I think most of the powerful countries in the world already have space weapons. Space exploration is just a facade for this.
I'd wager starlink is mostly military with the cover of civilian use case.
US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
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Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#182It's Golden Dome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#183I think most of the powerful countries in the world already have space weapons. Space exploration is just a facade for this.
I'd wager starlink is mostly military with the cover of civilian use case.
search "Declassify Elon Musk's space-based weapons program before Biden leaves the White House"
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Iran has shown how utterly pointless and ineffective these expensive weapons are. Make no mistake, the US has exercised incredible restraint when it comes to Iran. If it wanted to, they would be nothing left of Iran at all.
I'm sorry but that's absolutely incorrect. The USA has literally zero control when it comes to Iran.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#185Feels like I struggle to wake up to a good news since a decade.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#186Space 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 is the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which forbids placing "nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner", but you can get around that by saying that it's just a conventional weapon, not nuclear or WMD. If it's for space to space combat, you could say that any weapon is potentially a WMD due to the Kessler potential, but if…
Do US and Russia even give a shit about treaties.
Like Pompey “ Will you stop reciting laws to us? We are men girded with swords”
Might also mean, our civilization gets wiped out due to our stupidity m. In 1000 years, other galaxies also wonder, why are there no aliens? Are we the most advanced civilization?
Then get get “high IQ” president and wipe themselves out.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#187Space 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 is the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which forbids placing "nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner", but you can get around that by saying that it's just a conventional weapon, not nuclear or WMD. If it's for space to space combat, you could say that any weapon is potentially a WMD due to the Kessler potential, but if…
What is the point of any treaty with the current US administration which does not play by international laws? Rules and laws that the USA itself spearheaded after WW2.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#188Well, that's one way to kick off a new arms race. Guess the orbital junk problem is about to get worse.
It's been quietly brewing in the background for a couple years with accusations out the US about Russia and China secretly testing systems to intercept and sabotage US satellites either temporarily or destroy them permanently.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space is more like international waters legally. The outer space treaty is rooted in maritime law principles. The Chinese and Russians are in no mood to slow down relative to the US. There will likely be some escalation in debris and damage resulting from that might eventually result in some kind of action. But most of the damage here would be economical and sending more stuff up is now very cheap. Manned flight is r…
SpaceX satellites are doing about 1000 collision avoidance maneuvers every single day. The addition of new networks is going to congest things even more and the risk of unavoidable cascading failure keeps increasing at a massive rate.
At some point they need to remove all the objects that can't do 1000 collision avoidance maneuvers per day.
Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would likely require basically banning GPS, imaging and communication satellites too, if we get a WW3 I would be shocked if there weren't physical attacks against those assets by anyone with the requisite launch capabilities because they're just that useful to militaries. Maybe it gets relegated mostly to jamming them instead but I'd be surprised if that level of restraint happened.
There are many separate GPS systems and all the big powers know how to jam and work without them. It was one of the first tactics used in Ukraine.
Of course. But those are also limited to the areas around the jammers too. In a broader hot conflict there'd be a good reason to disrupt the opposition's GPS capabilities across the globe not just locally. It'd be pretty bad economically for many countries to lose GPS access in their homeland but difficult to achieve without a way to disrupt the satellites directly.