Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 397 posts

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

#301

Post by topspin »

tintor wrote: post #271
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.

Being the first country to put weapons in space, is far from comical. Weapons in space is like putting nukes and missiles in international waters 12 miles from coast of all other countries, to reduce strike time.

> Being the first country to put weapons in space

The distinction of first (known) deployments of orbital kinetic weapons belongs to the Soviet Union. In 1968, they tested an anti-satellite system by intercepting a target satellite with a interceptor satellite and detonating it (Kosmos-249/Kosmos-252).

Later, in the 1970's, the Soviets deployed and test fired Rikhter R-23 23mm revolver cannons from Salyut military space stations.

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

#302

Post by nomel »

legulere wrote: post #299
nomel wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as warmongers are in control we will continue to live in danger and fear. Can you expand on your solution to world peace?

You need to get a critical mass of people to despise war so much that they are ready to have disadvantages themselves to make a war free world a reality. E.g. complete stop of trade with countries starting a war or supporting such a country. It happened before relatively successful with slavery and is partially happening with the death penalty. For me it seems like a very long way to go though.

So, you're saying that this requires all people of the world get along and agree with anything that might cause war? That sounds like a reasonable plan! Thanks for the response.

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

#303

Post by tonymet »

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.

The capabilities of the "space weapons" didn't exist. Reagan used the threat of those weapons to perpetuate USSR's unsustainable military & defense investment, knowing the US could sustain it. Within 5 years, USSR was defunct.

Reagan had the right strategy , for his time.

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

#304

Post by PorciiVorbesc »

_djo_ wrote: post #29
pwdisswordfishq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that the US ever gave a shit about international treaties.

To be fair, this move is coming after fairly strong evidence that Russia and China have been breaking the treaty by deploying weapons into space for years. Which the US has highlighted many times in the past. At some point you have to acknowledge that the treaty is no longer being respected, and match capabilities to avoid being left at a disadvantage. That said, I'm sure there were tons of people in the US military…

>after fairly strong evidence that Russia and China have been breaking the treaty by deploying weapons into space for years.

The US invasion of Iraq was also based on "strong evidence" of WMDs.

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

#305

Post by Revanche1367 »

nradov wrote: post #300
Revanche1367 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What a weird comment. I never claimed the USA doesn't have similar things. It's an arms race. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4198/1

And the US complained about it then, so what’s your point in calling China’s complaint here chutzpah while leaving the US out?

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

#306

Post by moffkalast »

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?

Debris from a collision on water won't spread out into millions of floating pieces that speed around faster than a bullet, ripping random ships on the other side of the world to shreds.

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

#307

Post by Revanche1367 »

r_lee wrote: post #295
Revanche1367 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

the commenter never implied that they don't but anyone familiar with how China positions itself knows that they always say things like: "our space stuff is 100% peaceful we dont have any military stuff there, the imperialist West is lying! we are never aggressive, we are only peaceful and defensive" and when someone else does something they always urge them to act according to international law and to not escalate

How many wars has China started in the last century?

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

#308

Post by CodeWriter23 »

asdff wrote: post #249

Wasn't the shuttle originally planned to be a weapon as well, capable of intercepting and sabotaging satellites using its loading bay workshop? There are also the various "mini shuttles" the three letter agencies fly around the earth for several hundred day stints of doing who knows what exactly with who knows what capabilities (other than having a similar sabotage potential as the original shuttle perhaps).

The SIR-C/X-SAR was launched in the Shuttle Bay and used to map the entire surface of The Earth. Some would call that a munition. This article, following that event IS the confirmation.

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

#309

Post by CodeWriter23 »

nopassrecover wrote: post #46

Rather interesting timing after the US accused China of supplying Iran with high-res imagery used to support attacks on US bases, then a Chinese satellite mysteriously broke apart

It's really not interesting at all. The US Destroyed that satellite to stop that information flow.

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

#310

Post by wraptile »

nomel wrote: post #302
legulere wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to get a critical mass of people to despise war so much that they are ready to have disadvantages themselves to make a war free world a reality. E.g. complete stop of trade with countries starting a war or supporting such a country. It happened before relatively successful with slavery and is partially happening with the death penalty. For me it seems like a very long way to go though.

So, you're saying that this requires all people of the world get along and agree with anything that might cause war? That sounds like a reasonable plan! Thanks for the response.

Or a post resource scarcity society where everyone's rich enough to be able to make ethical decisions with very little actual cost.
Post reply on HN