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US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

bbc.com

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Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#261

Post by freebsd_lovefes »

gorgoiler wrote: post #211
mapt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While armor is indeed much harder in space, it is not impossible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield Whipple shields use spaced plates to disperse the impact of a projectile on the first plate over a larger area on the second plate, and so on and so forth over four or five plates such that the final plate is not penetrated. My father worked on high velocity impact ballistics and has some very nice multiple…

You know nothing about space armor until you manage to shoot down Amarr's dreadnought in Eve Online, tyvm.

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#262

Post by cedws »

sgustard wrote: post #224

Reagan and Gorbachev came within inches of abolishing nuclear weapons, but the sticking point was the US would not back away from building space weapons. As long as warmongers are in control we will continue to live in danger and fear.

Gorbachev's dead now and look who sits in his place. I'm not so sure such a treaty would still be respected anyway. As as for who sits in Reagan's place...

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#263

Post by [deleted] »

feoren wrote: post #142
somenameforme wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of messaging is much more propaganda than reality. For instance it's trivial to turn things around against the US where we have the highest prisoner population in the world, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, disproportionately made up of a single ethnic minority, who are then are pushed into forced labor. Is that because we're engaged in large scale human rights violations against our own population and enablin…

> Is that because we're engaged in large scale human rights violations against our own population and enabling defacto slavery for profit generation? Yes, that is absolutely correct: the United States is engaged in large-scale human rights violations against our own population and enabling slavery for profit generation. You nailed it. It's not even "de-facto" slavery, it's de-jure slavery on the actual books. Slavery…

[deleted]

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#264

Post by AngryData »

drnick1 wrote: post #147
cogman10 wrote: post #135

Earlier 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.

So the US didn't blow 90% of its surface missiles on Iran and park an aircraft carrier and other ships off their shore for months? That they didn't assassinate multiple leaders? Or spike fuel costs across the entire world?

Or are you saying they have used restraint by not committing genocide and undeniable crimes against humanity for nuking a bunch of civilian populations?

Because if its the 2nd one, the only thing that would accomplish is turn the entire world against the US until there was nothing left of the US also.

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#265

Post by whatshisface »

andai wrote: post #252

>"We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space," AFP quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. I'm no geopolitics whiz but "we urge the USA to be unprepared for war" is a pretty comical statement to me.

In human terms, there is a spectrum between knowing where to buy a firearm, owning a firearm, and pointing a gun at your head.

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#266

Post by dragochat »

drnick1 wrote: post #147
cogman10 wrote: post #135

Earlier 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.

actions that impact tens of millions of ppl can have consequences that are hard to predict - the ppl in power play power games, by definition, and most of them can't afford many of these consequence bc they'd be fatal to their games

fortunately even the most "malicious" actors are at least reasonable, even when not fully rational

also it's a GOOD thing there are billions of us on the planet still, this makes the powerful warmongerers still afraid to not push things too much into the chaotic realm

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#267

Post by chinathrow »

lossolo wrote: post #205
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major provocation? "Oh, you deny using your satellites to supply them with imaging? All right, then it wasn't us who blew up your spy satellite that wasn't supplying imaging." That is, China's in a bit of an awkward position to complain very much.

China is not Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela or some other third world country that the US has fought in over the past few decades. You can't just destroy one of their satellites for free. And I can bet the US didn't do it, because that would be a major escalation, especially now that Xi is coming to the US and there are rumors that the US wants a deal.

So it broke apart by itself?

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#268

Post by nradov »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #238
hajile wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> SpaceX satellites are doing about 1000 collision avoidance maneuvers every single day Genuine question: how many avoidance maneouvres does maritime traffic execute in the open ocean?

That depends what you mean by "open ocean"? Vessels near ports or in defined traffic lanes frequently maneuver to avoid collisions as per the rules of the road. Outside territorial waters it's less common but still happens occasionally. Either way, those avoidance maneuvers are such routine events that no one really gathers data on them.

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#269

Post by snickerbockers »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #9
chukar wrote: post #7

Well, that's one way to kick off a new arms race. Guess the orbital junk problem is about to get worse.

Say goodbye to satellites and space tourism for the next 200 years :(

Am I supposed to feel sorry for jeff bezos' loss?

Re: US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

#270

Post by AngryData »

M95D wrote: post #60
anentropic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other satellites

Isn't it easier to shoot them from the ground when they pass over? In space, the orbit must be adjusted to at least come close enough to the target, wait for the rendezvous, fire, then adjust orbit again for the next target...

Not if you want to hit your target before the other side can react and respond. Also if you expect your target to potentially shoot back, a rocket attempting to reach orbital velocity is a vulnerable target to any space based weapons or lasers because it has very limited ability to maneuver from its flight path and still reach orbital velocity.
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