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Comment by dasmoth | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty certain any such mission would have leaked by now. At least the fact of it, if not the details.

On-orbit servicing of friendly recon sats was considered pretty seriously, though: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3390/1

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You’d think the victims would have complained if it had ever happened, too. You can’t hide something like the Shuttle in orbit, so it’ll be clear to anyone who cares to observe.

Soviets would not cry that someone took one of their reconnaissance satellites. That would just underscore how far behind they are in space race/star wars.

I don't think the soviets were behind, and in fact they were far ahead in some capabilities (e.g. heavy launch). The program has suffered from neglect since the end of communism though, while the US has made some progress.

And it isn't like the US program hasn't suffered from neglect either. The best thing for US space efforts, both orbital and not, has been the end of STS.

Not to mention that being ahead or behind has nothing to do with whether someone could steal one of your satellites. Avoiding it is pretty easy: put a small bomb on your satellite, rigged to go off if it detects tampering. A couple of pounds would be plenty, spacecraft are fragile. I don't think anyone ever did this, since this wasn't a serious threat.

Why even bother going to the great expense and danger of capturing someone else's satellite? Surely it's relatively easy to determine its capabilities by looking at the data being transmitted?

Might be hard to intercept those data. They are likely encrypted. Plus you may want to learn about their technical capabilities.

If they are putting your sat in an enclosed area, you don’t even need to do that, just vent your hypergolic fuel, 1 part out each side of the sat.

You then claim that they must have damaged a fuel line when they touched the satellite.

Also, "accidental" damage is far easier to explain than putting munitions in orbit coughOuter Space Treatycough

I can't believe I'm about to defend the Russians here but... Not only were they first to pretty much everything space-related, they're the only country still flying manned missions. How are you defining "behind", exactly?

From what I understand the Soviet's Buran shuttle was far ahead of our own.

Are you being sarcastic? It completed one unmanned flight in 1988, that's all.

It was pretty sophisticated. The fact that it was able to make an unmanned flight is an example of something that was superior to the Shuttle. It just didn’t get the resources needed to keep flying, which is a separate issue.

Not to argue that the Buran was "far ahead" of the Space Shuttle, but reasons for not continuing to use the Buran include many others beyond it not being advanced enough. Whether or not it was useful or economical to continue using it are also legitimate (and probably more likely) reasons for it to have been discontinued regardless of its technological achievements. One could imagine the Soviet Union wanting to continue flights even if it weren't more advanced if it were otherwise reasonable to do so. (And that also ignores internal politics.)

The sophistication was in realizing the entire design is pointless and abandoning it early.

It wasn't ahead, but on the contrary it was behind.

They didn't managed to add engines to their copy and US launcher had reusable parts, but "Energiya" was strictly for single-time use.

Don't forget the Chinese program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_program#Missions_laun...

>I'm pretty certain any such mission would have leaked by now. At least the fact of it, if not the details.

How do you know it hasn't? For example, it would seem to be within the capbilities of the rumored Blackstar:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_(spacecraft)

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