Scientists plan to create 'Asgardia' nation state in space
bbc.com
bbc.com
Geopolitics is more than sticking a flag on something, and then saying it's a nation-state. No current country will respect the "citizenship" of Asgardia, and the "citizens" of Asgardia will be subject to the laws of their resident countries. The moment there is any real threat to the current geopolitical status quo by an orbiting nation-state platform, the current powers, assuming equivalent strength in the future, will strangle or corrupt it from existence with financial and military power.
I don't even see how it would ever get powerful enough for other nations to take notice; a hypothetical space station makes a terrible nation state because it has no resources of its own. Without resources it is powerless and reliant on other states. Let's assume it has trade from asteroid mining or the like; with these resources and trade it is, for military/national security purposes, an enormously fragile platform floating in a place uninhabitable to humans if there is so much as an air leak. It is pretty much the least defensible position, and all it takes is a strongarm threat of blowing it in half with a nuclear weapon to make them pay attention to you. What retaliatory force do you have if your space station inhabitants all died from asphyxiation?
Say one of the currently powerful countries establish a research station on the dark side of the Moon, and it becomes self-sustaining at some point, from say asteroid mining and 3D printing and growing synthesized food, powered by using whatever's on the moon for some nuclear whatchamacallit system.
What if that colony decides to become politically independent?
Would any of the nations back on Earth be able to project force on the far side of our moon? Won't it be very easy for the Moonians to just shoot down any approaching ships or ballistics?
No, because kinetic weapons work fine in space and you can't dodge a moon base making it a really easy target.
Consider this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/16%22/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun They fired projectiles weighing from 1,900 to 2,700 pounds (850 to 1,200 kg) at a maximum speed of 2,690 feet per second (820 m/s) with a range of up to 24 miles (39 km). At maximum range the projectile spent almost 1½ minutes in flight. now you have a minute to do something how do you stop one of these.
Naturally the Moonians will declare independence after they feel confident enough that they'll be safe from retaliation.
The way that I understand that sovereignty is codified, it's much like "adverse occupation" or like a street gang claiming "turf." You announce your intentions. You put boots "on the ground." Then, if no one kicks you out, you have your claim.
If they build apparatus to send solar energy to earth, that same apparatus could possibly be weaponized.
Also, being at the top of the gravity well counts for something. If an orbiting nation has a special status as part of a larger space mining economy, they could really build themselves up. Every projectile sent from earth has to pay a huge energy cost, while projectiles sent down do not.
Orbital dynamics combined with sitting high-up in a gravity well offers a lot of affordances -- and is well explored in SciFi (eg. Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress). A self-sustaining habitat in space could give most nation states (and certainly the UN's sovereignty restrictions) the middle finger and still (probably) have ample terrestrial trading partners ready and willing to be the benefactor of "space trade."
That said... probably better to just all be good actors.
On the other hand if the habitat is in low earth orbit nearly any actor with anything slightly more capable than a sub orbital sounding rocket can blow it out of the sky.
Rocks can be brought into Earth orbit (or rather down to Earth surface, no reason to stock them in orbit), for very cheap, basically for free. All you need, is a fillip on the rock from far above in the Sun's gravity well, and you can displace its orbit so that it will fall on Earth. You can then add another little push to make it drop right on the White House instead of the Pentagon (or vice-versa) when it's closer to Earth.
And you're looking too many Hollywood brainwashing spectacles. Things are not blown out of the sky. If you break a rock in two, now you have two problems, to meteorites instead of one. And if you break that rock into little pieces that would burn into the sky before reaching the surface, now you still have the fucking problem, because your atmosphere will be full of cender, and nuclear winter will be upon you. Hope you have stocked preserves for a few years!
And finally, the only actors that are anything slightly more capable than sub-orbital right now are Russia and China. If you've installed a self-sufficient colonny in space or even on the Moon (or Mars), earthlings are basically toasted.
And I'm not looking into any hollywood spectacles, anti-sattlite weapons have been fielded by the US (And any NATO nation fielding the SM-3 missile), the EU (France/Germany/UK have anti-sattlite capability), Russia, China, with Israel and India having similar capabilities or are effectively breakout states.
Also in general any nation capable of putting something into low earth orbit can effectively hit a space station, satellites are slightly harder since they can be considerably smaller, but any nation can put something into a collision orbit. This increases the list of capable actors considerably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems, and includes these days commercial companies.
As for your other scenario the mass needed to cause a nuclear winter is enormous (earth gains as much as 40,000 tonnes of mass due to space dust alone each year), each year earth is being hit by countless meteorites, the lowest estimates for a body hit that would cause an impact winter is about 10km in diameter with a mass of about 3-5x10^15 (depending on it's composition).
These are the major impacts that our earth experiences regularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_ris....
As for the directed hit, this is laughable the likelihood of you being able to calculate the hit location of a stellar body is very slim, there is almost no way to predict where it will hit because the atmospheric phase will be extremely unpredictable.
If you are looking at kinetic space weapons ala "Thor's Hammer" then you have very uniform aerodynamic bodies with terminal guidance capability and even then their CEP delegates them to strategic targets e.g. a city and not tactical ones e.g. a building.
P.S.
Suggesting some one to read sci fi to prove a point is a bit silly.
And if I wasn't clear enough in my first post, the blow it out of the sky reference is to the space station not the "rock".
Making a nation is hard, but not as crazy as it sounds, and I believe the time is ripe for new experiments. Sealand is famous, you can be nobility for about 40 bucks there. You can also be an e-resident in Estonia very easily (a status that they insist is not nationality but gives the right to open bank accounts and companies there)
I am not sure they plan on making a space station. They just want to make a claim (on a satellite) and then have people come together around that claim on a common platform.
Nations are just claims, citizens, and at least one international recognition. And there are many ways to obtain one but you usually have to be creative.
Not that this is in the slightest bit viable. But still, whatever polities exist in space, they should not be nation states.
These seem to be directly contrary. What's the point of nationalism without subjugating the inferior? I think it's just called 'culture' at that point.
Also, Igor Ashurbeiyli is not a scientist, he is a businessman with an engineering PhD.
> A nation state is a type of state that conjoins the political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation
Recognition (and space sovereignty issues) aside, a "virtual state" like this could be useful! For instance- Suppose such a state with fairly open "immigration," that collected income taxes and put that money into a central bank and a welfare program. Attract a sufficient affluent population with ethical appeal and favorable banking, and you can provide a little shadow-socialist support structure.
Economical and political considerations often take precedence over purely scientific ones and ethical boundaries are considered necessary to sustain safety.
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Asgardia will demonstrate to scientists throughout the world that independent, private and unrestricted research is possible.
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Asgardia [...] will offer an independent platform free from the constraint of a land-based country’s laws.
I'm not sure how helpful their satellite will be to this end, if they can't put scientists on it to perform their research. They'll still be bound by the laws of whichever country they reside within.
The idea of colonizing Mars has a certain appeal because there would finally be an escape from nation-states and the games they play with their citizens as pawns. No indoctrination that starts at preschool, appeals to patriotism/nationalism where your state is the best and everyone else is inferior due to some combination of religion, ethnicity, or values.
It represents a new beginning, a world without artificial, fictional boundaries where all must cooperate to survive, a place where there is a recognition that we are all one species.
With our current culture, this will not last long.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_arme...