293
SpaceX is reportedly building a $1.8 billion network of spy satellites for US intelligence
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
293 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59534 readers
3195 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You have no idea how a spy satellite works, do you?
They take pictures.
With really, really fancy cameras.
Cameras that are very carefully, and secretly, designed to be very good at their jobs.
No, you can’t just let some third party decide to use your fancy spy satellite, that means they now know what your satellite can and can’t do, which means they can hide things from it, which means it’s now just a very expensive lump in orbit.
And need I remind you that SpaceX is not some magical self funded space ferry service. They’re a US Government contractor, that’s where most of their money comes from. The satellites are made by other contractors. There’s not a government satellite factory somewhere in the desert, they pay companies like Boeing and Honeywell to make them the parts for the satellite, and then SpaceX gets money to launch it.
When the government pays for something, the contractor is legally required to keep their mouth shut about it, hand over the keys, and be available if it breaks. The contractor cannot just decide to let someone else play with the government’s toys, that’s called espionage.