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U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

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Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#241

Post by Paradigma11 »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #168
plandis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whose culture is right? What is right in the eyes of the law? Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way based on the number of pro-China posts, but a Chinese hegemony would likely be a world of censorship and social credit. Compared to a flawed US democracy I’ll take the US democracy every time.

China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nations. This is not really comparable to the U.S. which is an ideology-based nation that inherited European imperialism traits. China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs in the same way it's rivals are so we shouldn't interpret their actions with the same lens.

China is an imperialistic hegemony. Just look at tibet or xinjiang. Completely with genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide and all. It is very easy to say that you are only interested in internal matters if you define as internal any territory your ppl had any interest in the last 2-3 millenia: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-bend... "Thus, Beijing’s narrative about its claims begins as early as the 2nd century BCE, when Chinese people sailed in the South China Sea and discovered some of the region’s land features."

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#242

Post by mtrovo »

sudosysgen wrote: post #208
jcoq wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale of China's economy and population is so massive that they're clearly capable of hegemony. And as you say, it's good to be at the top. It would be irrational of China's leadership to seek anything else.

No, they can never reach hegemony. The economy and population of the US would never have allowed it to reach hegemony if it wasn't for WW2 and it's extremely privileged position in North America. Geographically China will always have a lot of trouble projecting naval power internationally because of Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Malaccas. Thus, even if it had 2x the economy of the US, the US would still be able…

What does it mean to be an hegemony on your terms? Economically China being number one is just a matter of time, military I wouldn't count on them stopping short before US. Good luck trying to convince +1B people being fed government propaganda that they're not entitled to everything when they keep pushing 2 digits growth every year for 30 years.

You're also missing the long game of China. Probably on our lifetimes the economic focus of the world is going to move to Asia and Africa based on opportunity of growth and demographics, looking from this perspective why would they care about conquering the west when they can just position themselves very well for the long term and have a nice view watching the decline of the west society?

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#243

Post by eesmith »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #229
eesmith wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would militarization of the oceans fund the practical colonization of the oceans? What about the militarization of Antarctica? > then it could effectively attack most satellites in earth orbit and rockets attempting to reach orbit This is the High Ground thesis, dating back to the 1950s (see https://thespacereview.com/article/396/1 and http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/08/he-who-contro... ). It takes a coup…

The naval analogy applies especially in space: any weapon you put on a ship you can build one 10x bigger on the shore. The shore in this case is the moon. In the case of rocket interception from the moon, you put a big laser on the moon, not complicated. Could you do that from the Earth? Atmosphere, etc. As for historical precedent for military dominance presaging development, it isn't really a good example, but it's…

Please don't argue by metaphor.

Unlike the age of sail, modern warfare doesn't use simply bigger weapons. We've got all the megatons of nukes anyone would want.

The USS Hornet was much less powerful than the land-based airfields of Hawai'i. Guess which one was able to bomb Japan first.

Obvious complication with a Moon-based laser system: beam divergence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_divergence . What Moon-based laser system is able to deliver enough power 380,000 km away to a rocket able to take multiple g's and handle the aerodynamic stress of supersonic travel?

Another complication: The power and accuracy loss of the atmosphere makes it hard to target rockets during launch phase. And if you wait until it's out of the atmosphere, how do you track it once its engines are off?

A third complication: Not only is it relatively small and hard to target from 380,000km away, but the round-trip speed-of-light delay is 2.5 seconds. Add some jinking to the rocket's trajectory and it will be quite hard to hit. (How wide do you think the rocket-damaging part of the beam will be?)

A fourth complication: what if the launch is on the other side of the Earth from the Moon?

Given all of these complications, orbital battle satellites are the obvious equivalent to the Hornet, able to be on station in a way that more powerful land-based systems cannot. And these can be supplied from the ground.

Or, if it's truly "not complicated", what are your solutions?

> to build economic exploitation

Which is a euphemism for "use force to extract labor and resources from other people." Look at all that British architecture built on the broken backs of black slaves in the sugar trade. Leopold II certainly managed to 'economically exploit' the Congo Free State. And of course the delightful opium trade with China.

Maybe, just perhaps, it's possible we can do without a repeat of that?

