I’m writing a short story about “the day the Satellites shut down” and I want to describe accurately a way that this could happen. It will be based in the Cold War era and I intend for the Soviets to be somehow destroying them (and the US counter-destroying).
I’m have only very simplistic knowledge about satellite orbits and how many satellites there are, etc. but it somehow seems plausible to me that you could set up a stationary satellite network that could somehow “disable” other satellites as they pass by on their orbit (within a range so to speak). Magnetic pulse? Radioctive clouds? I have no idea.
I may have to gloss over the actual destruction method and strategy but maybe somebody has an idea of how it might work? Or how to describe an orbit - ie. can I say that the satellites shut down when they pass over longitude 77 (Washington DC)? Would that be an accurate statement or are orbits not referred to by Longitude/Lattitude (plus probably distance from surface).
Even if I had a signature, I doubt I’d have room for it.
No, I’m afraid that orbital mechanics says you can’t have satellites “hanging” there, otherwise they’ll fall to earth. Gravity won’t be denied. You might try this page for some basics about orbital mechanics… scroll down until you see the ‘Orbital Basics’ section, then go back up and work through the math.
As for how you’d kill a satellite, you’d probably want either some type of directed EMP weapon, or a kinetic-kill weapon. There are about seven zillion ways to go about it – satellites are fragile critters.
Geosynchronous. In a geosynchronous orbit, the satellite orbits the equator and is at a specific distance (~24,000 miles?)from the earth which causes its orbital period to be exactly one day. Thus it appears to “hang” over one spot on the earth.
Polar Orbit. In a polar orbit, the satellite crosses each pole per orbit. It’s at a lower distance, so its orbital period is less than one day. The polar orbit, combined with the rotation of the earth causes the satellite to cover the entire surface of the earth, an advantage for survellance satellites.
Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Other non-polar orbits. These satellites again orbit at a lower distance than geosynchronous, but don’t necessarily cross the poles.
To disable a satellite, you basically have to introduce some form of destructive energy.
You can use kinetic energy: You basically cause the satellite to collide with something at a high relative speed (k =mv^2). To do so, you place some mass, usually a lot of little masses (using the shotgun principle), in an orbit that intersects the orbit of the satellite at high speed relative to the satellite. You can either use a highly elliptical orbit, since satellites use circular orbits, and an elliptical orbit that intersects the circular orbit will have a different relative speed, or a circular orbit either in the same plane as the satellite’s but in the opposite direction, or in a different plane at the same distance. Many small masses are good because with enough relative velocity, a small mass will cause a lot of damage, and you have a better chance of hitting if your aim is a little off or the satellite can maneuver a little.
The second way is to shoot some form of energy, either electromagnetic (e.g. an EM Pulse)or laser, in a straight line to hit the satellite. I’m not up on the physics, but I think an EMP is harder (if not impossible) to aim; whereas it’s tough to get a lot of energy/second out of a laser. A physicist could give you better info. In either case, one techique I recall reading from Star Wars research is to detonate an atomic bomb for your energy source. It doesn’t last long, but it has a lot of power.
Hope this helps at least a little.
He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’
Perhaps a more plausible scheme is to have the two sides employ “shadowing” satellites – satellites that are in nearby, nearly identical orbits, loaded with explosives or some disabling weapon. The other side would know they were there, of course, but they can’t do anything about them except to send up their own killer satellites.
FWIW, the USAF did successfully deploy an anti-satellite missile from an F-16 flying very high and fast. This weapon can only operate against satellites in LEO, but most Soviet satellites were just that.
“Cheddar?”
“We don’t get much call for that around here, Sir.”
Not too long ago I was taking a tour of the Garber Facility, which is a series of warehouses that store and re-store the aircraft that are the property of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum.
We were strolling along through one particularly dim building when the guide offhandedly mentioned, “oh, yeah, that rocket there to the left? That was the Air Force’s ASAT in the early 80s.”
So while the press spent a decade and a half batting around the anti-missle and -satellite programs as “Star Wars,” the Air Force had quietly tested and I presume deployed an aircraft-launched ASAT, and then donated it to a museum!
