> Nope, the standard method of film-return still has some advantages > over > digital imaging, enough (at least for Russia) to keep using it. Hmmm.... if Russia always has at least one of these recon. satellites up there, that's a minimum of three launches per year. I would think that would be the expensive way. Maybe digital imaging technology is not available at "cheap" prices in Russia. Possibly other factors, too. > (Who is "everybody" in this context, BTW?) Countries that orbit recon. satellites. > >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... You're probably right - but I'm sure it's longer than 4 months (the lifetime of the non-digital sats). ------------------------------ Jonathan T. Wojack tlj18@juno.com 39.706d N 75.683d W 4 hours behind UT (-4) ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 - 11:41:29 PDT