Print

[dss311]

Everyday we are hearing about car bombs going off in Bagdad and numerous people being killed.  I would think with our sophisticated
satellites, we could zoom in where the car bomb was detonated and simple rewind the tape and find out where the car came from.  If we knew where these bomb making facilities were located we could then destroy them.  I know satellites have tremendous ZOOM capabilities.  Do they not have some way to "time lapse record"?

[joseph_hac]

Satelites don't take real-time video (don't believe everything you see in Enemy of the State). They take snap shots as they revolve in Earth's orbit. They take a shot of a location, and won't take another shot of the same location for how ever long it takes to return to that location. Even if the satellite managed to take a shot of the car bomb explosion, their would only be the one. Who knows? Maybe (probably) the US government does stream video down from the satellites and just forgot to tell us because of privacy issues. It wouldn't be the first time they have kept something from us, right?

[dss311]

Wouldn't a geocentric satellite with a fixed position in the sky (like DTV satellites) be able to accomplish this?  We know their resolution capacity is amazing, so why not just connect some type of recording device to the optics.  

Who knows, maybe the military is allready doing this but not revealing their secrets like you said.  It is just getting tiring hearing about the constant turmoil going on over there.  I hate to see additional troop causualties when they may be preventable.


Maybe the new Iraq government and the US military need to enforce "Marshall Law" for ½ a year or longer until they can get control of the situation.

[The unProfessional]