Would google earth show the carriers in the gulf region and the other ships?

[madokie]

maybe it would be a way to kind of keep tabs on the goings on over there, maybe not

[DS1]

1. no

[1620rock]

4. No the pictures are static, they are not in real time.

[madokie]

5. thats what I was wanting to know

I know here where I live it used to showed our place real plain up close but for some reason it is blurred out now, prolly something to do with the large industrial park nearby.

[Squatch]

2. The imagery is not updated that often.

It's updated on the order of a few years.

[brendan120678]

3. It'll show what it looked like...

from anywhere between six months ago to two or three years ago, if that's what you're interested in.

[madokie]

9. I for some reason was thinking that maybe it was in real time and it would show

but hell I shoulda known better.

[EVDebs]

6. And it definitely wouldn't show sub's positions

Read Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Chris Drew

Or planes in the air for that matter. Or what Israel may do in order to have the US blamed or vice/versa.

A real stupid play if an attack is ordered. Nobody "wins", not the mullahs, not the US, not the Israelis. Let this sit awhile longer, eh ? As USAF's Sam Gardiner alludes in the Atlantic's article on wargaming this situation.

[KharmaTrain]

7. Most Maps Are Several Years Old

You have to check in the Keyhole threads, but there are many warships marked on GE. Most are in their harbors or bases, but in wide open detail and friendly Google Earthers gladly provide many specifics.

Ironically, the older version had the Captiol, White House & Dick Chenney's palace pixeled out...now it's just the Capitol and The House of Cheney.

[karlrschneider]

16. Just had a look, the WH and Capitol are sharp & clear

Only Darth's house is blurred...

[madokie]

18. speaking of darth whats happening with him anyway

no see him in a while.

[karlrschneider]

19. Getting his battery charged. In the basement, probably.

:shrug:

[madokie]

20. I guess a solar charger would be of no good to him huh

:rofl:

[Journeyman]

8. No. It's not a real-time map. . .

Check your own home. The picture of mine is at least four years old.

[madokie]

10. ours is so pixeled out that I can't tell anymore when it was taken

but at first it was so plain I could see the dumpster I had in the yard at the time, I could even see what I thought was my wheelbarrow and a few others things too.

[Squatch]

11. I can see my 32' Airstream Excella in my driveway...

I sold that trailer in April of '06.

[madokie]

12. well It was a legit thought anyway, huh

[BlooInBloo]

13. Misinformation correction: Some of the images are recent, some not...

... In neither case would they let the public see the positions of the military. They reached an agreement with the govt awhile back on which stuff to blur out & all. This stuff can be found by googling, believe it or not - lol!

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. Because Aircraft Carriers fascinate me, i have actually found more than 14 of them.....

on Google Earth, all in port and dry dock. The places to look are Norfolk, VA., San Diego, Bremerton, WA., Everett, WA., Philadelphia, PA., Mayport, FL (Near Jacksonville), and Yokosuka, Japan. The Forrestal and the Saratoga can be seen tied up in Newport, RI but neither are active.

The thing is, the ones in Bremerton are not active either, there are 2 in the Norfolk area in dry dock and since Google Earth has either obscured their hull numbers (Always painted in large numbers on the bow end of the flight deck) or they are covered by equipment, it is difficult to tell which one is which.

I found Wikimapia ( http://wikimapia.org/ ) DOES identify which one is which. You will find that the three in Bremerton, for instance are the USS Independence, USS Constellation and USS Ranger, all three of which are in "Inactive Reserve" status. Google shows one Aircraft Carrier under construction in Newport News that Wikimapia identifies as the USS George H.W. Bush and one in dry dock near her identified as the USS Carl Vinson.

Neither Google Earth or Wikimapia (which uses Google Earth Sat images) show much detail of open ocean spaces with a few exceptions, so finding a ship say, in the middle of the Arabian Gulf is impossible.

Regarding Submarines, you can actually spot dozens of them if you know where to look, all tied up in port. Obviously, you aren't going to spot one at sea.

I have found a wide range of ages in Google Earth images. For instance, the shot of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum at Dulles airport shows the facility still under construction. It opened in December of 2003. The shot of the neighborhood i used to live in, in Palmdale, CA has to have been taken after 2003 because i laid sod in the side yard that year and it shows up.

[Bitwit1234]

15. The ones that you pay for are supposed to.

But it cost 499.00....I don't know how accurate the 20.00 one is, the free one doesn't tho as you said.

[madokie]

17. when I first came out I thought it was the cats meow but that didn't last long

someone started complaining about the info there, thats about the time it went to shit for me, 'cause of the industrial park I'm sure.

[NeedleCast]

21. Explanation from an ex-imagery analyst

The answer to your question is no. Satellite imagery that's used to build the moasics for things like google earth are all static shots compiled from dozens of different commercial (that's a key word here) satellites and are rarely updated except to superimpose higher quality imagery over the older stuff. To gain access to military satellites you're going to need a top secret clearance and a damn good reason, so that's pretty much off the table as well.

Even then, water is rarely imaged in proportion to land because it's an evolving medium. Buildings don't move very fast, but ships do. Timing a satellite image with a ship location would be very hard to coordinate so it's not done very often. Keep in mind that satellites orbit the earth just like anything else. For most commercial satellites, there are only two passes over any given location a day...when the satellite is in orbit over India, you can't take a picture of the gulf.

[Xithras]

22. Update issue aside, Google Earth doesn't show oceans.

Google isn't going to waste the space on storing millions of square miles of empty ocean. Most coastlines fuzz out the water within a few hundred yards of the shore, and in only a few places it might go out a couple of miles. Most of the Earth in GE is rendered using a low-rez topo of the seabottom, showing you ocean trenches and undersea mountain ranges. There's no way to see boats on the surface...whether they were there four hours ago or four years ago.

[madokie]

23. I'm learning more and more all the time. thanks