Why spend money on healthcare when you can spend it on being able to annihilate any country on earth?
US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
131–140 of 397 posts
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#132Why spend money on healthcare when you can spend it on being able to annihilate any country on earth?
America spends more % of its GDP than France on healthcare.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#133Why spend money on healthcare when you can spend it on being able to annihilate any country on earth?
At this point I would take filled potholes.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#134Technically the US has had 'space weapons' for many decades, due to how an intercontinental ballistic missile works. Incidentally, the Shuttle raised concerns in the USSR because they saw those large cargo bay doors and rocket thrusters out back, to think that this was a 'delivery system'. In the modern battlefield, 'hypersonic' missiles are the new shiny. However, any ICBM is 'hypersonic', at least during the space…
Sort of related: The Shuttle was designed for military use, but mainly regarding launching and capturing spy satellites. From a NASA report on the Space Shuttle's history ( https://www.nasa.gov/history/sts1/pages/scota.html ):
> One Air Force requirement that had a critical effect on the Shuttle design was cross range capability. The military wanted to be able to send a Shuttle on an orbit around the Earth's poles because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was at high latitudes near the Arctic Circle. The idea was to be able to deploy a reconnaissance satellite, retrieve an errant spacecraft, or even capture an enemy satellite, and then have the Shuttle return to its launch site after only one orbit to escape Soviet detection. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, by the time the Shuttle would return to its base, the base would have "moved" approximately 1,100 miles to the east. Thus the Shuttle needed to be able to maneuver that distance "sideways" upon reentering the atmosphere.
> In addition to the Air Force's cross range demand, the military also wanted a larger Shuttle payload bay than NASA originally advocated. NASA wanted the Shuttle payload bay to accommodate modules for a future space station, which necessitated a payload capacity of approximately 50,000 pounds. The Air Force wanted a bay 15 x 60 feet that could hold 50,000 to 65,000 pounds and that had doors that could open out into space to deploy satellites easily. This payload requirement meant that the fuselage of the Shuttle needed to be essentially a large rectangular box with rounded surfaces. In general, NASA went with the Air Force's requirements because it needed the Air Force's support to help insulate it from the political charge that the Shuttle was really just a step towards human exploration of Mars or a permanent space station, which is precisely what some people at NASA wanted it to be.
The Air Force was working on a Shuttle launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California, but after the Challenger disaster they decided that the Shuttle wasn't reliable enough and opted to instead use traditional disposable rockets to launch spy satellites.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#135Why spend money on healthcare when you can spend it on being able to annihilate any country on earth?
Even worse, Iran has shown how utterly pointless and ineffective these expensive weapons are.
Cool, we have a weapon in space that cost $1B and 6 months to re-arm. That's not super helpful when who we are fighting is flying $20k lawnmower powered drones to take out all our bases in the region.
We are basically the modern version of the Spanish Armada.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically pretty much anything in orbit is a viable space to space weapon (for related reasons all space propulsion is ITAR controlled) so it was never practical to ban them. Space to earth, maybe, but that isn't unless it hits vague 'WMD' categories, and I'm not sure space to ground is necessarily what the US is declaring here. I suspect whatever capability the US is referring to is far more "counter space" than…
A bullet travels at a relative speed of about 250 to 1250m/s. A ~10g projectile moving that fast has an energy of 600-16000 joules. Everything in low Earth orbit is moving at 7600m/s. A ~10g projectile moving that fast has an energy of 580,000 joules. Getting hit by something moving that fast is roughly equivalent to getting hit by a whole ammo case of bullets at the same speed. There is no armor that can protect you…
>A cardboard box of ball bearings with a handgrenade in it in LEO being triggered could wipe out nearly everything up there, and depending on the exact altitude it could effectively mine LEO and prevent humanity from using it for a long time
Eh, you can do a lot better than that: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/conksat_introducing-fragsat-f...
:)
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#137Why spend money on healthcare when you can spend it on being able to annihilate any country on earth?
America spends more % of its GDP than France on healthcare.
For the most expensive population to insure (old people) in a much more inefficient manor (private coverage via medicare advantage).
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#138- Confirm openly that space weapons have been deployed.
- Open the floodgates to the open militarisation of space by all possible nation states.
- In response, justify huge increases in space defense spending budget
- Rinse / repeat to kingdom come. Same as it's always been.
Someone's getting a nice fat bonus, cigar and a blowjob tonight.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#139Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica. Especially since the consequences of space debris might trigger the Kessler effect [1], denying humanity future access to low-earth orbit for the considerable future. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
There's not really enough stuff up there to cause the kessler syndrome yet, maybe at some specific bands you could cause some annoyances... but ~75% of satellites are operating in bands that would decay into the atmosphere, fortunately it's just easier to operate in the decaying band anyway
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#140[deleted]