if the spooks have this kinda stuff laying around... it begs the question...

whats orbiting up there we dont know about...

btw: i totally ripped this off from discover magazine website... PROPS!

NASA Gets a Hand-Me-Down from Spy Agency: Two Space Telescopes | 80beats | Discover Magazine

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NASA Gets a Hand-Me-Down from Spy Agency: Two Space Telescopes

The Hubble Space Telescope. The new scopes are shorter,
designed for peering down.

NASA announced some exciting news yesterday: apparently, the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that looks after the US’s spy satellites, had a couple of Hubble-scale space telescopes lying around.
In a warehouse in upstate New York.
In bits and pieces, lacking the requisite solar panels and cameras to make them fully functional, but basically complete, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Why did the NRO have two unused space telescopes, when NASA is barely able to scrape two pennies together? Neither side will answer that question, citing classified information. Go ahead, use your imagination.
But an enterprising NRO official gave NASA a ring, and a little bureaucratic paper-pushing later, hey presto! NASA has two more space telescopes it had a few months ago. Right now, Chandra, Spitzer, and Hubble are in orbit, and the James Webb Space Telescope is supposed to launch in 2018, though its budget woes have been of epic proportions. These new telescopes are essentially satellites with mirrors the same width as Hubble’s but a shorter focal length, so they can see a wider stretch of space, and they are likely to be repurposed as part of a mission to explore dark energy, as Julianne Dalcanton notes over at Cosmic Variance.
It’s a little wince-inducing, though, to realize that NASA will be lucky if they can scrimp and save enough to get even one of these scopes up into orbit. “We don’t anticipate ever being rich enough to use both of them, but it sure would be fun to think about,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s astrophysics division director, in a conference call on Monday (via Talking Points Memo’s IdeaLab).
Fun is one word for it; sad is another. But those reservations aside, we wish NASA best of luck and congratulations on this windfall—it’s always exciting to see more resources being funneled towards observing space.
Image courtesy of NASA

They should have waited till the NRO launched them..... would have been cheaper to kick them 180 degrees in orbit and have them looking out to space instead of down at various parts of the Middle East, China and assorted other interesting places

Probably academic

Chinese-Built Microprocessor Includes Programmable Backdoor | Defense Update

Where's me tinfoil hat?

With the thread title, I was expecting something entirely different

Originally Posted by Ant1981

With the thread title, I was expecting something entirely different

lots of fried chicken pics?

Fyi, I don't think its acceptable to call them spooks anymore. Its 'racist'. Political correctness gone mad more like.

i cna just see most of the membership thinkin " i aint touchin this thread with a bargepole."

lol

Originally Posted by moth

Probably academic

Chinese-Built Microprocessor Includes Programmable Backdoor | Defense Update

Where's me tinfoil hat?

Apparently a Huawei bid to put in fibre optic infrastructure (er, like the exact kit we have here, cheers BT) was rejected in Australia due to security concerns. I didn't know what to make of it (well, obviously the kit was reverse engineered from Siemens / Ericsonns or whatnot in the first instance. But they all do that, sir) but seeing that, well, the Chinese have a proud history of snooping already!

Brutal.

Originally Posted by Mr Rooty Tooty

Apparently a Huawei bid to put in fibre optic infrastructure (er, like the exact kit we have here, cheers BT) was rejected in Australia due to security concerns. I didn't know what to make of it (well, obviously the kit was reverse engineered from Siemens / Ericsonns or whatnot in the first instance. But they all do that, sir) but seeing that, well, the Chinese have a proud history of snooping already!

Brutal.

Yep and they have a 64kbps line into each exchange that has their kit in it. For network monitoring purposes that is

i used to test AV dats for the MOD as part of my last job...

we had a lab with a secure line to upload them (one way diode setup)

the MOD got/get the latest AV/OS security updates before aaanyone else... commercial or otherwise..

pretty fracking cool...

we had an audit by them one day.. unfortunately i was still shittered from the night before and was joking around pretending to hit a colleague with a chair across the head right as they walked in...

OOPSIE!