Here’s one the Chicoms can use, now that they’re talking about a moon shot:
Launch a large vehicle toward the moon with the announced purpose of peaceful research.
As it rounds the far side of the moon, ostensibly to start its orbit, there is a ‘malfunction’ and it is put on a return trajectory to earth. Because the track is in a figure 8 shape, as it approaches the earth, it is now traveling in the opposite direction as everything else in orbit.
One more ‘malfunction’ and the damn thing blows up in a retrograde orbit, spraying pieces into whatever is the most damaging altitude. The resulting collisions just keep adding to the destruction, and nobody has space assets anymore. Good-bye GPS, satellite guided munitions, etc., and we can’t really say they meant to do it.
Here’s one the Chicoms can use, now that they’re talking about a moon shot:
Launch a large vehicle toward the moon with the announced purpose of peaceful research.
As it rounds the far side of the moon, ostensibly to start its orbit, there is a ‘malfunction’ and it is put on a return trajectory to earth. Because the track is in a figure 8 shape, as it approaches the earth, it is now traveling in the opposite direction as everything else in orbit.
One more ‘malfunction’ and the damn thing blows up in a retrograde orbit, spraying pieces into whatever is the most damaging altitude. The resulting collisions just keep adding to the destruction, and nobody has space assets anymore. Good-bye GPS, satellite guided munitions, etc., and we can’t really say they meant to do it.
How does a figure 8 put you into a retrograde orbit? And even if they tried this, they couldn’t make it look like an accident: For something coming back from the Moon, the Earth is a pretty small target, and you have to be trying to hit it. Add to that the fact that even if they did pull it off, the country which would be hurt most by it, by a long shot, is China. Their communications infrastructure is far more dependent on satellites than ours.
Once again, forgetting how BIG space is. Imagine trying to cover the ocean with enough debris so that any ship crossing it would have to touch at least one peice (at 8 miles per second). Now multiply that times the volume of space in orbit around the Earth. There’s a lot of room up there.
Nope. To have that effect, the debris would have to achieve orbital insertion, which it won’t since it’s on a re-entry course. In the scenario you’ve described, you’ve forgotten to reckon with inertia. Almost all of the mass of the returning vehicle would keep going and burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere.
Assuming no collisions are achieved with already orbiting craft, and assuming the original debris field is actually on an orbit intersecting the atmosphere, sure.
Actually, on reflection, likely much of the debris will fall into an eliptical orbit, and will periodically sweep though a range of useful high-, mid-, and low-earth orbits before heading out to around the lunar orbit, to return again for another sweep next go 'round. Depending, of course, on the trajectory of the orginal craft when it detonates. Of course, an orbit that long will allow loads of time for the debris field to expand to the point where any resulting collisions will be a statistically insignificant addition to current collisions, and eventually, the moon will probably either soak-up most of the debris, or will distort the orbit of the debris to either eject it from earth orbit, or cause it to fall into the atmosphere. How long that will take, or even if it happens at all kinda depends on the parameters of the craft when it detonates.
Any way you slice it, blowing-up a Lunar orbiting craft on it’s way home is a low-efficiency attack.
Even more so, if we ever reach the phase of common interplanetary travel. Attacks against supply ships will recreate the Battle of the Atlantic, in space.
You obviously haven’t seen “Buck Rogers in the 23rd century”. The humans were losing their space fights because they used computers and were too predictable. Good old Buck showed them them that they didn’t need them to fight and saved humanity.