The missle itself was about twelve to fourteen feet long by about one-and-a-half to two feet in diameter. The warhead/gudance end of it was a simple sharp-pointed cone, a little shorter than most I’ve seen. I seem to recall that it had small stabilization fins not unlike that of a Phoenix. It looked to be liquid-fueled, although I cannot remember how my father and I arrived at that conclusion. It must have used the momentum of the carrying aircraft and its altitude (and, no doubt, a “trajectory” flight path) to allow the rocket to be as small as it was.
“Star Wars” was Reagans name, he gave it to the press. I assume it referred to war in space.
Military planners started working on anti-sattelite weapons the day sputnik was announced, if not sooner.
Directed energy weapons can blind without destroying, and can take out sattelites in any orbit that has line-of-sight to the laser. Check out the MIRACL laser for an example. A current project is to put a powerful laser in a 747 for shooting down missiles, but sattelites could be targetted as well.
What about a massive solar flare - could that knock down a huge number of satellites - throw them off orbit and burn them up in the atmosphere?
Say the satellites started to fall at night - what color would they be when they burned through the atmosphere and would it be a streak, a bright dot or invisible to the naked eye? (and if a solar flare could do that much damage, wouldn’t it have an affect on Earth’s surface? Would the solar flare be visible as a flash at all?)
Solar flares can knock satellites out of orbit but it’s an indirect effect. The flares cause the atmosphere to expand and low-flying satellites lose momentum from friction with the expanded atmosphere. The process occurs slowly (i.e., it wouldn’t happen all in one night – it might take several weeks) so the satellites would re-enter one by one, not all at once. Only the satellites in the lowest orbits would be affected and these tend to be spacecraft that have a limited useful lifetime. (Otherwise they’d put them higher up in the first place. They know the effect of flares and can predict them pretty well.)
An unlikely, but just plausible, scenario might be a single, unexpected, really massive flare. The expanded atmosphere effect is the result of increased solar flare activity, not a single flare – there are always a few flares now and then but they are periodically larger and more frequent. It’s when the level of activity gets higher that it affects the atmosphere. Replace the gradual increase in activity with one mother-of-all-flares, for dramatic effect, and you could speed up the timing and have things happen fairly quickly. A flare that big would have a dramatic effect on the earth’s surface as well. Most atmospheric communications would be disrupted or disabled. I suppose it could even cause computers to reset, etc., like an EMP from a nuclear weapon.
“You have no choice but to be impressed.”
Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan Doubt and Certainty
I thought that Reagan’s name for the program was the “Strategic Defense Initiative”, and it was his wanking detractors in the press that ridiculed it with the name “Star Wars”.
If you want to see a real time 3D plot of about 500 of the major satellites which now orbit the earth (including Mir and the Space Station), go to this page.
I found a couple of mistakes on that page.
I don’t think this is right because escape velocity is about 25000 MPH (as he says), but near-earth orbital velocity is only 18000 MPH. If you launched at escape velocity, to orbit you’d have to have another burn to slow down. If he meant orbiting the sun, then his statement would be correct.
The eccentricity of a hyperbola is greater than one.
In fact, it’s very unlikely for any object to have an orbit that’s a perfect parabola. This is because the parabola is the form between ellipses and hyperbolas. Ellipses have eccentricity < 1, parabolas have eccentricity exactly equal to 1, and hyperbolas have eccentricity > 1. You’d also have a very hard time distinguishing between orbits that have eccentricities close to 1.
“No,” he replied, and smiled seraphically, as was his wont.
Thanks, that is an interesting idea. By the way, the article talks about how it could impact humans and satellites - but then it says that the star is 7,500 light years away. Does that mean, that even if it did go hypernova that we’d have to sit and wait over 7,500 years before the first effects of it would hit us? (I guess nothing moves faster than the speed of light?)
Even if I had a signature, I doubt I’d have room for it.
[- but then it says that the star is 7,500 light years away. Does that mean, that even if it did go hypernova that we’d have to sit and wait over 7,500 years before the first effects of it would hit us? (I guess nothing moves faster than the speed of light?)
]
for all we know that star could be long gone. we are looking at the light sent 7500 yrs ago. the star could have gone HN 7499 yrs ago and the shockwave is 1 yr from earth, in this case we still see the star today as it was 1 year before the HN.
