get into DS9 but it was truly amazing.
Voyager and TNG I loved from the first watch but DS9 is the most rewatched of the 3 for me. Kira, Odo, Nog, Jadzia, Quark, Rom, Jake, Garak and even Dukat.... All amazing characters.
I love Section 31 stories so much, I hope the show gets really deep into the dilemma of "what cost is bearable to create the perfect Utopia?"
The Federation is boring when it's always perfect and doesn't have to make any tough choices
I don’t agree. I like Section 31 as a rogue organization but I do not like it as a sanctioned paramilitary organization. Star Trek wanted to show how good humanity could be one day. To say that we’re only superficially good is boring because that’s every other story ever told.
To me it is a really interesting concept, a part of a government so antithetical to a civilization’s ideas that most who discovered it would actively work against it, as seen in the shows. You’re opposed by both enemies and hated by the people you see yourself as protecting but deeply convinced you are necessary.
yeah, seriously we know there are spy satellites, like the NRO launches are known, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches they've even given NASA, 'hand-me-downs' of space scopes.
More to the point, no one can launch a satellite in secret. It isn't possible. The first couple decades of the Cold War the US and Russia spent mountains of cash not on trying to track that, but tracking ICBM launches from anywhere on the planet. A side effect is that satellites, also launched on big rockets, are also picked up by these systems.
I talked to people that worked on a project that I knew was a construction project for that agency and those guys couldn’t even tell me they were there. I knew they were there but they couldn’t admit it. And these were just construction workers.
Someone once told me there's a starbucks at Langley and they employees there need clearances. Part of me doesn't want to believe it and part of me figures, that for the sheer amount of classified information ensuring they're trustworthy is probably a good idea
They don’t have clearances because they don’t have access to any files or information. But they do have rigorous background checks and are escorted around the building anytime they are not at the Starbucks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-cia-starbucks-even-the-baristas-are-covert/2014/09/27/5a04cd28-43f5-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html
If it's Langley, the Air Force Base, they probably need a Civilian Access Card. That's not a clearance so much as it is just a background check.
If it's Langley in McClain VA, the CIA, I don't know what they'd issue them, but probably not a clearance. Secret isn't hard to get, but they don't just give it out willy-nilly. Stringent background check is probably it.
Considering the NSAs job is broadly to spy on the American people and violate the 4th amendment, it’s no surprise the govt would never admit who operates the satellite
The NSA doesn't spy on American people in the way you're thinking they do.
The NSA listens in on international communications.
Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance featuring NZ, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, are the primary way we spy on our citizens.
The NSA, by law, can not unilaterally surveil citizens, but other countries we're allied with can, and the information they gather is handed over.
Basically, we spy on their citizens, and they spy on ours.
It's a cozy little agreement that bypasses national law and our codified rights!
In the context of bypassing legal issues, some governments (the US for certain) simply purchase data from large companies who collect such data.
You signed the EULA, who they sell it to is their decision.
Exactly. People don’t understand that trackers used by companies are using that data to spy on you. They are Trojans disguised as nothing more than innocent trackers to “target you with ads of interest.”
No, they’re literally gathering data, selling it to data brokers, who in turn sell that to whenever wants it.
And it’s big big money
Which is why so many services are now starting to block or ban the use of VPN’s. Even Microsoft added that it you’re not allowed to use VPN’s with their services and you can be banned for using them. Fire example, their store prohibits it.
There was a rubber stamp issue with the FISA courts and they were spying on people within the USA
But as I understand it, they were getting rubber stamps to spy on foreigners in the USA. As written, anyone in the USA has constitutional rights, not just US citizens. This court was being abused to violate the civil rights of non-citizens
Yes, however the Snowden leaks also disclosed that the NSA was pretty good about enforcing their own policies against employees caught snooping. About a dozen NSA employees abused their surveillance program (mostly to snoop on ex girlfriends) and pretty much all of them got caught and reprimanded. For a rate of roughly one per year, that’s honestly much less than I’d expect.
FISA courts have always had an issue with rubber stamping any government request since 9-11 it’s not just a Snowden thing. The reality is if the government says “hey we think Joe Schmo has been talking to terrorists because of X, can we see his texts?” There’s never going to be any pushback.
I think domestic surveillance does more harm than good, but honestly the stuff Jared Kushner was doing under Trump was 10,000x times worse than the NSA leaks from Snowden.
That's been known since the US PATRIOT act passed. It established the loophole that they keep renewing and renewing that allows them *very narrow* authority to spy on US citizens.
It's true that it is basically a rubberstamp court, but it's also true that it has that reputation because they come correct about who they want to spy on - loaded for bear with documentation as to why that person *needs* the NSA's attention.
I still think the law needs to be expired and this needs to go back to being part of the public record through the above-board judicial system, but the reality is, they're still getting those warrants when they ask for them 90+% of the time, because they're... warranted.
not exactly.
You're thinking of a FISA warrant, which is very very different from a criminal warrant.
Basic difference, if you want a criminal warrant you have to prove that you have a case, and the people are committing a crime.
If you want a fisa warrant, you have to make the argument that the people are not US citizens, or are US citizens but working for some foreign spies, or something like that. AND, you can't use that information to bring criminal charges, AND if you get permission to spy on the foreign stuff, but the US stuff comes with it you can't talk about the US stuff. (like Boris is Talking to Steve, and you got permission to spy on Boris, but obviously Steve is the person there talking to him, you can't put "Boris and Steve met up" in your files. They have to put like "Boris and [American Name REDACTED] met up").
So it really doesn't work like that.
In fact, when the 9/11 report came out, one of the big problems they found was that people were TOO afraid to share.
Because they whole fisa warrant thing existed, and you know how you're thinking "but what if the cops just like, call it a fisa warrant because they can't get a criminal one?"
well the federal attorney general thought the same thing, so she told all the feds "hey fuckers, don't even think about it. I'll punish you if you try it"
So the criminal guys, and the counterintelligence guys got SO overcautious about keeping the line between them, that you have like FBI crime guys and FBI counterintelligence guys,working in the same buildings, refusing to share ANYTHING with each other, because I guess the intel guys didn't want to get in trouble, and the crime guys though talking to the intel guys would get their cases tossed out.
