
War in Space May Be Closer Than Ever - WestCoastJustin
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/war-in-space-may-be-closer-than-ever/
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ChuckMcM
I have been involved in a number of informal discussions on this topic, things
like the Kessler effect effectively denying access to space is a possibility
even without malicious action (all you need is an asteroid to fly close enough
to bat some of the geosyncronous satellites into a crossing orbit with the
rest of the LEO stuff.

A number of scenarios start with just that, something happens and suddenly the
space around the earth is so full of junk flying every which way that a new
sort of "debris" belt prevents launching new Geo satellites or even people
into orbit.

At which point the country that can build a space "tank" a hardened satellite
which is designed to deflect damage from collisions wins.

Alternatively the ways in which things can be de-orbited can be increased. The
laser idea has some good press going for it, I am partial to conductive tether
tugs, but it is probably not going to be people up there taking out the trash.

And of course if someone does this deliberately how much of the US' military
inventory is suddenly worthless? Predator drones, cruise missiles, gps guided
bombs, auto-pilot features, iridium sat phones, gps laser designators, lots
and lots of stuff. Not the kind of change that leads to extended space use.

~~~
mmanfrin
It boggles my mind that there are so many things we've put in to space that
there is a danger of them colliding in to one another on a plane that is
larger than the entire earth.

~~~
bane
it's not so much that there's a lot of stuff up there, but it's moving around
at absolutely incredible velocities, so the territory an individual fragment
can cover is continent sized.

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jfoutz
Seems very much like MAD. I would bet there's a 30% chance that the big
players have already picked off some of each other's spy satellites, but
they're secret, can't admit to their existence, much less their method of
demise. ASAT missiles are 30 years old now. Surely there are other systems,
ground based lasers or something.

But the big visible satellites? disabling gps, glonass or any of the
communication satellites? That's a real bad idea. Messing with those looks a
whole lot like starting world war 3.

Presumably, a modern conventional world war scale war would start with cutting
the fiber optic cables, and disabling the communication satellites. Step 2,
eliminate all of the gps type stuff. Maybe you'd pick off the spy satellites
first. Stopping communications and navigation would disrupt economies a whole
lot more than tipping your hand about troop locations.

~~~
grandalf
It takes significantly lower levels of tech to destroy satellites than it does
to design and launch them.

The big asymmetry lies in the dependency that the US has on both civilian and
military satellites. The existing satellite infrastructure will not be
retrofitted with armor or other defenses, so the cost of protection is in the
trillions of dollars.

Within 10 years all satellites will be armored and look nothing like current-
day satellites... or perhaps smaller, more disposable sats will become the
norm (like those launched by Planet labs).

Ground-based lasers are capable of emitting pulses of energy sufficient to
damage or disable many satellites.

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clamprecht
Isn't it always "closer than ever", by definition?

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aggie
Usually when someone uses the phrase 'closer than ever', they are implying
that an uncertain outcome is more likely to occur than it has been in the
past, not that a possible future event is temporally closer (which, as you
suggest, would be a trivial statement).

We are not 'closer than ever' to nuclear war, for example.

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codecamper
What makes me the most upset is that these are not governments that are
building anti-satellite weapons. These are scientists and engineers. People
that know better and yet are building these weapons anyways, handing them to
warmongers, all in exchange for some money. Each technologist has a choice
whether or not to work on these systems. The answer should always be NO.

~~~
trhway
>Each technologist has a choice whether or not to work on these systems. The
answer should always be NO.

The answer NO makes sense only when ALL technologists do it. Prisoner dilemma.

Anyway, our technological civilization started when apes learned to use stone
and stick as weapons. So, no surprise that most of the technological
development is driven by weapons development. After all, Cro-Magnon had bow,
and Neanderthal was physically stronger and had more peaceful spirit as result
...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly. And the more people will say NO, the bigger salaries will go to those
who say YES.

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TeMPOraL
> _“We are in the process of messing up space, and most people don’t realize
> it because we can’t see it the way we can see fish kills, algal blooms, or
> acid rain,” he says._

Well, if this is what he's comparing space debris to, then we're _so screwed_.
We can't make most people notice or care about fish, acid rain, deforestation,
etc. because the consequences are already too abstract - and space trash?
That's gonna be an order of magnitude harder.

I wish there was a good way to make people care about things that are actually
important; as things are now, the general population pays attention in inverse
relation to issue's actual importance.

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NovaS1X
Whenever I read articles like this that touch on the Kessler syndrome I'm
reminded of Planetes and that one day it just might be real.

Fiction becomes reality.

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akeck
An in-depth analysis: [https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-end-of-sanctuary-
in-spa...](https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-end-of-sanctuary-in-
space-2d58fba741a)

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jotm
Am I the only one who thinks this is good news? Not awesome, not even great,
but good for development of space technologies.

It's literally another space race if it's true, and we know how the last one
turned out.

As they seek to destroy stuff in space (from Earth and from space), they'll
want to do it as cheap and fast as possible, and that will be picked up by
civilian space companies and enthusiasts in no time.

I highly doubt it will cause any big wars - but if it does, we damn well
deserve it.

~~~
rrss1122
A space race to Mars is a fun, if monstrously wasteful economically, way for
the nations to one-up each other.

A space race to build weapons to destroy each other's satellites is not fun,
and not good news. I don't see the higher probability of armed conflict with
Russia or China as a good trade-off for development of space technologies. And
going to war because "we damn well deserve it" is a terrible reason.

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wlesieutre
As with anything about blowing up satellites, the potential for a runaway
chain reaction of debris collisions should be mentioned. It's not pretty:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)

~~~
forkerenok
I'm wondering if it is feasible to create an autonomous/remotely piloted
Garbage Collector that would be knocking the junk down into atmosphere?

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wlesieutre
Maybe, but you'd need to make sure when it gets hit by a flake of paint at a
relative velocity of 8-10 km/s that it doesn't make any new fragments. Space
debris is _fast_.

And space is very, very big. Similar problems to cleaning up the ocean. Even
if someone comes up with an effective solution, now you need to launch a
million of them to get the job done.

Maybe small space debris could be cleaned up by vaporizing it or pushing it
around with lasers?

~~~
forkerenok
Those are good points. A followup thought I had is that it (the Garbage
Collector) doesn't have to clean everything up in predetermined constant time
once it's been deployed.

Performance would be sufficient, if, for a given interval of time, it would
knock down at least as many pieces of junk, as there were collisions and new
launches for the same period, plus some "margin"/"premium" to keep the counter
going down.

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btbuildem
I really hope it plays out like it did in Peace on Earth [1]

1)
[http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-15-171554-1](http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-15-171554-1)

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fractallyte
A war in space would be utterly disastrous for human civilization - the
resulting cascade of orbital debris would confine us to Earth for a _long_
time, not to mention destroying or disabling the satellites on which so much
of our infrastructure depends.

A recent edition of BBC Horizon highlighted the problems of space junk:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0656dbj](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0656dbj)

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DrNuke
Nuclear for space can go spectacularly well (innovative propulsion,
electricity and heat generation) or horrendously bad. Propulsion is the most
promising, though, for Moon and hopefully Mars colonies. More Elon Musk need
to go mainstream.

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Fendgame
It is a full-blown war, it had been, and they won't stop it for the public or
themselves.

Someone has stolen "genderless no form factor options" from the populous, and
are using them against us all...

There isn't much anyone can do.

:-(

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lago
"I have the higher ground"

~~~
elektromekatron
Mastering the Ultimate High Ground - Next Steps in the Military Uses of Space

[http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1649.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1649.html)

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acd
make peace ! war

