Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

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It also raises a bunch of issues around:

- Kessler Syndrome, a la "Is the plotline of Gravity inevitable with increasing commercialization of space?"

- Weaponization of space. If you could get 4 unauthorized satellites up on a launch that was forbidden because "they're a danger to other satellites", could you do the same with satellites that are intentionally a danger to other satellites? Could a private company knock out the U.S's spy satellites at just the moment they are most needed? Could it set up its own spy network?

- How about ABM defense? Could a private company create a network of smart space junk with the purpose of stopping a potential nuclear war before it starts? (Incidentally, such an organization could end up in the position of both saving humanity and opposing U.S. national interests, given that the U.S. has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on Earth, which should make Americans wonder if U.S. national interests are aligned with humanity. Crimson Tide was a great movie.)

- More generally: nation states have traditionally had a monopoly around certain technologies. Spaceflight, weaponry, cryptography, communication networks. That monopoly is fraying, or in some cases, has already frayed beyond repair. What does that mean for the power balance on earth, and for social organization on the planet? There are some private organizations that are arguably more powerful than full nation-states nowadays.

21st century sorts of problems indeed. At least the 21st century looks like it'll be exciting, if somewhat scary.

- Kessler Syndrome, a la "Is the plotline of Gravity inevitable with increasing commercialization of space?"

Kessler Syndrome wouldn't stop us directly. If we absolutely had to, we could use air breathing electromagnetic thrusters to keep extremely low orbit satellites aloft.

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-world-first-air-breathing-elec...

However, if global warming requires us to do geoengineering, such a handicap might well result in the extinction of human civilization.

There are some private organizations that are arguably more powerful than full nation-states nowadays.

There were private companies that basically owned some 3rd world countries in the 20th century. This situation probably still exists to some extent.

>There were private companies that basically owned some 3rd world countries in the 20th century. This situation probably still exists to some extent.

Just one example that never seizes to amaze me:

By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Was East India Company really independent from the government? Wikipedia says [1] in 18th century the government effectively had control over those territories.

I think the idea was to allow private investors to colonize new territories and later seize control from them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#East_India_...

> Was East India Company really independent from the government?

It had an army, larger than the one from its home country. AFAIK, it was officially not independent, but what difference does the official title make?

The fact that nominally WIC "had" the army doesn't necessarily meant that in the case of conflicting orders it would obey WIC, as the Indian armies were run by British officers who also had sworn loyalty to the King/Queen.

I think it was not independent, it might be just a trick to make government not responsible if soldiers did something bad.

Nation states might not have a monopoly on the various technologies they gave birth to, but they still have the advantage in terms of budgets and non-profit status.

Source: Working for a nation-state funded science lab.

Not to mention recognized sovereign with de jure ability to physically regulate activity within its borders.

Russia has way more nuclear warheads than US. This has been true since later stages of Cold War (although the gap has narrowed a lot since end of Soviet Union, Russians used to have about 40 thousand nukes in mid 80s). What they lack in high tech and quality they make up with much larger quantities. It’s also a part of strategy to overwhelm any sort of anti missile defense US might have.

Aren't those mostly tactical nukes?

I don't think this really raises the Kessler syndrome argument. The bigger question is: what was the FCC so worried about it crashing into and is that object classified?

There have been PocketQube launches which are smaller than these satellites which in theory got licenses.

The problem is that these are small enough that they couldn't be reliably tracked if they stopped transmitting. As for PocketQubes I only see one that's been launched as the smallest 5cm cubed version most are >=1.5u. I'm guessing the 2.5cm smallest dimension was too small combined with the proposed orbit, I bet they're more willing to accept poor tracking on objects that won't be there long.

They're not too small, as they seem to be actively tracked by AFSPC and others.

Also, there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris smaller than these satellites. It's not clear that four more satellites are really going to raise the risk bar that much.

They can be tracked but the FCC was concerned about how reliably they would be tracked.

> Also, there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris smaller than these satellites. It's not clear that four more satellites are really going to raise the risk bar that much.

Yeah but intentionally putting up more is still not a good idea.

> Given that the U.S. has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on Earth

[1] Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on Earth.

[1] https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-...

Largest stockpile of weapons that work?

Maybe? Only one way to find out really.

Decommission them all; then you will know for sure.

The only winning move is not to play.

If nobody is left does that count as finding out? If a tree falls in the woods...

It is also a bit of a strange comparison since the weapons produced today are hundreds of times more powerful than the ones produced sixty years ago. It seems like the US or Russia will prominently decommission old bombs and people will hail the lower number of nuclear weapons but in reality the total amount of destructive force in the nuclear arsenal long term is the same or greater.

Weapon yields are much, much smaller nowadays than in the 1950s and 60s.

The highest-yield US warhead was the 25Mt Mk 41, retired in 1976. All warheads in the inventory now are in the sub-Mt range, mostly around 150 to 300 Kt

Back then ICMBs were accurate to several miles, necessitating large bombs. Today they are accurate to meters. Not only you could do with smaller bombs, but it's feasible to attack many more targets. The destruction potential of today's nuclear arsenal is significantly larger than it used to be, although it uses smaller bombs.

how do you even prove that

Several inspections and basic statistics.

Your link seems ambiguous on that point, with 1710 deployed nuclear warheads for Russia vs. 1800 for U.S. (I used the word "stockpile", but realistically, only deployed warheads count since nuclear war has a tendency to be over in an hour.)

Regardless, if you're Russian you should also carefully consider whether your national interest aligns with the continued existence of humanity, at least as far as nuclear weapons go.

> Regardless, if you're Russian you should also carefully consider whether your national interest aligns with the continued existence of humanity

Putin said, just yesterday, that he sees no reason for the world to continue to exist without Russia. He was strongly impling that Russia would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if threatened.

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