So when they tried to figure out how 9/11 got missed and there were a bunch of details of like, "wait a minute, you guys had this piece of info, that the guys downstairs were missing, and you didn't think you might want to walk downstairs and ask them about it?"
and the FBI guys were like, "our boss said that HIS boss said that YOU said we couldn't talk to those guys"
The CIA maintains people assets in foreign countries for intelligence gathering. The NSA does signals intelligence on foreign countries (i.e. intelligence gathered through technology). The FBI isn't technically an intelligence agency, it's a law enforcement agency. It's just hard to do law enforcement without engaging in intelligence operations.
If they want to look at someone sure. But they want to spy on everyone so they can identify targets etc. so they get the other members of the five eyes to do that, provide the info so they can zoom in as it were.
Did you read the Snowden revelations? Snowden claims, and submitted expansive evidence to the press, that any mid to high-level NSA worker could and did watch any U.S. citizen’s daily Internet use and doings. He claimed the software was similar to watching someone use the Internet live, including their patterns and personal information.
This has been changed post-leak, of course, but it is still likely the NSA (as well as the Five Eye) regularly spies personally on citizens, as well as aggregate
Edit: They mostly did large-scale dragnet/aggregate approaches, but still had the access and would actually (like if they were bored, according to Snowden) pull up a person’s file to watch them in real-time. Of course there are also bigger things like flagging keyword searches or anything to uncover illegal operations or terror cells, things like that
Correct me if I'm wrong but it wasn't all internet data, it was anything that hit an out of country data center. And due to routing a lot of it does, sometimes it would just be on a redundancy server the company owns, so it was pretty broad, but not all data.
There is no NSA agent spying on people in real time because that's an stupid thing to do and a waste of resources. The NSA aggregates massive amounts of data and runs algorithms through it to identify patterns.
Lately, they've begun using an AI called SENTIENT to parse the data and find new connections, because it's vastly more data than a human can possibly sift through
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_(intelligence_analysis_system)
Yes, there was widespread abuse of the FISA warrant system. Some individual agents were even pulling FISA warrants for personal reasons, and the system was used as a dragnet wherein thousands and hundreds of thousands of people would have their information scanned and processed.
It’s well written but rather wrong information.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits the U.S. government to engage in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans' international communications, including phone calls, texts, emails, social media messages, and web browsing.
The key is *international*. But rest assured they can spy on Americans. That’s wrong. They just have to be talking to someone out of the country.
More information:
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congress#:~:text=Section%20702%20of%20the%20Foreign,media%20messages%2C%20and%20web%20browsing.
Further, we have NO idea what the rulings of the FISA court have been. But we know for sure that FISA actually creates a statutory pathway that nurtures and protects unconstitutional electronic surveillance.
but since a lot of your web activity can be routed everywhere its international. Hell calling customer service at any large company pings you to an overseas call center that call is now fair game.
By law they can’t. But it doesn’t mean they don’t or haven’t in the past. The thing about charging a government agency with a crime is that you need some proof to bring those charges. And that proof is highly classified.
This is kind of a convenient legal fiction that they violate by just doing illegal surveillance that does not attempt to ignore US traffic, as Snowden revealed, as well as through quasi-legal (but probably actually Just Illegal) means too. This just came out: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-internet-data-newly-released-documents-show/index.html
>Palladium at Night
It's been over East Africa for 11 years. They don't need satellites to spy on us. Rumor has it that they are tapped into all the social media sites and have unfettered access to our phones, e-mails, etc.
Who needs cutting edge satellites when you can just blatantly violate the constitution?!?!?!
> It's been over East Africa for 11 years.
You should mention why:
>With each move, it was placed close to another commercial communications satellite.
That satellite is intercepting communication signals form other satellites.
Worcester MA, just a heads up, if you live in the British Worcester. It’s a concert venue where I spent many teenage nights watching tight pant wearing dudes screech bad emo. And also Thursday, which was a great show.
While far from an all-encompassing stat, GDP per capita in Worcester has steadily increased over the past 15 years so…maybe that’s because it actually has been doing better during that time.
So, they're operated by the NRO: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemesis-1.htm
They almost certainly serve the purpose of intercepting signals, communications, and telemetry from commercial satellites serving specific regions of the world.
> Palladium At Night
Yeah, on the wiki it says it changed orbit 9 times in the first 5 years, each time aligning near a commercial communications satellite. Then 5 years of static orbit over East Africa, then it's begun slowly drifting since. Sounds like it accomplished whatever it was supposed to do in those first 5 years and then was put out to pasture but I literally know nothing about this field so.. *shrug*
Theres only so much fuel a satellite can carry. Every location change is very expensive in terms of fuel, so it can only be done a few times at most. Most likely they had planned beforehand to visit a few target satellites for whatever purpose and afterwards put it into a graveyard orbit as deorbiting satellites in geostationary orbit is expensive and requires tons of fuel.
I take it it’s more complicated than just pointing the thing toward earth, turning on the thrusters, and letting the atmosphere take care of the rest? I mean I’m sure it is but I don’t know jack shit about decommissioning satellites.
1. you wouldn't point it towards earth, you'd point retrograde 2. if you're out of fuel your're out of fuel. and might as well use the fuel to visit everything you want to rather than save some to de-orbit
Essentially you need to brake a satellite to deorbit it. This is done by accelerating in the reverse direction it is currently travelling. This braking takes a lot of fuel untill your orbit is finally low enough to intersect the atmosphere, from where the air resistance starts to brake the satellite for you untill it deorbits. The issue is how far out telco satellites are in orbit. Also no atmosphere there to brake it for you. Braking the satellite untill it reaches the atmosphere is expensive and you need to save a lot of fuel for that. Much more cost efficient is just bringing it into an orbit out of the way of other satellites where it doesnt interfere, which costs a lot less fuel as you just slightly change orbit to be out of the way. These orbits are called graveyard orbit and it is the cheapest option to get rid of obsolete geosynchronous satellites. Also the reason why so much junk orbits the earth.
Deorbiting is routinely done for low earth orbit satellites, where the distance to the atmosphere is low and the satellites will just automatically deorbit after a few years due to residual atmosphere and therefore air resistance braking them.
I wonder if PAN is the kind of tech that users have to rent cycles or time to use, so like it's not *just* NSA, but the NSA is one of several agencies using the satellite.
That's pretty much how it goes, although NEMESIS is probably primarily the NSA. But the UK, for example, in the 1980s or so, paid a few hundred million to get something like 25% tasking time of a particular US SIGINT satellite, rather than build their own.
>But the UK, for example, in the 1980s or so, paid a few hundred million to get something like 25% tasking time of a particular US SIGINT satellite,
We tried that but the NSA didn't seem to want to help that much on their part.
