Why Is NASA Blurring These SLS Photos? (Update)
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Keith’s note: I got this from NASA HQ PAO today: “Our colleagues at Marshall Space Flight Center looked into your questions. You probably already know this, but before NASA images of Space Launch System hardware under development are released to the media or on NASA web or social sites, the images are reviewed by both NASA and Boeing export control representatives to ensure they don’t contain sensitive data. In some cases, the export control representative will allow release of the image, if certain sensitive hardware features are blurred. A NASA public affairs officer also reviews the images before they’re released. NASA’s policy on image use can be found here.
Teams at Marshall followed standard agency procedures for clearing the blurred forward join images on NASA Watch and NASASpaceflight.com. Some export controlled features were blurred in these images made by NASA photographers so that images of this milestone could be released. As hardware is completed, it becomes more sensitive in nature. NASA export control officers are taking another look at these images to determine whether they contain sensitive material or was it so early in development that the feature shown was not sensitive. So some cases, such as it seems to be with these images, hardware that doesn’t start out ITAR sensitive can become ITAR sensitive as it’s developed, and images of them are blurred accordingly so they can be released publicly.”
In summary: someone at NASA/Boeing decided that something on the SLS Intertank that was not ITAR sensitive became ITAR sensitive at some point and they started to blur photos of that ITAR sensitive thing. But since I asked about the blurring of the images the ITAR people are going to go back and see if the ITAR sensitive thing was really ITAR sensitive to begin with. So .. media inquiries are now part of the process of deciding of something is/is not ITAR sensitive, I guess.
Not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens.
MAGA (if I may use your first name?), I’m reminded that maybe, just maybe, the same conclusion could explain the Comb Over in Chief?
Well Senator Hillary’s campaign manager believes it was space aliens that rigged the election so President Trump won, so maybe its both. 🙂
https://www.insidesources.c…
John Podesta Stars in “Documentary” Suggesting Clinton Lost Because of Aliens
Posted to Politics April 29, 2018 by Michael Graham
And returning it to this thread, the reason NASA is blurring the pictures is to hide the alien parts being used on the SLS…
No he didn’t say space aliens rigged it .. he said that Clinton wanted to release over a billion pages of documents related to UFO’s and he believed the pentagon and CIA were against that and they rigged the election .. not the aliens…
You are not following all of the conspiracy theories are you? Who do you think gave them their orders? ?
gosh no .. just repeated what the article said ..
Like I said, you need to know the backstory to it. 🙂
https://www.huffingtonpost….
06/05/2013 11:48 EDT | Updated
02/09/2014 07:59 EST
Paul Hellyer, Ex-Defence Minister, Believes In Aliens (VIDEO)
“Canada’s former minister of National Defence Paul Hellyer testified at the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure (CHD) last month in Washington D.C. that aliens are living among us and that it is likely at least two of them are working with the U.S. government.”
Doesn’t it give you a sense of security knowing the government is being run by folks like Mr. Hellyer under the secret guidance of space aliens. (LOL)
I assume the aliens came here in search of intelligent life That was the plot of an Outer Limits episode. Aliens come here to find out if there is intelligent life, make various attempts to make contact, can’t find any sign of intelligence, and leave disappointed..
Yep. Because rule number one: you must have the ability to read between the lines. To connect the dots…
I’ve been an aficionado of these theories since the late 90’s when the great Art Bell ruled the night.
Oh. And here’s the Great Test: Do you accept that aliens have visited Earth, either in the past, or currently?
As someone long interested in history I haven’t seen any evidence to support the theory aliens have visited the Earth. Indeed, the more we learn about the origin and development of life on Earth, and conditions for life in the Universe, the more I am starting to believe we are the only intelligent technological civilization in this quantrant of the Milky Way. Although Archaea may be likely on Mars and planets in other star systems, and more advance life in subsurface oceans on worlds like Europe and Pluto, the conditions for a technological civilization, which would require complex life to establish itself on the surface of a very, very stable world, are likely to be extremely rare.
It appears that not only stars have habitable zones, but galaxies as well. And for an advance technological civilization to emerge you need a planet with a fast rotation that is large enough for plate tectonics, a strong magnetic field and to retain a thick atmosphere, one still thin enough for filtered sunlight to reach the surface. It also needs a large moon to keep its axis from excessive wobble and the presence of one or more gas giants to stabilize orbits in the system and reduce the rate of impacts from large objects.
