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Have to admit that I was and remain somewhat taken aback by the responses in this thread. While it is a fairly pointless object you would have to regard it as simply "Test load"
Given the size and shape of the thing it is certainly NOT going to be the brightest object in the sky and the linked article in the first post said as much. Would anyone actually expect this thing to be brighter than the ISS that we actively go out there and try to watch pass over and take photos of? Or of Iridium flares that many of us look forward to just as much? One of which is a matter of hundreds of square meters of reasonably reflective surface area and the other of a couple of square meters of polished antenna. This thing might be polished but it is simply not going to reflect that kind of light in one direction.
As to catching on, seriously? After someone has done it once, what company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch a single purpose object (That purpose being "Look at me, we proved that we can launch this") that only space wonks like us are likely to identify, and that only if we go and look at the ephemeris data (Or if it's "flashing" is distinctive enough to identify it positively on sight) or go to a website that has done the data trawl for us, and only if we are quick enough to do so before it falls back to earth?
From the space graffiti article "Jamming a brilliantly glinting sphere into the heavens feels similarly abusive"
Wonder what he would have made of Sputnik?
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