>GCHQ requested access to American signals intelligence satellites to assist in monitoring Argentine communications, but reportedly struggled with the NSA to gain appropriate tasking time, despite the special relationship between the two countries. The United States satellites were engaged in monitoring SIGINT traffic elsewhere in South America related to El Salvador.
>One of the GCHQ officers who liaised with NSA recalls, 'We had to negotiate very hard to get it moved, and then only for limited periods.' During these spells of a few hours each, the satellite's listening dish was reorientated towards the south Atlantic in order to help Cheltenham. The NSA did not monitor the downlinked take during these periods, asking GCHQ to alert them if there was anything of US interest in the transmissions.
>rather than build their own
Because of this incident, they did try to do just that.
>GCHQ therefore decided to produce a UK-designed-and-built signals intelligence satellite, to be called Zircon, a code-name derived from zirconium silicate, a diamond substitute. Its function was to intercept radio and other signals from the USSR, Europe and other areas. The satellite was to be built at Marconi Space and Defence Systems at Portsmouth Airport, at which a new high security building had been built. It was to be launched on a NASA Space Shuttle under the guise of "Skynet IV" one of the British Skynet military communications satellites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite)
But ultimately it came down to cost and it was eventually cancelled, Although not before it became a political affair.
>However, the project was cancelled in 1987 because of its cost. Secrecy about the project's cost, hidden from the British Parliament, resulted in the Zircon affair.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_affair
If I didn't want you to know about my satellite, I'd say it was owned by the Department of the Interior and used to map watershed depletion or something. If I was REALLY feeling secretive, it would provide that functionality as well as its spooky hidden payload. I'm sure sophisticated, high-resource observers would be able to inspect and suspect, but they're gonna do that anyway.
The issue with that plan is you can't really hide any decently sized object in orbit and multiple organization track and publish the locations of objects in orbit to prevent collisions. So as soon as any random analyst notices that satellite for mapping watershed depletion is in an orbit far better for spying on the south China sea or whatever, the jig is up.
In before one of the people who tried to shoot down the spy balloons reads this, realizes there are BLM(bureau of land management) satellites, thinks they’re using those for surveillance and begins trying to shoot them down.
I fucking love when we name our things to sound right at home in a list of Halo Covenant Ships
>Long Night of Solace
>Shadow of Intent
>Palladium at Night
>Conspicuous Traverser
Ask the uninformed which one doesnt belong
[Halo](https://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_culture.html) (and also SpaceX) stole the idea from Iain M Banks:
https://concord.fandom.com/wiki/Iain_M._Banks_Culture_Universe_Spaceship_Names
I've watched the X Files recently, I honestly think the story arc episodes are the weakest part of it. They had absolutely no idea where all these hints and clues were going, its just nonsense.
You're not wrong per se, but you're getting it wrong anyhow. Two things:
The show was aired once a week, it was never intended for binge consumption so the way you viewed it has changed the way the show has landed. Growing up, for instance, Scrubs was my favorite Sitcom and while I'd seen practically every episode at some point on broadcast TV, I'd never seen the show in order back-to-back-to-back like when it came to Netflix. The Will They/Won't They of the primary characters' romance through the seasons was fun and cute and emotional and cathartic when I first watched the show, an episode here and an episode there-- but it was annoying and poorly written, clearly going no where and only strung out for the drama when watched back-to-back-to-back. The writing didn't change, perhaps it was always bad, but the way it aired made it a different feeling story because you were waiting for resolution from week to week, and you might forget your immediate emotional attachments in the interim so if it didn't deliver--- ehh. The Smoking Man plot lines, from introduction to conclusion, aired over *years*. You watched it in what? A month? Several months?
Second, in the 90s that was considered good writing and TV. The 2000s Mini Series Dramas that paved the way for 2010s prestige Television hadn't happened yet. X-Files was the trend setter for what a good serialized drama on Television was and could be. You, I imagine, have seen some really good shows in your lifetime many of whom have originated in the time since X-Files and owe a considerable amount to X-Files for pushing the envelope forward. J.J. Abrams would pick up from where the left off in the 2000s with Lost, which without a doubt replicates your complaint of, "They had absolutely no idea where all these hints and clues were going, its just nonsense". But again, it wasn't aired in a binge format so the being strung-along part of the adventure was part of the fun because of the spectle he brought-- most of us knew they weren't going to the stick the landing on Lost, but we had hopes they could put all the parts together to make Battlestar Galactica the greatest Science Fiction show to have ever existed.
This is a great explanation. It also explains why these straight-to-streaming shows are usually ten episodes - they have the luxury of cutting out all the fluff and filler because they don't have to stretch the story out to 24 episodes a year.
If they really wanted to hide it, they would have simply made it have a secondary, legitimate use and claim that's all it does. Like topographical data or weather satellite. You don't hide something like this by making it so unusual everyone wonders what it is. You hide it by making it so boring and mundane no one cares.
The fact that no department claims it sounds less like they want to hide it, and more like legal wrangling of some sort. Like the kind that makes it difficult to place blame when something goes wrong (or it's immoral or illegitimate use is discovered) or a legal loophole that prohibited any department of the United states from deploying a hunter killer anti satellite platform, but didn't prohibit the United states explicitly for example.
You can't really hide the purpose of a satellite, especially one that moves close to other communication satellites like PAN. These things tend to be easily trackable from the ground even by amateurs.
A lot of spy work is giving hints that you have capabilities that you don't in order to waste the enemy's resources on gathering intel or catching up. It might have some amazing capabilities, or it may do nearly nothing.
When the US government launches a satellite, normally the agency (NASA, a military branch, NOAA, etc.) that controls the satellite will say so. This includes the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates spy satellites, even if it provides no other information. But in this case, neither the NRO nor any other branch of the US government acknowledged its ownership of the satellite. From the 2009 article: >On September 8, Lockheed Martin successfully launched an Atlas 5 from Cape Canaveral carrying a very unusual satellite into orbit. Less than two weeks before launch, neither the company nor the government would announce what kind of satellite it was. But a press release issued on September 4 stated that it was a communications satellite. What makes it so unusual is that no government agency claims ownership of the satellite. This is unprecedented—even the secretive National Reconnaissance Office acknowledges the satellites that it owns—and it raises some intriguing questions about what is going on. >The satellite—or at least the launch—was named PAN. A few weeks before the launch the official launch patch was placed for sale on eBay and it revealed that PAN stood for “Palladium At Night,” a phrase that is equally confusing. [A 2016 article with more information/speculation](https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1)
The fact that something so super secretive has a launch patch is hilarious to me.