Each one of those is an event with a very low probability of occurring. Which is why life on planetary surfaces is likely to be limited to Archaea and similar micro-organisms. You are likely to fine more advanced life in subsurface oceans but the inability to create fire and an extremely stable environment would work against the emergence of intelligence and even more importantly, technology. Remember, the most intelligent creatures to actually have emerged in the ocean are octopus since dolphins and whales developed extensively on land before returning to the ocean.
All in all that is why I suspect intelligent life in the Universe is very rare, so rare we may be the only ones in this galaxy, the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Yes, Art Bell’s show was good, far more entertaining then the endless babble about politics and sports on the other talk shows. I still listen to his replacement, George Noory, for entertainment. BTW there has been a shift in the beliefs of the UFO crowd. Although many UFO advocates still believe in ET, and that ET is running the world, there are also an increasing number that believe UFOs are either humans from the future or from a Earth in a nearby dimension (the multiverse theory). It is really as entertaining and imaginative as the classic science fiction stories.
Interesting. I’m not sure I agree on plate tectonics and a magnetic field. If you’re thinking of water loss and Mars, I might argue that one or the other is necessary, but perhaps not both. And some of the things you describe as improbably may not be. A large gas giant or two may be common (current observing techniques aren’t quite at the point of detecting a Jupiter or a Saturn around another star.) Giant impacts to form a large moon may be more common than you think. Planetary scientists keep invoking them to explain everything from Mercury’s large core to the axial tilt of Uranus. The Moon-forming event would just be one of many, which happened to be a grazing impact. Admittedly, requiring five or six 50% probability conditions is still long odds (1-3%.) But I don’t think that’s enough to resolve Fermi’s paradox.
I’m inclined to attribute it to time and distance. Fermi did assume extraterrestrial civilizations would expand linearly. Not at anything close to the speed of light, but that they would be 1000 light years from their home planet after N thousand year, and out to 10,000 light years after 10N thousand years.
Based on human experience, civilizations may not last for N thousand years, yet alone 10N thousand. It’s anthropomorphic, but that may mean an extraterrestrial species might expand in a very start-stop way and may go back inwards as well as outwards (e.g. recolonizing the home world after a big war or major disaster destroyed their civilization.) In physics, that’s called a random walk process, and the average distance traveled doesn’t depend on time. It depends on the square root of time. So it wouldn’t take 10N thousand years to go ten time as far, it would take 100N thousand years. I wonder if anyone has ever tried factoring that into the Drake equation?
Neither has to do with water loss. Plate Tectonics recycle nurtrients and create new environments, helping to drive evolution. An example was India ramming into Asia to create the Himalayas. Not only did the flora/fauna of both land masses get mixed up and forced into competition, the rising mountains scrubbed large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere setting the stage for the ice ages which drove additional competition for resources.
A strong magnetic field is needed to prevent solar flares from making the land unsuitable for advanced life forms.
Water loss was probably too specific; I was thinking of atmospheric loss in general.
An old theory about Mars, and probably still at least partially correct, was that plate tectonics are necessary to preserve atmospheric carbon dioxide in the presence of oceans. (No matter what you think about global warming, _some_ amount of greenhouse gases are beneficial.) Atmospheric carbon dioxide tends to react with water and form carbonates. Without plate tectonics to recycle that, by subduction and volcanic venting, that would result in low surface temperatures.
For a magnetic field, the MAVEN results show that Mars has lost a fair amount of its atmosphere to space. That’s driven by the interaction between the solar wind and an atmosphere which is not shielded by a planetary magnetic field. In terms of the direct radiation and its effects on live, I’m not too concerned. An atmosphere thick enough to support complex life is also thick enough to stop most of that radiation before it gets to the surface.
Well, Dr. Downer. Thanks for your POV 🙂
I prefer the immortal words of Fox Muldur: They Are Out There.
And in seriousness, though, isn’t your description of life’s predicate a bit parochial? You’ve described our planet, sure, but if there is one thing we’ve learned as planet after planet is discovered: the variety is stunning. And indeed the actual discovered planets are a peculiar subset: the research tech limits discovered to those close to home star, or to those with a suitable orbital plane relative to our own, among other limitations.
Soon, much more powerful scopes will become available, making the identification of small, rocky worlds much easier. It’s only just begun.
Yes, we will see what emerges, but the more paleontologists learn, the more like it seems that advanced life on a planetary surface is a very rare thing. Now on world with underground oceans it may be a very different and that may well be where the bulk of life exists.