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#244

Post by sterlind »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #220
amprolh wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> culturally an ancient society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution > China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs China is extremely interested in controlling and imposing the beliefs that the CCP is the best and should never be opposed and never makes mistakes, and demonstrates this daily within the great firewall and through threat of sanction against international media companies, neve…

Control of actions and beliefs of citizens absolutely. But again that's to maintain internal stability. You'd need to give specific examples for the latter point.

forcing US airlines to label Taiwan as China in their maps? annexing Tibet? all the power they have over Mongolia? Telco equipment sold way underprice to members of the Belt and Road initiative? the South China sea? the power they exert over Chinese students studying abroad? none of those are internal.

maybe you're right, depending on how you define citizens - though taking a page from the British empire, maybe everyone's a citizen!

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#245

Post by TheGigaChad »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #150
russli1993 wrote: post #125

On Aug 2020, a US spy satellite moved close to a Chinese satellite, attempting to shadow it closely. It was caught by the Chinese and they maneuvered it to get away from the US satellite. This seems to constitute ill or malign intent. Why would you go and bother the property of another person? What is the intent behind this move? Trust goes both ways, and it takes effort from both parties to build trust. This kind of…

AFAIK, there is only one nation on this planet that has dropped a nuke on another country, that can put the rest of the world on edge. Besides you cant rush globalisation, cultural differences take time to evolve over generations, we haven't had the internet and other forms of communication for that many years in the scheme of things and there are still many people on this planet who have not even used or regularly u…

Your place is in a mass grave.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#246

Post by nraynaud »

plandis wrote: post #154
nraynaud wrote: post #25

I just love the complete lack of self-awareness. Russia and China bad, the US is good.

You think that Putin and Xi are the good guys here? You really think the world would be a better place if the US let them be the world’s super powers?

the world is not manichean, the superpowers are thorns in the side to "deal" with day in, day out, for smaller nations.

What's the point of view of the African nations where only China invests vs what the Uighurs think of the same government?

What's the point of view of a NATO nation vs the point of view of the Afghans on the US? It's the same country that blocked the westward moving of the USSR and gave an entire country to the Talibans after having upset them.

Or even worse, think of Irak, where nothing good came of the invasion, and nothing good was really foreseeable without the invasion anyways, no clear good vs bad here. Maybe a dictature kills less people and is more predictable than an open war, but that's hardly a manichean difference.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#247

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

pvarangot wrote: post #167
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we are discussing is about laser and EM attacks. Anyone with a software defined radio, a directional antenna, and some skillz can mount ground-based EM hacking attempts on satellites, and there are many academic astronomical facilities with artificial star lasers which could pull off attacks to disable the imagers of spy satellites. (Note that individuals don't because this is the sort of thing that gets…

Not sure about EM attacks, but I don't think disabling the imager of a spy satellite with a laser from the ground is feasible. If it makes it through the atmosphere it would just scatter or open up too much. Artificial stars shine by reacting with the atmosphere that kinda ends around 30km. LEO imagers fly as low as 240km but are even higher than that usually. EM "attacks" wouldn't do much except if you are trying to…

If you're trying to blind a spy satellite, you don't need to focus your laser through the atmosphere. Focusing through the atmosphere is what the satellite is built to do! The better the satellite's atmospheric correction, the more effectively your laser will be focused on the imager. Sure, maybe you don't burn it, but if you can saturate the right pixels... (Although the wavelengths used to create artificial stars are probably not ideal.)

Similarly with EM, the holy grail would be to send valid control commands to the satellite, or to jam the satellite during some critical period. Satellites are already designed to receive the signals.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#248

Post by duduer8fttg »

kungito wrote: post #211
plandis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whose culture is right? What is right in the eyes of the law? Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way based on the number of pro-China posts, but a Chinese hegemony would likely be a world of censorship and social credit. Compared to a flawed US democracy I’ll take the US democracy every time.

I'd take european democracy over US democracy any time

So you'd prefer to be largely irrelevant but fashionable? When the EU has problems it complains to institutions founded by the Americans. There's a reason the US is pivoting its diplomatic focus to the UK, AU, Japan, etc. It's because the Europeans are happy to sit in their bubble pointing fingers while opining on why all their best talent leaves. Actually, that's a lie. Sometimes they also play with the definition of 'best' so that they can say lots of talent is still choosing to remain.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#249

Post by [deleted] »

1_player wrote: post #236
random314 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, there are no representatives of US/NATO on wechat.

It's their loss. To be fair, they had to create a pretty massive and intrusive censorship system to prevent the widespread Western propaganda from entering their borders.

[deleted]
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