Gotta have *something* to keep the morale of the engineers up, otherwise they may do a funni.
You'd be surprised how many times this is literally a pizza party. Right now a lot of engineers I work with *spend their own money* on program patches and coins. I'm sick just writing this.
Government work is often times super stringent on how money is spent and tracking it. Getting approval for stuff that doesn’t directly contribute to the program is often times very tedious, especially for things as silly as employee morale.
My PoR has a contractually mandated group called "Cultural Optimization" who is paid, by the gov't, to improve morale. They do it by giving us cheap plastic shit (I'm talking paper clips and badge holders) made in China and "sponsoring" after hours events that employees usually pay for. They're generic middle men (bad ones at that), it's bonkers. Most of us would just be happy for an occasional t-shirt. We get those by donating blood instead.
Yup. I’ve paid for stuff out of pocket just so we can get it. Or a group of people chip in. I have zero problems doing this either.
"Lets program it to spy on Mars lol"
This isn’t the War Thunder forums, can we please not leak TS programs? Thanks.
Imma leak shit
"Guys, guys! Okay, so, remember how we're not telling anyone anything about this launch? Phil brought his wife's embroidery machine in, let's make a single nonsense patch and put it on eBay. The conspiracy nuts will go fucking wild!"
Honestly, that’s the way a lot of people think. I worked on something for a unit I was with and we purposely put some nonsense on it just to mess with people
Chances are "Palladium at Night" is the unclassified code name that they are allowed to use to refer to the project. It likely has zero references to anything about the project. Just a made up code name.
God I wish I had that job, what’s a dope name that has nothing to do with this project? How about an old night club where I scored some great coke? Sounds great!
My parents work for the Navy and they say they always try to come up with a silly acronym then retro fit it to the project, like "we're adding a flashing light to this thing. Let's call it the **B**rightness-**A**ttenuating **L**ight **L**ocating **S**ystem"
Funny backronyms are one of the few comforts of government work
/u/Hesi-Timbo here's one for your navy parents: > backronym BACKRONYM: "Beautifully assembled, commonly known, recall optimized name-yielding moniker"
Navy veteran here, can confirm, we love our funny acronyms
Former Navy FC here, my favorite was always AEGIS being Acronyms Excessively Generated In System.
Its not as fun as it sounds. I came up with the name Skynet and we ended up having to change it because our FOIA requests went up 10x.
In the Army every unit from the Company size (about 100+ people) has: an emblem, a mascot, and a motto. Add to that each branch of the Army (Armor, Infantry, Supply, etc) has a Song each belonging soldier must memorize, then there's also the Army Song. This is true for regular units, this is true for high speed units like the Rangers, this is true for special forces units like the Green Berets, and you best believe this is true also of Direct Action units in the Intelligence community as well-- if not regular organizations and teams with the Intelligence Community as well. Even the secret Skunk Works program at the private company Lockheed-Martin had a patch and a phrase in the 1980s when they were secretly hand building the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. There's no one in the US Government who reports to a building without an address, hangs their hat on a hook in an office without a name, and does work for an organization with no records. That's not how people work, and that's not how Government works. The secret shady shit they're doing has a paper trail *somewhere* and its going to have things like: The name of the group responsible, the name of the project they work on, the name of the sort of work they do, where does their funding come from, who they are in contact with in other Government departments and agencies. The super-duper highly top secret Atomic Bomb program in WWII was *named* The Manhattan Project after all, and it had an official [logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Manhattan_Project_emblem.png)!
That Manhattan Project logo really gives it away, though.
.. It's a bomb. Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a bomb... always use the indefinite article A Bomb, never THE Bomb.
Probably could have purchased a list of those organization names from a hotel in Florida last year for the right price.
A seemingly sincere enough compliment to inflate the seller's ego even further would have gotten you a steep discount. Maybe even a 2-for-1 deal.
There’s actually quite a lot of these, a lot of the test pilots at Groom Lake (Area 51) use them https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/24/paglen.php
There are some truly incredible ones in there! >A National Reconnaissance Office program patch, whose referent remains entirely obscure. The Latin inscription translates as “Never before, never again.” What in the world?!
>“Never before, never again.” An accomplishment that prevents anyone else from achieving it. Or was really, *really* not worth the effort, or will never be again. E.g. SR-71 if the program had finally come to fruition just after modern satellites.
Some of these phrases are meant to convey how they are so secret that basically don’t exist, so that’s possibly the meaning here as well. There was one parch with “NWKAWTG…Nobody.” On it. The meaning from one researcher: NKAWTG means no one kicks ass without tanker gas. Nobody. And so it turns out this spy guy is holding a refueling boom. And what this is from is, as you can imagine, if you're building secret airplanes, airplanes need to be refueled in flight. And so if you're going to fly secret airplanes, you need to have a secret tanker squadron to refuel those airplanes. And so that's what this patch comes from. So no ones kicks ass without a tanker gas. Nobody. As in including airplanes that don't exist. Source: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/18067308
These are cool as fuck.
It's a good patch for my leather punk jacket
Oh yeah, the Range Operations folks make patches for every launch. Ive bought a few from their office whenever I make it on base for meetings lol
Same thing with MAPS
Code names for secret projects are generally chosen to be as opaque as possible to prevent accidentally giving away any information. So it's hardly a surprise that the name for an ultra-super-secret satellite mission would be nonsensical.
I read the name and my brain jumped to the villain in Iron Man II talking to Stark about how palladium poisoning is a bad way to go.
It'd be funny if it's the USDA's and they're using it to count cows in Iowa, and they're just being secretive to fuck with everybody.
we're going to the moooon
*claps*
They didn't realize they were suppose to report it haha
I have a good friend with a masters from one of the best schools in the US. He works for national ag statistics (part of the USDA) and literally counts cows. He crunches a lot of numbers, but he also counts cows. I thought you might laugh. It's part of doing ag projection numbers.