An all time favorite of mine, as described in Wikipedia, is:
In the June 7, 1994, edition, WWN reported that 12 U.S. senators were aliens from other planets. The piece quoted several senators or their spokespersons humorously “confirming” the story. The Associated Press ran a follow-up piece that confirmed the tongue-in-cheek participation of Senate offices in the story. WWN quoted Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) as saying he was “amazed it took you this long to find out.” Charles Pelkey, the then-spokesman for Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), told the AP: “We’ve got only one thing to say: Klaatu barada nikto.”
That was a good one. Here are some more…
https://www.motherjones.com…
Hillary’s Alien Baby And 7 Other Out-of-This-World Tabloid Tales
And they have pictures to prove it!
My bet: deliberate blurring. They thought no one would notice.
Perhaps because they do not want anybody to know how far behind they are by pretending to keep some things confidential. Unfortunately for SLS, we already know how far behind they are.
Maybe they ought to allow such things to be viewed. If we could get the Chinese, et al, to copy the SLS/Orion lashup, it would put them as far behind as we are!
Did not the British provide (through the Soviet spy network) flawed Concorde data which contributed to Tu-144 problems? Or is that just an urban legend?
I’ve wondered the same thing for years. And not just the Concorde.
OTOH, the several design bureaus in the Soviet Union were, or could be, quite capable.
I’m thinking it is where the duct tape is located.
EAR/ITAR Stuff was put in that location during the interim…? Can’t have the Chinese (or other Evil do-ers) getting a look at the pipe/valve/transducer or whatever!
The ITAR stuff is getting out of hand. They even confiscated a Saturn V poster that was bought at the gift shop here at KSC.
That’s more of a problem with the language and application of ITAR rules, not the intent of the rules themselves. The language is so vague and inconsistent that no one can really be sure what is and is not allowed. Some institutions react to that by assuming everything is forbidden unless they are absolutely sure it is allowed. That’s an overreaction, but it does make sure they don’t end up in court. The solution would be clearly written and unambiguous regulations. I’m not holding my breath on that…
It just looks like a dust cover to me. I say this because it appears to me that the “blurring” has perspective distortions to it, rather than being in “screen space.”
Maybe just an a– cover!
I second the ITAR/EAR comment. Before NASA releases any photos of space flight hardware, it goets vetted by export control. They look for anything that could be considered instructive on how to build a launch vehicle. They likely blurred this out of an abundance of caution rather than bring in technical experts and waste time trying to prove it wasn’t ITAR/EAR.
ITAR is also a convenient justification for those reviews. You do not want a live web cam in the high bay when you drop the spacecraft. In 2004, Lockheed Martin learned that the hard way.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
It looks cleaner/nicer without the truss & cables. It’s better to look good than to feel good.
They do it for models on magazine covers, removing blemishes and unsightly lines, why not SLS?
I’ve certainly been yelled at by Lockheed in Sunnyvale for photographing a spacecraft I was working on. Seemed to be ITAR issues on things I had thought were totally innocuous (like the rest of the clean room in the background). ITAR is so hazy, could be almost anything.
in 1992, I got yelled at for taking pictures of inside my cubicle (not an aerospace company or any sort of military contracting going on). It was my first post-college graduation job, so I wanted pictures to remember it. There was absolutely nothing on the gray cubicle walls. I’m pretty sure there was nothing at all on the computer screen (big old CRT). The boss was so hot I thought he was going to ask me to hand over the film, but he just told me to not share the pictures with anyone besides my immediate family and to never again take pictures of anything in the office without prior management approval.
I thought it was bizarre at the time, but I understand the concern today and it really was a rookie mistake on my part.
In the case of cb450sc, there could have been some item(s) that, together with other intel that could have created a more complete picture for “the enemy”. OTOH, it also could be, a matter of proprietary info. The same might have been true for Jeff2Space’s boss.
Beam me up, Scotty, there is no intelligent life down here!
That’s gotten more complicated. A number of aerospace companies used to require approval to take a camera into their facilities, or even simply prohibit it. Then they started putting cameras in cell phones. Somewhere around then, I needed a new phone and totally confused a salesman at a Verizon store by asking for a phone _without_ a camera. These days, I don’t know how they deal with it. The rules about not taking pictures are still around, but with everyone carrying a smartphone with a camera (or two, or four…) I don’t see how they can enforce those rules.
KSC used to require a”camera pass” to bring a camera on center, but they finally dropped the requirement, perhaps because they realized it served no purpose.
