Yeah, as I said: physics remains physics. According to your article, the X-37 goes to low earth orbit. As a reminder, that’s about 80-500km up. Geo-stat is at 36,000 km up.
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Yup.
I dunno man, maybe if you want a fight it’ll take a different thread.
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I am not sure. Getting the high enough angular resolution to see enough details from geostationary orbit could require Quite Huge optics.
Then there is the amount of pixels needed, OR prior knowledge where and when to look…
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Awwwww, man, I really miss having a dog 
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Life is a bitch.
Does it count?
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Look, I was just pointing out that some satellites do in fact always look at the same spot of Earth.
See? No claims about optics whatsoever.
And then I mentioned another project which probably could achieve that kind of intelligence.
“I’m not arguing that with you, Harry!”
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Most modern ships have very little crew anymore. Container ships are very automated and while driverless cars are going to be awhile I think that a lot of cargo ships are going to be autonomous first. Basically they will get piloted out of the harbor/inland areas and the crew leave and get a ride back to port while the ship is run by the computer and satellite till it reaches the other end of the trip where a crew will board and dock the ship.
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Point taken! Sowwy! 
For some reason I thought things were in context of IMINT.
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[quote=“slybevel, post:26, topic:73772”]
I was just pointing out that some satellites do in fact always look at the same spot of Earth.
Satellite coverage of any given point is not constant, even for major military powers, so that would be very hit or miss.
Not true for geostationary sats. Otherwise DirecTV couldn’t work.
See? No claims about optics whatsoever. [/quote]
(sorry about the borked nesting)
Except that the DirecTV satellite isn’t “looking” at anything, and clearly(?) in the context of this thread the “looking” function is the capability of interest. The point you’ve been making is technically true, but raising it here is a red herring. It’d be like saying, in a conversation about moving large volumes of freight, ‘trucks can’t drive across Himalayas’ and you responding ‘yeah but you can walk!’ It’s true, but useless.
You’re right, I was foolish to contribute.
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To answer your first question, yes, it does matter, and especially to the poor bastards being thrown overboard. Your hypothetical is…nothing more than a hypothetical. Other than that, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about in that last para.
I found this bit in the story to, once again, make me consider starting to burn everything I can if only to hasten global warming and the end of our species:
Ships intentionally dump more engine oil and sludge into the oceans in the span of three years than that spilled in the Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez accidents combined, ocean researchers say, and emit huge amounts of certain air pollutants, far more than all the world’s cars. Commercial fishing, much of it illegal, has so efficiently plundered marine stocks that the world’s population of predatory fish has declined by two thirds.
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As a couple of random asides;
- I recall an xkcd from a few years ago (maybe a “what if”?) which highlighted that thee is more weight (and/or volume?) of man-made things in the oceans - ships, basically - than there are fish and other living things, by quite a large margin. There’s two trends intersecting; the number and size of ships at sea has exploded over the last century, and the number of fishies has plummeted.
- AFAIK, fish are the exception when it comes to western cultures eating carnivores. Generally ‘we’ eat herbivores, or the herbs directly, and avoid meat eating animals. I find that kinda weird and completely normal at the same time
edit: here it is. Not quite the conclusion I remembered, but close enough.
I think it was not foolish of you to contribute. But when you suggest that people reconsider their positions, while offering them no specific bases to re-evaluate, it should not be very surprising if others aren’t persuaded. If you need to dance around anything specific, all anyone can do is decide whether or not to take your contribution on faith.
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A friend who is a Marine Biologist and sails regularly on research vessels has consistently told me, in 10 years of friendship, that if the oceans are any clue, humanity is doomed. The seas are just another biome, albeit a large one, but one with a carrying capacity that we’ve successfully (and suicidally) reduced to dangerous levels. The big tuna and swordfish are almost wiped out, and the sharks can’t be far behind.
Yay humanity.
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Again, the ‘poor bastards’ being thrown overboard were the ‘poor bastards’ that were most likely going to execute the crew as they routinely do because the crew are not worth month, the ship and cargo are. They were the pirates there to do harm to the members of the ship. And again, the members of the ship ended their lives by disability their boat even before putting the bullets in them.
The only option NOT to kill them would have been to bring these men onto their boat – one that wasn’t equipped to handle prisoners. Therefore, essentially they signed their own death warrant the minute they attacked the ship. LOGICALLY – not emotionally – the crew really did nothing more than would have happened anyways as a result of these pirates malfeasance towards them. They ended up dead.
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Except that … where I live …
a) the death penalty is not on the books for any crime
b) fishing boat crews are seldom trained lawyers and judges
c) we have this awkward thing called due process
[quote]If I remember this video when it came out last year or a
year before that, …[/quote]
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there
[quote]the men doing the shooting are actually the men that
run the ship. They had been attacked by pirates in the past and they
had fired a warning shot to tell these folks to stay away.[/quote]
“A black guy threatened me once, so I shot this other black guy. That’s cool, right?”
[quote]It is illegal for ships to have guns like this in most countries, so a lot of
them meet up with mercenaries that have floating caches out past
international boundaries where the law doesn’t matter.[/quote]
Except the law does matter.
[quote]The pirates generally know most ships are unarmed – or have maybe
one gun – so they ignore the warning shots hoping the overrun them with
greater force.[/quote]
Do we KNOW these guys were pirates, or are we simply assuming it? There’s been a lot of refugees floating around the worlds oceans over the last couple of years, in decidedly unseaworthy boats. Is it not at least plausible that these four may have been refugees?
[quote]And apparently it doesn’t take too many men with guns
to take over an entire ship if you have none. So these guys decided to
make an example of the pirates that day.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure pre-crime isn’t a thing yet?
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So if I understand correctly, because the pirates attacked a ship that “wasn’t equipped to handle prisoners”, the only logical course of action for the crew was to throw the pirates overboard, and then shoot them ala fish in a barrel. Because logic. Some kinda horribly tortured logic, but logic.
By that logic (we’re still calling it logic, instead of 
), the young gentleman who briefly robbed me of my motorcycle could then be killed, because my house doesn’t have a proper, USDOJ inspected, jail cell. He tried to take my stuff by force, and I’m no LEO, so you gets the bullet to the head, kid.
Gotcha.
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By “coverage” I was referring to image capture coverage, which should have been clear from the context. Geosynch is too high for that, and such orbits are only over the equator.
The X-37 B can get you coverage that you would otherwise not have, on demand, but it cannot cover the same patch of earth constantly.
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