The Chinese have successfully launched a missile that destroyed an old weather satellite. The U.S. has “expressed our concern” about this new step in the “weaponization of space” – but we can only protest feebly; the Bush Admin has resisted any global test ban treaty, and its latest revision of the National Space Policy rules out arms control.
Are looking at the beginning of a new international space race? Like during the Cold War – but a space race where the superpowers will compete, not merely to put probes and astronauts into space, but to put weapons, offensive and defensive, into space?
Is NASA’s new stated goal of a permanent Moonbase based, at least in part, on military considerations?
I think that until Star Wars is up and running, and there is a defense against nuclear missiles, mankind is constantly on the virge of destroying itself at any given moment of the day. If another superpower is needed to get movement going again on future-tech weaponry and defense, so far as I’m concerned, that’s probably a good thing.
We can already kill most of all life on the planet, so it’s not like that can get any worse. So the best case is that we do start being able to defend against it.
Though you do have to hope that Bush doesn’t even try to put any sort of thought into concerning himself with China. Let’s get the technology before we decide to piss them off…
Why would they need to do that? This test just demonstrated that they can hit anything in LEO from the ground. They also have ICBM’s. Where else are they going to shoot? Geosynchronous orbit? The moon?
And, once again with the angst-filled “ZOMG we can’t let some other country have the same military technology we’ve had for 20 years! What will happen???”
Everything I know about space-based combat comes from Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising but having said that… Hasn’t the US had the ability to shoot down satellites for 20 some years now? Why the concern all of a sudden? Why doesn’t the US just say “Okay, you shoot down one of our satellites and we’ll shoot down all of yours!”?
Well…we need our GPS satellites for our military. We need our spy satellites, our com satellites, and so on. The US has more satellites in orbit than the rest of the world put together.
I think it’s a big deal. FWIW, this was the lede on the front pages of broadsheet newspapers here today.
The big deal is that they did it. It’s one of a number of signals that China’s been sending that indicate a more assertive stance in world affairs. A couple of previous threads over the last few months about aspects of this: Are Counties Allowed To “Blind” Spy Satellites? and Chinese Sub Tracks US task Force? It looks like my comments in the second thread were quite wrong. My links in the first thread are useful context, and include this quote from the Washington Post article
I think this looks pretty bad. I don’t know how the current policy would have gone if things had been going rather better in Iraq, but it looks to me like China is taking advantage of the US’s strategic position. On the one hand, the US is avoiding committing to a continuing non-military space (which other countries must see as an attempt to dominate), on the other they have their hands full. China’s response shows it is unwilling to accept US dominance of space (and therefore communications and surveillance) and believes it can flaunt its saying so due to the US’s weak strategic position.
If they used such a thing, the US already has the Mutually Assured Destruction part of the equation in place automatically and it favors the U.S. without firing any additional missiles. China desperately needs the U.S. for its own economic continuation. I have no idea why China would do such an aggressive, pointless thing to destroy a U.S. satellite in order to provoke the U.S. We have backup GPS satellites as well as backups for all others because they are prone to failure on their own. If they started blasting our own satellites one after the other for some unknown reason, that signals the beginning of World War III and diplomatic relations would have to take place. The U.S. has the upper-hand well there as well. To assume that China would blow up a U.S. satellite on its own is hopelessly unrealistic as to the chain of events that would occur after than and this isn’t some Si-Fi movie.
There are two issues here; one is the very real concern of orbital debris, and the other is political.
The first is a signficant concern. Demolishing a satellite in orbit leaves thousands of pieces of debris from the size of small flakes of paint up to major pieces of structure, all moving at orbital velocities, i.e. several km/s. Should your communications satellite, space telescope, or Shuttle intersect the debris field while crossing that orbit, major damage to flight or protection systems could occur. Pollution from older satellites and space boosters is enough of a concern, but at least it’s largely intact and trackable; the small remains of a demolished satellite are not and represent a significant hazard.
The second is political. Yes, the United States and the former U.S.S.R. both developed and performed limited testing on ASAT weapons. They also made an agreement not to further test (and at least, ostensibly, to develop) such weapons. It’s arguable that the U.S. has not held to its end of the bargin (and I highly suspect the same of the pre-collapse Soviet Union) but no outright testing or deployment has occured. However, for another party to come out and openly display both intention and sufficient technical prowess to develop such weapons begs for competition; as others have pointed out, the U.S. and Europe are highly dependent upon satellites, and for a nation like China to display the capability to attack them is inherently threatening. Hence, it may very well result in another space race, and worse yet, one in which one party is significantly disadvantaged in initial capability and thus willing to take more risks.
It is somewhat disingeneous to suggest that China should not develop such weapons while the United States still holds the capability and refuses to unilaterally disarm. Naturally, the Chinese want to develop equivilent capability, if for no other reason than to compete on the world stage in a chest puffing competition, though I doubt that this is their exclusive aim; the Chinese seem to have become relatively low-key and very practically-minded in the post-Tiananmen Square era. (The goverment is still run by a bunch of evil bastards, but they’re smart evil bastards, which is more than certain countries can say currently.)
Regarding the OP’s question regarding the Bush Administration’s thrust to return to the Moon and establish a permanent base, it has always been my contention that this was driven entirely by advances in China’s manned space program. Despite the apparent insincerity of the actual effort (about which I’ll restrain my commentary, only to note that said plans are seriously incomplete) it does serve as an excuse for militarization of space which was backburnered after the Reagan-era and the Challenger loss. As long as China claims to be going to the Moon, we will to. If they stop, so will we. It’s a sad, stupid way to do business, but at least it’s an impetus to do something rather than muck about on the increasingly hobbled and irrelevent International Space Station.
…from those Chinese generals? And LORAL CORP.-selling all that advanced mmissile guidance technology to China? Nobody saw that as a problem at the time…well, this definately changes things! Let’s face it…the Chinese now can neutralize any US advantage-and they made NO secret of their plans!
It reminds me of the comment of a Chinese general (talking of Bill Clinton) …“we like your presiden :smack: t!”
I doubt it. I think it’s more that NASA is trying to figure out what to do next, given that the Shuttle and the ISS haven’t gone the way they wanted. A moon base is something that NASA thinks it might be able to do. The infrastructure they’re proposing is based a lot more on the Russian model, which is to develop a few ultra-reliable base systems and then modify them slightly for different tasks.
I can’t really figure out what China is trying to accomplish with its latest moves. The best I can come up with is that the Chinese want to send a clear message: we are not a Third-World nation, we are equal in “rank” to Western Europe and the US. We don’t pay enough attention to the feeling among many Chinese that they have something to prove after centuries of domination by the West.