We don’t have any smart whiteboards at work, so occasionally I’ve taken a picture of a whiteboard with my phone, downloaded it to my work PC, deleted it from my phone, then printed it out so I can save a hard copy. I don’t have “cloud” services turned on, so it doesn’t upload to “the cloud” at any time, which is a good thing.
I’m sure I’m violating some company policy, but this saves so much time when someone draws something critical on the wall of a conference room that really needs to be captured and saved. I don’t know of an easy way to do this with any of the company provided equipment we have.
Pictures are usually provided to NASA by the contractor. Depending on the context in which these pictures are submitted they go through different levels of ITAR/EAR99 review. There is definitely an inconsistency, but I doubt there is much to it.
Perhaps it is just to hide the bird nests and cobwebs?
It’s for ITAR, but that’s a joke on SLS. Back on Ares I a NASA SES and his engineer knowingly gave 1st stage and J-2X engine technology to a South Korean (who was not from the South). He was arrested and convicted ( the NASA IG web site had the case up for years). The SES ended up leaving for other reasons. The engineer not only a got out of jail free card, but immunity to do whatever she wanted (she had helped with the prosecution) and a job with NASA MSFC as a government emp. ITAR is a joke, the dangers real, the North now has better rockets and no one cares.
Given the purpose of ITAR being the protection of secrets, particularly those readily converted to military use: is your characterization of ITAR as a ‘joke’ focused on the goal, or the implementation?
implementation and no one cares.
SpaceX doesn’t seem to be too worried about spies…
https://www.brownsvillehera…
Rocket Watcher: Boca Chica resident witnesses SpaceX growth
Posted: Sunday, March 24, 2019 5:27 pm
By MARK REAGAN Staff Writer
“But since Pointer saw the bottom of the portion slowly moving on State Highway 4 in front of her house while she was juicing oranges, there has been a flurry of activity.”
Definitely not your average space program… Imagine looking out your kitchen window and seeing a very large rocket go by.
Hmm, wonder if ITAR/EAR law actually covers building controlled technology in public view… doesn’t seem like something they’d expect a company to do, but you never know.
From a European perspective it seems entirely inconsistent and not fit for purpose. We are using smart phones for space applications these days. Are they dual use? A simple 50 year old mechanical component that is easily designed with modern tools and entirely knowable by any half competent engineer is encumbered with all sorts of nonsense. The only reason it is persisted with outside of the US market is that the market size prohibits a business case to develop a replacement. This is a threshold of pain argument. It is more typical than protecting big ticket items. Which should be protected even under commercial considerations. The perception is that it remains because it is a convenience for US suppliers. I do wonder how much protection it offers. Take the mentioned example. NK does not follow the technology path embodied in the J2-X. It is also pretty useless for ICBMs. So it was more of protecting IP than a national security lapse. YMMV.
Your argument being, I suppose, that identifying tech easily redirected to nefarious enterprise can produce laughable results?
I don’t disagree. But neither do I disagree that an effort, however imperfect, must be made, recognizing that witless results will occur from time to time.
I would go further than that and so far as to question the whole premise of sequestering space technology, when far higher more capable technology is routinely made by the likes of Foxcom and other sub-contractors. It is a self defeating exceptionalism that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the technology in question. Technically making space hardware is comparatively simple; closing the market case or otherwise (NK -> pop 26 million and an economy the size of a Friday night poker game has realized ICBMs!) willing a need for it and funding that is all that is required to realize it. For sure it may not be the most capable manifestation but that would be a matter of margins rather than overall capacity.
I have colleagues who have model aircraft that can be controlled by their phones and set off on a cross country trip to be picked up at the other end again by their phones. Why on earth would an evil doer go to the bother of spending such vasts amounts on launchers to deliver their hate when they can buy a drone from Wallmart to do it for them?
I agree, classified information is supposed to be clearly identified when it is created. But apparently _everything_ falls under ITAR, including simple scientific observations and documents, unless it is examined by an ITAR specialist and determined to be non-ITAR, and even then the criteria are unclear.
Some institutions don’t require a review by an ITAR specialist. If they give their employees some brief training, some guidelines, and someone to ask if they aren’t sure, they can just dump the determination on the individual employee’s lap. Legally, if the employee makes a mistake, such an institution can blame him and avoid liability. That’s the sort of thing that makes people really dislike ITAR; as a friend put it, she’s old enough that ITAR is the only four letter word which still offends her.
The counterargument is that the more sophisticated technology, like your friend’s model aircraft isn’t too reliable. It wouldn’t work for long in a space environment, or under the conditions military equipment is expected to survive. But the counter-counterargument is that terrorists have used drones from Wallmart (or the local equivalent) to deliver bombs. If it’s cheap and easy, it doesn’t have to be very reliable.