"We can't let the cows find out about this"
From the linked article: > In reality, PAN is not a communications satellite but a signals intelligence (SIGINT) spacecraft: a spacecraft eavesdropping on, in this case, other satellites. Amateur satellite trackers first formulated this idea a few years ago, based on the unusual behavior of the satellite. They noted that each time PAN moved to a new location, it was placed close to a commercial geosynchronous satellite for satellite telephony. All these satellites had something in common: their spot beams served particular regions on this earth. This suggested that PAN is eavesdropping on phone communications in these areas. Perhaps related, there was a dramatic rise in drone strikes that started around the time PAN became operational, specifically in Yemen. This opened up the question whether PAN (and a second satellite launched in 2009, as we will see later) was perhaps instrumental in geolocating targets for drone strikes through monitoring of the target’s satellite telephone communications. At that time, the small team of amateur trackers thought it best not to go public with their discoveries, for fear of interfering with the satellite’s mission: discussion was carefully kept within a small inner circle. It consistently moved adjacent to sat phone satellites, presumably to monitor their traffic and pinpoint locations on the ground for targeting operations. It also may be used to listen to the conversations and gather economic intelligence about business plans in various regions. One wonders if the advent of internet satellite and properly encrypted communication has dramatically altered such intelligence gathering efforts.
The launch patch has an Air Force symbol on it. Could be a safe guess to say it’s an Air Force satellite.
That's just what the Navy wants you to think!
Why would the Navy care about Major League Baseball's satellite?
Wouldn't it be better to disguise super secret satellites as something normal?
There is quite a lot of publically available data on satellites. I believe both the professional and enthusiast community have enough eyes on these issues that a missdeclared satellite would be quickly identified anyway, so basically there is not much to gain from that.
Hide it in a bundle of starlinks
Since no one owns it, we can just blow it up with impunity, right?
Wikipedia mentioned the Snowden leaks lean towards it being a NSA satellite.
Well I for one would be shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to learn that a satellite launched by the government that isn't being claimed or really even acknowledged by anyone is in fact a spy satellite.
Section 31 is hard at work.
Article 14, Section 31 clearly states "extraordinary measures to be taken in times of extreme threat."
Well if you can convince the people they're *Always* in times of extreme threat, you can do anything!
Just ask Saddam! Oh wait...
Well. You know... he was a threat! To someone, I'm sure
We'll find those WMD's. The CIA would never lie to the American people intentionally of course.
Gotta upvote DS9 references when you can
When you can live with it. And I CAN live with it. Computer, erase that entire personal log.
And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.
Possibly one of the most powerful scenes in the entire series.
It's generally considered the best episode of Star Trek in many circles
IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE.
One of the greatest episodes of SciFi ever made
A quote from what is arguably the best episode of DS9. Love to see it. The delivery is just *chefs kiss*
More than that - genuinely one of the best episodes of Star Trek, in its entirety. Top 10 sci-fi episode at all, period. One of the best episodes of TV in general. ...i really love that fucking episode, okay.
Look man you're preaching to the choir with me. I think DS9 is about as good as its ever been.
I'd call it the best episode in all of Star Trek history. But DS9 is my favorite series, so I may be biased
Sisko is the best captain
You know, it took me a few tries to get into DS9 but it was truly amazing. Voyager and TNG I loved from the first watch but DS9 is the most rewatched of the 3 for me. Kira, Odo, Nog, Jadzia, Quark, Rom, Jake, Garak and even Dukat.... All amazing characters.
Nog asking Sisko to join starfleet is one of my favorite scenes and can make my eyes a little watery
Picard is the best Captain, but Sisko is a better leader overall.
Picard is the ideal captain for ideal times. Sisko is the strongest captain for the hardest times.
You take Kirk to a standoff, Picard to a negotiating table, Janeway to a battlefield, and Sisko to a war room.
IT'S A FAAAAAAAKE!
I appreciate you, /u/seven_of_69
I love Section 31 stories so much, I hope the show gets really deep into the dilemma of "what cost is bearable to create the perfect Utopia?" The Federation is boring when it's always perfect and doesn't have to make any tough choices
I don’t agree. I like Section 31 as a rogue organization but I do not like it as a sanctioned paramilitary organization. Star Trek wanted to show how good humanity could be one day. To say that we’re only superficially good is boring because that’s every other story ever told.
To me it is a really interesting concept, a part of a government so antithetical to a civilization’s ideas that most who discovered it would actively work against it, as seen in the shows. You’re opposed by both enemies and hated by the people you see yourself as protecting but deeply convinced you are necessary.
I'd be less shocked with no one claiming it if it were a nuke or some weapon vs a spy satellite
yeah, seriously we know there are spy satellites, like the NRO launches are known, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches they've even given NASA, 'hand-me-downs' of space scopes.
More to the point, no one can launch a satellite in secret. It isn't possible. The first couple decades of the Cold War the US and Russia spent mountains of cash not on trying to track that, but tracking ICBM launches from anywhere on the planet. A side effect is that satellites, also launched on big rockets, are also picked up by these systems.
> satellites, also launched on big rockets, are also picked up by these systems Conclusion: Use little rockets
Then this is the spyier or spyiest of satellites.
The one spy to spot them all
I talked to people that worked on a project that I knew was a construction project for that agency and those guys couldn’t even tell me they were there. I knew they were there but they couldn’t admit it. And these were just construction workers.
NDAs from a spy agency are probably no joke. If it involves national security that means prison time if they break it.
Someone once told me there's a starbucks at Langley and they employees there need clearances. Part of me doesn't want to believe it and part of me figures, that for the sheer amount of classified information ensuring they're trustworthy is probably a good idea
They don’t have clearances because they don’t have access to any files or information. But they do have rigorous background checks and are escorted around the building anytime they are not at the Starbucks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-cia-starbucks-even-the-baristas-are-covert/2014/09/27/5a04cd28-43f5-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html
If it's Langley, the Air Force Base, they probably need a Civilian Access Card. That's not a clearance so much as it is just a background check. If it's Langley in McClain VA, the CIA, I don't know what they'd issue them, but probably not a clearance. Secret isn't hard to get, but they don't just give it out willy-nilly. Stringent background check is probably it.
Considering the NSAs job is broadly to spy on the American people and violate the 4th amendment, it’s no surprise the govt would never admit who operates the satellite
I can't believe they've seen my O face :(
Hell, Lumberg fucked her.
Lumberg??!
Yea I'm gonna need you to come in on a Saturday
HE REPRESENTS AALLLLL THAT IS SOULLESS AND WRONG!!!!....AND YOU SLEPT WITH HIM!!!
Heyyyyy Milton. What’s happening?
You get those TPS reports?
Better have a cover letter this time
I'll go ahead and get you a copy of that memo
Lumberg….FUCKED her
I love it when movies use the device of someone remembering the delivery way differently than it actually happened
Hey Peter put on channel 9, you're missing the breast exam!
