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A comment on SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky license. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by oh_sigh on Friday April 06, 2018 @07:41AM (#16772453)
The whole point is to prevent giving away information to other countries who don't have it already, not some conspiracy to prevent Americans from seeing the earth. Other countries are free to broadcast their data to the world if they like. The US will probably learn nothing new about the Earth but would learn of at least some chacteristics of other country's satellite tech
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Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by bpicolo on Friday April 06, 2018 @08:38AM (#16772709)
> prevent giving away information to other countries who don't have it already

Pretty easy for a nation-state to launch a surveillance satellite with much better optics, I imagine.

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Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by some_random on Friday April 06, 2018 @09:03AM (#16772856)
I suppose nation-states aren't the only ones who'd like information on US military bases/infrastructure/"nationalsecurityinterests", but I honestly think it's irrelevant. If we were discussing serious imaging systems then sure, but it's pretty clear that a webcam isn't going to give anyone any meaningful information.
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Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by grigjd3 on Friday April 06, 2018 @09:41AM (#16773119)
The point is that you don't hand out the license trivially. Yes, spacex is just discussing this in the context of a glorified webcam, but webcasts aren't their only business. Such a license needs to consider the whole business. Now the NOAA perhaps should consider a type of limited license, but they can't assume the only imagery technology spacex is interested in is webcams.
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Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by bitcurious on Friday April 06, 2018 @08:59AM (#16772827)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_laun...

This is a list of nations that have managed to put something in orbit. It contains 10 nations, and the ESA. The vast majority of nations do not have the capability.

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Re:SpaceX can't broadcast Earth images because of a murky li... by TeMPOraL on Friday April 06, 2018 @09:22AM (#16772971)
That's a list of nations capable of launching stuff on their own. Compare with this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite#First_satellites_of_...

Non-space-capable countries do routinely put their payload on the rockets of countries with launch capability (though I guess then it can't be an obvious spy satellite).

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