
The Cold War nuke that fried satellites - Audiophilip
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results
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stephengillie
> _British government documents detailing the fate of the satellite remained
> locked away for 50 years. Reading through a copy of the file stamped
> ‘secret’ in red letters today, it is clear why: Nasa realised almost
> immediately what had happened to the satellite but the UK was,
> embarrassingly, kept in the dark._

Another example of Classification used to censor something that poses no
security risk, but holds huge reputation risk.

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dx211
You say that, but now that this is out it's only a matter of time before the
bad guys realize they can stop using their nukes for leveling cities and
repurpose them for disrupting HBO.

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sandworm101
The sats for HBO are geostationary. Hitting them with nukes is a far cry from
disrupting those in low orbits. You would need a much bigger rocket and
significantly better aim (GST=35000km vs. LEO=150km).

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krylon
If I recall correctly, there were a couple of people (I don't remember if they
were astronauts or cosmonauts) in orbit at the time of Starfish Prime, whose
space capsule passed through the radiation belt on its orbit. The space agency
in question was pretty nervous about _them_ getting fried as well, and was
kind of upset they weren't informed ahead of time.

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sandworm101
I doubt it. The vanallen belts were predicted long ahead of time and were
confirmed during the very first sat missions (explorer 1). They were known not
to be dangerous, at least not in comparison to riding a rocket. The amount of
dangerous radiation penetrating any spacecraft would be minimal in comparison
to that constantly funneled into the belt from space.

The vanallen belts are often mentioned by moon hoax people to suggest that
manned spaceflight is impossible. Mr Van Allan has been interviewed several
times to dispute this assertion.

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krylon
As far as I understand the issue, the Van Allen belts themselves were not the
problem, but the high energy electrons released by the thermonuclear
explosion, which got caught in the belt. (Apparently the amount of high energy
particles released during a solar mass ejection far exceeds that released by
any of the nuclear weapons set off during Operation Fishbowl, but I guess
people knew a lot less about SMEs back then.)

The only reference I can find right now is the Wikipedia article on "High
altitude nuclear explosion", which says: "The radiation dose rate was at least
60 rads/day at four months after Starfish for a well-shielded satellite or
manned capsule in a polar circular earth orbit, which caused NASA concern with
regard to its manned space exploration programs."

Which sounds quite a bit less dramatic than I remembered.

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jawbone3
Many good reasons for protect space from weaponization by treaty, too bad the
article doesn't raise this issue better.

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smileysteve
Is this the real life event that led to Goldeneye?

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sergiotapia
For England, James?

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doctorshady
No - for me.

