SATELLITE REPAIRED BY ROBOTIC SATELLITE
This story was spotted by A.C.M. and passed along (with our thanks), and at first, it may not seem like it is very important, but just the internet equivalent to those types of "column filler" stories that newspapers used to run to fill up the page. Empty space in a newspaper, after all, was like dead air on the radio, and either one were potential "lost revenue". But it's actually a hugely important story:
Northrop Grumman robotic MEV-2 spacecraft, in a first, catches active Intelsat satellite
Here's the basic nuts and bolts of the story:
Two aerospace firms accomplished an industry first on Monday, as a small Northrop Grumman spacecraft docked successfully with an active Intelsat satellite to provide service and extend its life.
Intelsat’s IS-10-02 satellite is nearly 18 years old, and operating well past its expected lifespan, but the Northrop Grumman-built spacecraft called MEV-2 will add another five years of life to IS-10-02, essentially re-fueling the satellite and giving it a new engine for control.
The companies hit a milestone in the growing business of servicing satellites while in space.
...
Extending the life of an active spacecraft in orbit has only been done with human help before—such as the Hubble telescope servicing missions conducted by NASA astronauts.
And that, basically, is the story.
So why is this big news as I contend, and not just a "column filler" story?
Bear with me here, because we're going to have to take a stroll around Harvey's Barn to sketch out the full significance. Firstly, satellites are still extraordinarily expensive things. One has to design them for whatever purpose, pay the design team (which itself paid a lot of money to learn how to do it), pay the manufacturer, and then buy the passage to put it up there, and pay the insurance company that insures it against something going wrong during launch, or while it's in orbit. If your multi-million dollar satellite just happens to hit a "rock" up there that knocks out a solar power panel rendering your satellite all but useless, chances are until now your insurance company would probably have just written you a check, rather than insist on repairs, which would have probably required a human repair team, launch on a Russian or Chinese rocket and that may have been more expensive than just writing off the satellite...
...and that's an extreme case of course, but as the article suggests, most satellites have small rockets for maneuverability, and to keep them in a stable orbital position. Once the fuel runs out, the orbit begins to decay, and eventually down comes the satellite into the lower atmosphere where it usually burns up. In short, in the satellite business, there's really no such thing as an equivalent to an antique car, or ship, unless of course on can find a way to repair them, and refuel them, that is cheap and cost effective...
...like a robot satellite (and modular designs of satellites themselves that makes repair by a robot satellite easier).
So why is all of this important? Very simple: if you're Dr Ernst Stavro Klaus von Blohschwab of the World Economic Fleecing and you're salivating about "great resets" and central bank digital currency and vaccine passports and social credit systems all being run "in the cloud," i.e., in space, you'd better be able to maintain all those satellites up there that you're going to need in order to run such a Chinese-bat-guano-crazy virus ... er... scheme. And that means you need either (1) robot maintenance satellites or (2) a way to quickly launch lots of cheap (replacement) satellites, or optimally (3) both. What's interesting to ponder in this regard is that so far as the article is concerned, this recent satellite repair was a relatively new, and hence, rare event, and if that represents the plain and simple truth, then Blohschwab, Globaloney & Assoc. are in a bit of a scheduling bind, being in a much larger hurry than the public technology is able to keep up.
Unless of course, they're sitting on top of a whole lot of hidden technology of that nature (and the weapons platforms to protect their assets), or unless they've hired "someone" to look after things out there who, they must fondly hope, are not unionized or with designs of their own. If you're Blohschwab, Globaloney & Assoc., it would be a huge spanner or monkey wrench in the works to have that "Denial of Service" message pop up just when you're ready to push your big red shiny "Great Reset" button.
And if you're thinking that they can just lay cables underwater, what robots can do in space, they can also do under water... (see https://gizadeathstar.com/2021/03/protecting-those-underwater-cables/ and https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/09/the-incredible-disappearing-underwater-observatory/)
See you on the flip side...
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It would seem that salvaging expensive hardware is round the corner, too, especially, for looking at other’s designs and design flaws if not for what they’re made.
Back in the 90’s once gave a presentation in front of military peers on a favored topic and titled it “Space Junk: It’s worth millions.” Touched on the need to clean up Earth’s manmade junk floating around in orbit and how it would be getting in the way later on. Also mentioned that those 8,000 plus (at the time) pieces of debris that NORAD had to keep track of could greatly be reduced if such salvage operations were implemented by NASA or even private enterprises might get involved if that space junk had a market price for its retrieval.
