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On 2018-04-01 19:20, Jeff Findley wrote:

I know it's April 1st, but no, that's bull****. NOAA is the agency in
charge of issuing permits for earth observation satellites. This has
nothing to do with those idiot flat earthers.

But if I I am a Singapore company launching a satellite from Kouru on an
Arianne, why do I need a permit from a US bureaucracy (NOAA) to have a
camera on my satellite?

Once I get orbital slot from the UN agency (forget its name), and the
spectrum for the uplinks, why should a country have a say on what I do
with the satellite?

When the USA sent the Shuttle STRM mission, did it need permission from
every nation in the world to "radar" all of the ground on the planet?

See below where I said, "US has jurisdiction over what its citizens, and
its corporations do in space".

When an astronaut on the ISS takes a picture while over Italy, does he
need permission from Italy to take that picture?

From what I understand, there is specifically an exception for "hand
held" cameras.

Bull****. The US has jurisdiction over what its citizens, and its
corporations, do in space.

As it did with encryption, preventing export of US built encryption
because us military felt US encryption couldn't be beat. So US companies
started to buy euriopean encryption so it could be deployed in all their
offices around the world and it turned out to be equal or superior to
the US encryption. I believe iut was under Clinton that this rule was
removed when the USA realise that thsi rule hurt US companies sionce
their encryption products were undesirable because of the "no export"
rules on them.

It appears to me that this NOAA rule is anachronistic and has been
rendered laughable with advancement of commercial launches, satelite
imagery that has become "open" with Google and others.

All that imagery no doubt was gathered with the proper permits, if it
was done with US satellites. And even if it wasn't, I'm sure Google
does what the government requires for images of "sensitive" sites.

except for the bit where the cameras are so low resolution (in terms of
pixel size on the surface of the earth) that it's laughable.


As it was explained to me here, stage IIs have finite lifetime after
which, they are dead. inert. In today's world, this is not considered a
"satellite" even though in the 1950s cold war era, early surveillance
satellite would go up, take pictures and fall back after an orbit or two
so the analogue film could be recovered and developped. And those image
likely had resolutions comparable to what a GoPro can do today.

From what I understand the point is moot. SpaceX has the required
permits for launches going forward. Like I said originally, I'm sure
some middle level bureaucrat got a bug up his butt from watching the
several hours of Starman footage. SpaceX responded with snark by
mentioning NOAA when it cut off its last launch live-stream right before
2nd stage cutoff (i.e. when the 2nd stage was not yet "in orbit" and was
therefore functioning as a launch vehicle, not a satellite).

Jeff

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