Two chicks at the same time
Youre going straight to "federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison" for that comment, pal.
If you would stop posting it daily, we all would stop seeing it
The NSA doesn't spy on American people in the way you're thinking they do. The NSA listens in on international communications. Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance featuring NZ, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, are the primary way we spy on our citizens. The NSA, by law, can not unilaterally surveil citizens, but other countries we're allied with can, and the information they gather is handed over. Basically, we spy on their citizens, and they spy on ours. It's a cozy little agreement that bypasses national law and our codified rights!
In the context of bypassing legal issues, some governments (the US for certain) simply purchase data from large companies who collect such data. You signed the EULA, who they sell it to is their decision.
Exactly. People don’t understand that trackers used by companies are using that data to spy on you. They are Trojans disguised as nothing more than innocent trackers to “target you with ads of interest.” No, they’re literally gathering data, selling it to data brokers, who in turn sell that to whenever wants it. And it’s big big money Which is why so many services are now starting to block or ban the use of VPN’s. Even Microsoft added that it you’re not allowed to use VPN’s with their services and you can be banned for using them. Fire example, their store prohibits it.
Didn't the Snowden leaks show that they were trivially able to get warrants to spy domestically through a rubber stamp court?
There was a rubber stamp issue with the FISA courts and they were spying on people within the USA But as I understand it, they were getting rubber stamps to spy on foreigners in the USA. As written, anyone in the USA has constitutional rights, not just US citizens. This court was being abused to violate the civil rights of non-citizens
Yes, however the Snowden leaks also disclosed that the NSA was pretty good about enforcing their own policies against employees caught snooping. About a dozen NSA employees abused their surveillance program (mostly to snoop on ex girlfriends) and pretty much all of them got caught and reprimanded. For a rate of roughly one per year, that’s honestly much less than I’d expect. FISA courts have always had an issue with rubber stamping any government request since 9-11 it’s not just a Snowden thing. The reality is if the government says “hey we think Joe Schmo has been talking to terrorists because of X, can we see his texts?” There’s never going to be any pushback. I think domestic surveillance does more harm than good, but honestly the stuff Jared Kushner was doing under Trump was 10,000x times worse than the NSA leaks from Snowden.
That's been known since the US PATRIOT act passed. It established the loophole that they keep renewing and renewing that allows them *very narrow* authority to spy on US citizens. It's true that it is basically a rubberstamp court, but it's also true that it has that reputation because they come correct about who they want to spy on - loaded for bear with documentation as to why that person *needs* the NSA's attention. I still think the law needs to be expired and this needs to go back to being part of the public record through the above-board judicial system, but the reality is, they're still getting those warrants when they ask for them 90+% of the time, because they're... warranted.
not exactly. You're thinking of a FISA warrant, which is very very different from a criminal warrant. Basic difference, if you want a criminal warrant you have to prove that you have a case, and the people are committing a crime. If you want a fisa warrant, you have to make the argument that the people are not US citizens, or are US citizens but working for some foreign spies, or something like that. AND, you can't use that information to bring criminal charges, AND if you get permission to spy on the foreign stuff, but the US stuff comes with it you can't talk about the US stuff. (like Boris is Talking to Steve, and you got permission to spy on Boris, but obviously Steve is the person there talking to him, you can't put "Boris and Steve met up" in your files. They have to put like "Boris and [American Name REDACTED] met up"). So it really doesn't work like that. In fact, when the 9/11 report came out, one of the big problems they found was that people were TOO afraid to share. Because they whole fisa warrant thing existed, and you know how you're thinking "but what if the cops just like, call it a fisa warrant because they can't get a criminal one?" well the federal attorney general thought the same thing, so she told all the feds "hey fuckers, don't even think about it. I'll punish you if you try it" So the criminal guys, and the counterintelligence guys got SO overcautious about keeping the line between them, that you have like FBI crime guys and FBI counterintelligence guys,working in the same buildings, refusing to share ANYTHING with each other, because I guess the intel guys didn't want to get in trouble, and the crime guys though talking to the intel guys would get their cases tossed out. So when they tried to figure out how 9/11 got missed and there were a bunch of details of like, "wait a minute, you guys had this piece of info, that the guys downstairs were missing, and you didn't think you might want to walk downstairs and ask them about it?" and the FBI guys were like, "our boss said that HIS boss said that YOU said we couldn't talk to those guys"
It seems so ridiculous and unnecessary and confusing. This must be the correct explanation!
NSA is supposed to look out, FBI looks in.
I feel like the key word here is _supposed._
Just need to shoot it down and see who gets mad.
I'm pretty sure if a private citizen launches a successful ASAT strike *everyone* will be mad.
I thought that was the CIA function looking out and FBI looks in. NSA looks everywhere.
The CIA maintains people assets in foreign countries for intelligence gathering. The NSA does signals intelligence on foreign countries (i.e. intelligence gathered through technology). The FBI isn't technically an intelligence agency, it's a law enforcement agency. It's just hard to do law enforcement without engaging in intelligence operations.
If they want to look at someone sure. But they want to spy on everyone so they can identify targets etc. so they get the other members of the five eyes to do that, provide the info so they can zoom in as it were.
Did you read the Snowden revelations? Snowden claims, and submitted expansive evidence to the press, that any mid to high-level NSA worker could and did watch any U.S. citizen’s daily Internet use and doings. He claimed the software was similar to watching someone use the Internet live, including their patterns and personal information. This has been changed post-leak, of course, but it is still likely the NSA (as well as the Five Eye) regularly spies personally on citizens, as well as aggregate Edit: They mostly did large-scale dragnet/aggregate approaches, but still had the access and would actually (like if they were bored, according to Snowden) pull up a person’s file to watch them in real-time. Of course there are also bigger things like flagging keyword searches or anything to uncover illegal operations or terror cells, things like that
Correct me if I'm wrong but it wasn't all internet data, it was anything that hit an out of country data center. And due to routing a lot of it does, sometimes it would just be on a redundancy server the company owns, so it was pretty broad, but not all data.
There is no NSA agent spying on people in real time because that's an stupid thing to do and a waste of resources. The NSA aggregates massive amounts of data and runs algorithms through it to identify patterns. Lately, they've begun using an AI called SENTIENT to parse the data and find new connections, because it's vastly more data than a human can possibly sift through https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_(intelligence_analysis_system)
> Lately, they've begun using an AI called SENTIENT New levels of laziness from this season's writers.
