On Wed, 13 Jun 2001 22:21:33 -0400, you (Jonathan T Wojack <tlj18@juno.com>) wrote: >I had thought the days of returning film back down to the Earth from >recon. satellites was over - that everybody now uses digital imagers in >orbit, and just beam the data back down to Earth? Nope, the standard method of film-return still has some advantages over digital imaging, enough (at least for Russia) to keep using it. (Who is "everybody" in this context, BTW?) >I would think that the later would be cheaper - such a satellite would >have a lifetime of around 10 years. Well, if you manage to stuff it with enough propellant... Optical spybirds usually tend to be in rather low orbits and need a frequent reboost. 10 years is a _bit_ of an optimistic life expectancy there... CU! Markus ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 14 2001 - 03:55:44 PDT