> Lagrange points are more limited in volume. Consequently, they are highly desirable pieces of celestial real estate, so to speak.
They're plenty big enough, especially as you orbit around the points, not at them. Invoking scarcity as a reason to worry about "securing" them is wrongheaded.
You misunderstand, the task at hand for the "national security expert" is identifying points in space that you can plausibly have a fight over, to say there are none is to fail the primary task. This is simply seen by realising that you cannot have space security policy until after the space security expert have created a battlefield in minds of the policy makers.
But yeah, I think all this proto-space-war theory crafting is very stupid and harmful.
There is no arms race in the Lagrange Points of the Earth-moon system. I think this is a fantasy made up by bored academics and think-tank people, inventing nonexistent crises because they don't have enough real ones in their fields.
There's no military value to those orbits (or please think up one and defend it!) These are much farther away than orbits people are actually using, and far worse (by inverse-square laws) for any purpose involving things on Earth—communications, or observation. And it's outright risible to suggest the *United States* would want national security-critical communications relays in that sad orbit, when we just obtained a constellation of literally tens of thousands in LEO. Starlink is infinitely more capable than anything you could imagine placing in a Lagrange point.
I suspect the real arms race is between anti-satellite weapons and giant, survivable constellations of cheap unit costs, like Starlink. US has a massive head start. Putting expensive single points of failure in an orbit like L2 is a bad doctrine: that's a sitting duck at the outbreak of a potential war. China quite possibly has already deployed missiles intended to defeat this: they tested what the US thinks were anti-geosynchronous satellite weapons, more than a decade ago [0]. L2 orbits are only trivial amounts of energy more than geosynchronous (cost to intercept–not orbit-match).
No, sadly this is a fantasy also made up by the employees of the Space Force, see for example the introduction to the Space Force "A primer on cislunar space"
> Until now, the limits of that mission have been in near Earth, out to
approximately geostationary range. [But now] the reach of USSF's sphere of interest will extend to 272,000 miles and beyond - more than a tenfold increase in range and 1,000-fold expansion in service volume. [...] USSF organizes, trains, and equips to provide the resources necessary to protect and defend vital U.S. interests in and beyond Earth-orbit [emphasis mine]
I know much less about Chinese plans with the moon (actually, I know nothing) but from what they already achieved they look slightly ahead of the US, so maybe the authors could call a halt also on those initiatives - not single pointing the US. But maybe they are aware of the futility of their call and addressed it to the agency somewhat likelier to answer?
The article itself indicates that "this suggests that China's lunar program is focused on pursuing scientific knowledge and stoking national pride".
If there were known Chinese military "patrol and 'debris' removal" emplacements, for an area that famously can't retain debris in a stable orbit, no less, would they not mention it in that breath? Or maybe there are such things but they can't say?
Of course now there are going to be at least two such platforms, there inevitably will soon be four. Good job everyone, we have learned nothing from the entire Cold War. Hopefully the nice career in writing Scary Stories for Senators (and ditto on the other side without the alliteration) is worth it.
Honestly, the more you look at it, the more you realise this geopolitics nonsense just the kind of trivial tit-for-tat thing that you learn in playschool is not OK, but with suits, a multi-billion dollar budget and the survival of the species, rather than onesies, biscuits and crying fits.
I'm sceptical about the idea of space debris removal. Sure, you can remove/recover a spaceship; but you can't practically remove trillions of pieces of hypersonic gravel.
So it seems to me that the fate of any spacefaring race is ironically to be confined to their own planet as a result of their very success in launching spacecraft.
I don’t know why this title made me think of it, but the muzzle velocity of a typical apfsds round is similar to the orbital velocity of the moon. With no atmosphere to inhibit travel you could shoot at adversaries from just about anywhere.
Life on the moon would be interesting. For a little while.
They're plenty big enough, especially as you orbit around the points, not at them. Invoking scarcity as a reason to worry about "securing" them is wrongheaded.