And the article I read about a drone delivering a bomb is also an example of the cost/reliability thing. It was about the Pentagon statement that the military in an unidentified country had used a Patriot missile to shoot down such a drone. They were impressed that a Patriot could engage and hit such a small and slow-moving target, but noted that shooting down a drone which sold for a few hundred dollars probably wasn’t a cost-effective use of a $2 million dollar missile…
“(NK -> pop 26 million and an economy the size of a Friday night poker game has realized ICBMs!) “
Which reminds me of an SF trope, namely that simply knowing a thing is possible will enable an observer to duplicate it. starting with a clean sheet. It’s applied to the idea of FTL: if human beings observed FTL in action, according to this idea, they’d find a way to duplicate it, with no foreknowledge of how the demonstration flight actually worked.
Long long ago I used to study art. One period we covered was prechristian European. There was this gold cloak clasp that always stuck in my mind. It was derivative of some Viking metal work. The original Norse piece had been formed by dragging a very fine steel comb over a gold cone. The copiers, unaware of the original method developed their own. They brazed very fine gold thread onto the disk. A far more accomplished technique. More often than not the copy exceeds the original.
Honestly, that’s a good way to get funding. Either from the government or from private investors. Not for aliens and warp drives. But in general, if you have an idea which pushes the limits, one of the first questions from a funding source is going to be, “Why do you think this can actually work?” If you can say, “If can work because someone else has already made it work,” then you’re over the first hurdle. So even with aliens and warp drives, if we saw one, lots of currently unfundable research projects might suddenly have a better chance of getting funding.
One pedantic note. I know you’re using it in the normal sense, but “secret” has a fairly specific, legal meaning in this context. ITAR extends to far more things than those technically classified as “secret.” For example, design documents for a scientific instrument, which we can freely give to any random US student we like, can potentially be covered by ITAR.
It is understood that a punctilious personality is sine qua non among scientific types… 🙂
That’s the core of the problem. There is no actual criteria for whether a topic is ITAR except for being “cleared” by an ITAR assessment specialist based on criteria that I cannot find. Unlike the classified information system, where at least in theory classified information is clearly marked as such when it is created, _everything_ is ITAR until proven otherwise. Our thoughts are not our own. No wonder Thales advertises that some of its spacecraft are “ITAR-free”.
Yes, that is why it is on the National Space Council’s “to do” list.
https://spacenews.com/comme…
Commerce Department moves ahead with space regulatory reforms
by Jeff Foust — June 22, 2018
“Another aspect of SPD-2 requires members of the National Space Council to coordinate a review of export control issues related to commercial space activities. “Next week, we will begin interagency discussions to implement space export control reform,” Ross said at the June 18 space council meeting.”
There is no criteria, but there are lists of technological categories. And things move on and off the list. For example, prior to 2014 planetary probes and rovers were considered ITAR sensitive, but now they aren’t.
One can get into strange situations where, for example, a Canadian citizen working for a US company could develop some technology and then not be able to work on it if it was later deemed to be under ITAR/EAR control.
The other issue is that the folks assessing whether something is ITAR/EAR sensitive do not always have a technical background.
Wasn’t 2014 when some authority to approve things shifted back to the Department of Commerce? They are much more understanding that the State Department (who had previously been responsible for more-or-less everything.) So I’m not sure if the planetary probes difference you mentioned is due to some logical list of technological categories, or simply which agency is responsible for granting waivers.
The rules applying to Canadian citizens is a running joke. But we should be fair and apply the same rules to everyone. If we give a Canadian a free pass (I think we should), why not a citizen of the United Kingdom? Or any other country we’ve had friendly relations with for a century?
What bugs me is the rules for re-exportation. If certain hardware is built in another country and imported into the US for testing, you can’t send it back after the tests. At least, not without a lot of paperwork and paperwork you really ought to do well in advance. As if national security is threatened by letting the Swiss have a mass spectrometer _which_they_built_.
Regarding planetary probes and rovers, I do have some recollection that it switched from State Dept. to Dept. of Commerce, but is it cause or effect? At the time I assumed it switched because it was reclassified as EAR from ITAR.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was logical, quite the opposite. It was just an example of something coming off of ITAR. And the Canadian example was someone I knew, didn’t realize it was a running joke these days. I also know Swiss who this has happened to. Canada was just a particularly obvious example of something wrong with the system… anyway, I think we are in violent agreement.