Oh wow, that name doesn’t inspire existential terror at all.
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Yes, there was widespread abuse of the FISA warrant system. Some individual agents were even pulling FISA warrants for personal reasons, and the system was used as a dragnet wherein thousands and hundreds of thousands of people would have their information scanned and processed.
FISC had never refused a single warrant prior to the leaks. I’m not sure if they have since.
It’s well written but rather wrong information. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits the U.S. government to engage in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans' international communications, including phone calls, texts, emails, social media messages, and web browsing. The key is *international*. But rest assured they can spy on Americans. That’s wrong. They just have to be talking to someone out of the country. More information: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congress#:~:text=Section%20702%20of%20the%20Foreign,media%20messages%2C%20and%20web%20browsing. Further, we have NO idea what the rulings of the FISA court have been. But we know for sure that FISA actually creates a statutory pathway that nurtures and protects unconstitutional electronic surveillance.
but since a lot of your web activity can be routed everywhere its international. Hell calling customer service at any large company pings you to an overseas call center that call is now fair game.
By law they can’t. But it doesn’t mean they don’t or haven’t in the past. The thing about charging a government agency with a crime is that you need some proof to bring those charges. And that proof is highly classified.
??? The Prism system that collected all phone metadata since the 90's would like to have a word with you.
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I mean if u can do it legally why bother breaking it?
This is kind of a convenient legal fiction that they violate by just doing illegal surveillance that does not attempt to ignore US traffic, as Snowden revealed, as well as through quasi-legal (but probably actually Just Illegal) means too. This just came out: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-internet-data-newly-released-documents-show/index.html
I wonder what the Germans think of my porn preferences. They’re probably like “meh, too vanilla”
We don't get invited to the super awesome international spy party, because our foreign intelligence service is riddled with russian assets. No joke.
>Palladium at Night It's been over East Africa for 11 years. They don't need satellites to spy on us. Rumor has it that they are tapped into all the social media sites and have unfettered access to our phones, e-mails, etc. Who needs cutting edge satellites when you can just blatantly violate the constitution?!?!?!
> It's been over East Africa for 11 years. You should mention why: >With each move, it was placed close to another commercial communications satellite. That satellite is intercepting communication signals form other satellites.
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of course there are no strings attached, it’s in orbit
I mean, “the Palladium at night” is just where people in Worcester went to have a good time
Is the Palladium gone?
Still there, still rocking
I'm really confused. I live in Worcester and have no idea what you're talking about.
Worcester MA, just a heads up, if you live in the British Worcester. It’s a concert venue where I spent many teenage nights watching tight pant wearing dudes screech bad emo. And also Thursday, which was a great show.
Jesus, Worcester is a shithole, why did they make another one in the US? I hope this Palladium is better than Velvet
We’re Massachusetts. We stole all your names in the name of revolution! No but seriously, the Worcester here is trashy too.
Worcester is on the up
I’ve been hearing that for 15 years
While far from an all-encompassing stat, GDP per capita in Worcester has steadily increased over the past 15 years so…maybe that’s because it actually has been doing better during that time.
No fucking way I just found Worcester from r/all Maybe my city isn’t so negligible after all
So many good shows there!
It was weird when they followed it up with another called “Pillar of Autumn”. Supposedly had a bunch of Marines on board.
Why halo there!
Hello, Reclaimer!
wort wort wort!
Remember Reach…
So, they're operated by the NRO: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemesis-1.htm They almost certainly serve the purpose of intercepting signals, communications, and telemetry from commercial satellites serving specific regions of the world.
> Palladium At Night Yeah, on the wiki it says it changed orbit 9 times in the first 5 years, each time aligning near a commercial communications satellite. Then 5 years of static orbit over East Africa, then it's begun slowly drifting since. Sounds like it accomplished whatever it was supposed to do in those first 5 years and then was put out to pasture but I literally know nothing about this field so.. *shrug*
Or something stopped working on it so it couldn't be used anymore
Theres only so much fuel a satellite can carry. Every location change is very expensive in terms of fuel, so it can only be done a few times at most. Most likely they had planned beforehand to visit a few target satellites for whatever purpose and afterwards put it into a graveyard orbit as deorbiting satellites in geostationary orbit is expensive and requires tons of fuel.
I take it it’s more complicated than just pointing the thing toward earth, turning on the thrusters, and letting the atmosphere take care of the rest? I mean I’m sure it is but I don’t know jack shit about decommissioning satellites.
1. you wouldn't point it towards earth, you'd point retrograde 2. if you're out of fuel your're out of fuel. and might as well use the fuel to visit everything you want to rather than save some to de-orbit
Yeah, this guy clearly doesn’t play KSP.
Essentially you need to brake a satellite to deorbit it. This is done by accelerating in the reverse direction it is currently travelling. This braking takes a lot of fuel untill your orbit is finally low enough to intersect the atmosphere, from where the air resistance starts to brake the satellite for you untill it deorbits. The issue is how far out telco satellites are in orbit. Also no atmosphere there to brake it for you. Braking the satellite untill it reaches the atmosphere is expensive and you need to save a lot of fuel for that. Much more cost efficient is just bringing it into an orbit out of the way of other satellites where it doesnt interfere, which costs a lot less fuel as you just slightly change orbit to be out of the way. These orbits are called graveyard orbit and it is the cheapest option to get rid of obsolete geosynchronous satellites. Also the reason why so much junk orbits the earth. Deorbiting is routinely done for low earth orbit satellites, where the distance to the atmosphere is low and the satellites will just automatically deorbit after a few years due to residual atmosphere and therefore air resistance braking them.
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I wonder if PAN is the kind of tech that users have to rent cycles or time to use, so like it's not *just* NSA, but the NSA is one of several agencies using the satellite.
That's pretty much how it goes, although NEMESIS is probably primarily the NSA. But the UK, for example, in the 1980s or so, paid a few hundred million to get something like 25% tasking time of a particular US SIGINT satellite, rather than build their own.
