--- Bill J Gray <pluto@...> wrote:

>NASA provides ISS elements

If you mean from

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/orbit/ISS/SVPOST.html

There fine for visual use only. If you use them to track the iss with your scope, your in for a
suprise.
They would take a orbit for the iss and intergrate it forward in time, that's what those elements
are intergrated. So they are not reliable for using your scope to automatically track the station.
Even today there's a good difference between where the nasa tle places the iss and where the
spacetrack tle places the elements. Space track are the one's to use for tracking of the iss with
your computer guided scope.

> (Elements for classified objects are still available. (It seems odd that we can
> get elements for US reconnaisance satellites, but not for pieces of
> discarded rocket boosters!)

But Bill, you can get elements for discarded rocket boosters. You can get them from spacetrack,
but you just can't share the data with other's. All people have to do is register withs space
track, and download the data. Then tell guide where the data is. I know it works, I been doing
that for a long time:)

Sorry for my rant.

Kevin






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