281–290 of 397 posts
Space 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
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What would be the point? MAD relies on everyone knowing you can take them out if they attack you. What does a space weapon offer additionally that makes the huge expense worthwhile?
MAD is not military doctrine and never has been. It's a philosophical concept that arose in the mid 1960s and gained column-inches in the press because it had a cool and ironic name. Even McNamara rejected it. USA, China and Russia all plan to fight and win wars, not go out in a blaze with the other guy. And that includes 'nuclear warfighting' which involves the ability to command and control nuclear exchanges and co…
I am not sure there is any limited nuclear exchange that is not so risky as to be worthless unless you just want to die.
Space based nuclear weapons do not improve your survivability. Space based nuclear missile interception might - if you could pretty much ensure you could take out the majority of your opponents missiles (star wars).
The problem there is it destabilises the Nash equilibrium of MAD and makes it more likely someone will initiate a first strike before your defensive capability is complete...
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Kessler trashes LEO and yes, "space tourism" because that means bare orbital joyrides and those would become unacceptably hazardous for a tourist attraction. But it makes no real difference for GEO or outer orbits, or for leaving if we, or more likely a non-human probe wanted to leave Earth's orbit. So, no Starlink, but you'd still have COSPAS SARSAT in a reduced form, you'd still have geostationary telecoms birds, s…
> it makes no real difference for GEO or outer orbits GEO is one of the few orbits we could actually one-shot trash for generations. (Well, any high-altitude orbit is. But GEO is special. If a random high-altitude orbit gets trashed, you can probably do fine with a slightly-different trajectory.)
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Right, so we definitely have the ability to commit genocide, but we lack the ability to dismantle the government without being monsters. To actually do the hard thing that the trump admin wants, we need to send in boots on the ground. And even then, we've seen how totally ineffective that is with Iraq and Afghanistan. Gaza shows this as well. Even with the genocide that Israel is actively committing, Hamas remains. Y…
> To actually do the hard thing that the trump admin wants, we need to send in boots on the ground. And even then, we've seen how totally ineffective that is with Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think the trump admin has communicated its war aims, so it's pretty hard to evaluate what sort of deployment would be most effective at achieving them. US/allied boots on the ground (as part of combined arms) are pretty effecti…
But it's true this hasn't been clearly communicated. I think, mainly, because it really wasn't well thought out.
>"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.
Ya, that's a hilarious comment from the Chinese after they have literally tested their own anti-satellite weapons. But then their diplomats have never been short of chutzpah. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/chinas-anti-satellite-test
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...
All you need to know about making deals with Russia.
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> Adding a few thousand more pieces of debris would not be even remotely as bad as using a tactical nuclear weapon in war would be. The worst effect would be a nuclear weapon in space. The resulting EMP would probably fry more than enough electric and electronic devices to throw back whatever country is hit by it by decades .
The US famously did that in the 60s (detonating nukes at roughly the height of today's ISS)[1]. Also some less famous ones, including a Soviet test that resulted in the EMP destroying a power plant [2]. Properly aimed at a populated area it would be devastating. And you can detonate bombs far from your enemy's country, then let earth's magnetic field lines transfer the EMP pulse to their territory. Good luck defendin…
Hit the ten biggest metropolitan areas [1] with one nuke each and you'd hit about 88 million people and probably an even bigger share of all industry that isn't farming. The biggest problem is power transformers, there isn't much capacity in manufacturing them, it's already a bottleneck thanks to regular replacement and renewable energy / datacenter buildouts with 24+ months of lead time [2] - now imagine a significant war related impact, the lead time would probably skyrocket to at least a decade.
At least one source claims that the radius from a single device could be much, much larger [3], so with proper design to maximize an EMP (which even Starfish Prime wasn't intended to do), it is conceivable that dropping just two of these things over the East and West Coast respectively would cause immense damage.
A Fallout-style nuclear war, I think, would be easier to recover from than even a small exchange of EMPs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropo...
[2] https://berlin.cwiemeevents.com/articles/new-normal-componen...
[3] https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasst...
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it makes no real difference for GEO or outer orbits GEO is one of the few orbits we could actually one-shot trash for generations. (Well, any high-altitude orbit is. But GEO is special. If a random high-altitude orbit gets trashed, you can probably do fine with a slightly-different trajectory.)
No. The reason this can't work is that "trashing" an orbit works by a long chain of random collisions which also put debris into different orbits at roughly the same altitude. The debris from a smashed StarLink for example goes into a thousand different orbits with a variety of different directions but all at a similar altitude to the StarLink and so they'll collide with other StarLinks and similar LEO birds. For LEO…