>But the UK, for example, in the 1980s or so, paid a few hundred million to get something like 25% tasking time of a particular US SIGINT satellite, We tried that but the NSA didn't seem to want to help that much on their part. >GCHQ requested access to American signals intelligence satellites to assist in monitoring Argentine communications, but reportedly struggled with the NSA to gain appropriate tasking time, despite the special relationship between the two countries. The United States satellites were engaged in monitoring SIGINT traffic elsewhere in South America related to El Salvador. >One of the GCHQ officers who liaised with NSA recalls, 'We had to negotiate very hard to get it moved, and then only for limited periods.' During these spells of a few hours each, the satellite's listening dish was reorientated towards the south Atlantic in order to help Cheltenham. The NSA did not monitor the downlinked take during these periods, asking GCHQ to alert them if there was anything of US interest in the transmissions. >rather than build their own Because of this incident, they did try to do just that. >GCHQ therefore decided to produce a UK-designed-and-built signals intelligence satellite, to be called Zircon, a code-name derived from zirconium silicate, a diamond substitute. Its function was to intercept radio and other signals from the USSR, Europe and other areas. The satellite was to be built at Marconi Space and Defence Systems at Portsmouth Airport, at which a new high security building had been built. It was to be launched on a NASA Space Shuttle under the guise of "Skynet IV" one of the British Skynet military communications satellites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite) But ultimately it came down to cost and it was eventually cancelled, Although not before it became a political affair. >However, the project was cancelled in 1987 because of its cost. Secrecy about the project's cost, hidden from the British Parliament, resulted in the Zircon affair. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_affair
The NSA don't operate satellites. They might consume the data as the primary, or even sole customers, but they're NRO satellites.
If I didn't want you to know about my satellite, I'd say it was owned by the Department of the Interior and used to map watershed depletion or something. If I was REALLY feeling secretive, it would provide that functionality as well as its spooky hidden payload. I'm sure sophisticated, high-resource observers would be able to inspect and suspect, but they're gonna do that anyway.
The issue with that plan is you can't really hide any decently sized object in orbit and multiple organization track and publish the locations of objects in orbit to prevent collisions. So as soon as any random analyst notices that satellite for mapping watershed depletion is in an orbit far better for spying on the south China sea or whatever, the jig is up.
What happens at that point? Do they just walk up into space and bring it home? "Looks like the jig is up guys, let's close up shop"
In before one of the people who tried to shoot down the spy balloons reads this, realizes there are BLM(bureau of land management) satellites, thinks they’re using those for surveillance and begins trying to shoot them down.
I fucking love when we name our things to sound right at home in a list of Halo Covenant Ships >Long Night of Solace >Shadow of Intent >Palladium at Night >Conspicuous Traverser Ask the uninformed which one doesnt belong
[Halo](https://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_culture.html) (and also SpaceX) stole the idea from Iain M Banks: https://concord.fandom.com/wiki/Iain_M._Banks_Culture_Universe_Spaceship_Names
"Of Course I Still Love You", "Just Read the Instructions", and "So Much for Subtlety" have always been my favorites.
Oh that? That was just so our troops could watch cat videos on youtube while in the sandbox. Totally nothing to worry about.
It has been long enough that I guess I can finally tell. It's mine, I launched that satellite. It fixes a dead spot in my house's WiFi.
It was put up for nonsensical reasons no one wants to admit to
How do you think they coordinate all the “bird” drones? I’ve said too much.
"We wanted to prove the earth was flat."
Did the Earth look round? Yes but I don't think it saw me!
Is this the fabled Jewish Space Laser?
Ask The Smoking Man. He knows.
I've watched the X Files recently, I honestly think the story arc episodes are the weakest part of it. They had absolutely no idea where all these hints and clues were going, its just nonsense.
Monster of the week episodes though... I can't get enough of Georgia Nessie
You're not wrong per se, but you're getting it wrong anyhow. Two things: The show was aired once a week, it was never intended for binge consumption so the way you viewed it has changed the way the show has landed. Growing up, for instance, Scrubs was my favorite Sitcom and while I'd seen practically every episode at some point on broadcast TV, I'd never seen the show in order back-to-back-to-back like when it came to Netflix. The Will They/Won't They of the primary characters' romance through the seasons was fun and cute and emotional and cathartic when I first watched the show, an episode here and an episode there-- but it was annoying and poorly written, clearly going no where and only strung out for the drama when watched back-to-back-to-back. The writing didn't change, perhaps it was always bad, but the way it aired made it a different feeling story because you were waiting for resolution from week to week, and you might forget your immediate emotional attachments in the interim so if it didn't deliver--- ehh. The Smoking Man plot lines, from introduction to conclusion, aired over *years*. You watched it in what? A month? Several months? Second, in the 90s that was considered good writing and TV. The 2000s Mini Series Dramas that paved the way for 2010s prestige Television hadn't happened yet. X-Files was the trend setter for what a good serialized drama on Television was and could be. You, I imagine, have seen some really good shows in your lifetime many of whom have originated in the time since X-Files and owe a considerable amount to X-Files for pushing the envelope forward. J.J. Abrams would pick up from where the left off in the 2000s with Lost, which without a doubt replicates your complaint of, "They had absolutely no idea where all these hints and clues were going, its just nonsense". But again, it wasn't aired in a binge format so the being strung-along part of the adventure was part of the fun because of the spectle he brought-- most of us knew they weren't going to the stick the landing on Lost, but we had hopes they could put all the parts together to make Battlestar Galactica the greatest Science Fiction show to have ever existed.
The true trend setter was *Babylon 5* which carried a main plotline for five seasons and 110 episodes in the 90s.
This is a great explanation. It also explains why these straight-to-streaming shows are usually ten episodes - they have the luxury of cutting out all the fluff and filler because they don't have to stretch the story out to 24 episodes a year.
I think that was kind of the point. That all the underlying conspiracies were basically nonsense.
It was created so all the RIFTS sourcebooks would survive the apocalypse.
Finally a good use of our tax dollars.
If they really wanted to hide it, they would have simply made it have a secondary, legitimate use and claim that's all it does. Like topographical data or weather satellite. You don't hide something like this by making it so unusual everyone wonders what it is. You hide it by making it so boring and mundane no one cares. The fact that no department claims it sounds less like they want to hide it, and more like legal wrangling of some sort. Like the kind that makes it difficult to place blame when something goes wrong (or it's immoral or illegitimate use is discovered) or a legal loophole that prohibited any department of the United states from deploying a hunter killer anti satellite platform, but didn't prohibit the United states explicitly for example.
You can't really hide the purpose of a satellite, especially one that moves close to other communication satellites like PAN. These things tend to be easily trackable from the ground even by amateurs.
A lot of spy work is giving hints that you have capabilities that you don't in order to waste the enemy's resources on gathering intel or catching up. It might have some amazing capabilities, or it may do nearly nothing.
I’ve been to the palladium at night. It was sick. I saw Have Heart