That was then, but now there seems a need to have ready repair units in place due to the seemingly ever-increasing incidence of newly identified Big Rocks passing within Lunar orbit. Like the ones that keep getting caught on video cameras.
June is approaching and so is the first half of the Taurid Stream to say little about those Near-Earth Asteroids yet to be identified that might be inbound. Those PHA’s or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids are increasing in number, too, and that’s just the ones discovered and located. Wouldn’t want a 100-meter sized rock falling on your head. Of course, if it does you’re not likely to be found complaining about it in your present corporeal frame.
Then there are those “Blohschwab” and company and other Party types just waiting to take advantage of difficulties others might be forced to endure.
Haven’t heard much about that disappearing underwater observatory. One would assume that that Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) in the greater ‘Hot Zone’ is better observed by those observing others on how they might be up to nefarious deeds. Those P-3’s and P-8’s are not wasting aviation fuel in the Bahamas and Florida Straight because it’s cheap.
I think it’s more like the problem provides an engineering challenge and work.
The good side of this technology is we have a way of repairing the James Webb Telescope if something like the Hubble problem happens to it or Kepler aging. Without having to risk astronauts’ lives doing the repairs. The bad side is kidnapping and holding for ransom of satellites in other words piracy in space raise the black flag the wars of the space trading companies is about to begin shiver me timbers.
So if you’re Stavro Blohard & Co. and you’re investing a ton in your satellite control grid, you’re going to need a defense force to protect your investment — from the likes of Russia or China, or from anyone (human or not) who’s already out there. Who or what are they planning to use for satellite defense? Is this a job for whatever is left of the wealthy Western nation-states? Or a job for space-based robots with weapons?
Got to tell you; I’m thinking these non-human scribblers
love to frame/spin stories implying human’s analogue future
is likely spinning dead in empty space;
not only as useless eaters, but as useless workers in space.
While their digital brothers;
as non-human scribblers love to
personify the dead [robots, cyborgs, androids, transhumans, etc.],
as the future of space.
The AI’s scribbler tool’s core mission narrative then is to:
personify the dead; while, at the same time – killing the living.
Evil is their game; AI is their name.
Because, those scribbler’s jobs are going to be AI’s;
as well as those soldiers, enforcing the killing of the living.
To the post…
Now, robots repairing robots; are the stuff of science fiction.
Yet, as most know here; sci-fi is here and now.
Who knows, maybe sci-fi is catching up to reality in some cases?
But these robots then become; 2nd generation robots. A new digital robotic “germ” line, if you will.
Ironic, in that it took a so-called germ[covid1984]; to clear the brush[humans] out of the tanshumanist “way”.
To burn the living spiritual way; for the new non-living way.
Concurrently, as alluded in the above: killer robots are another species replacing the human warriors. And these, will be critical in space.
As war; usually loves to kill communications: satellites.
Ironically, robots not only repair satellites; they destroy them.
But that’s not all; they can hack into the enemy, and sabotage;
or, do some espionage; they can massage the truth; and,
frame the enemies reality; as they did to the human enemy.
AI, is rather; humanly complicated.
But don’t worry.
AI will take care of those human pesky complications.
Oh, what a tangled web AI weaves,
when the AI spider is doing all the jobs at once:
the spider, the schemer, the soldier, the scribbling spinner, the solder, the safety, the security, the sculptor, the scientist, the stagehand, stocks, service, structure, support…
Oh, hell!
You get the idea…
The AI is the snake in the garden.
Or
The repairmen in space.
And whose side is IT/AI on?
Perhaps, there are just too many sides?
To rule out… there?
Spinning “dead” in empty space… ?
«You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but, when God made man, the devil was at his elbow. A creature, that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine, to make the machine. And evil, that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?»
– Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”, 1985.
MARY ELLEN CARTER
Vessel heading straight forward,
into sunken sun westward,
will rise again in defy
by rebel’s cry,
wrestling down wayward.
Stan Rogers – The Mary Ellen Carter:
https://youtu.be/rGRP3jxwD_A
alternatively, an aging satellite can just be replaced by one 1/2 the size and 1/10th as expensive as the original.
Hence all the talk of “fleets” of hundreds or even thousands of satellites – giving the term “stairway to heaven” a whole new context.
Yes I think there is something insurance-related lurking here.
There’s potential profit in salvage operations.