India’s destruction of satellite threatens ISS, says Nasa
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Sure it shows you've got capabilities for shooting down really low satelites, but it also shows you don't have consideration for the effect this will have. If we don't cooperate globally and stop so much space debris being created some orbital ranges could become impractical to use and manned space flight becomes even more dangerous.
It's like Facebook asking for legislation.
"Look what we'll have to (feel we'll have to) do in the current paradigm, unless..."
Now in 2019 with 2 front war with both Pakistan and china, where both party have actively militarized the border with them and playing the proxy war it was sure coming. China vetoing 2 times action against J-E-M terrorist group based in Pakistan that are active in insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir state of India. They are also actively claiming the state of Arunachal Pradesh as the territory like they did with Tibet
China has also amassed large number of military installation near the North-Eastern border of India and have actively tried en roaching into Indian territories, several kilometers sometimes into the past few year resulting in border skirmishes sometimes.
Last time India declined the UNSC seat and gave it to china & they are still regretting the the decision. They are hoping the next NPT for Space will have India's seat already reserved.
If other nations are going to play game of dual diplomacy it's leaves no option but to demonstrate show of force. India cannot afford to become Another Ukraine, Tibet or Taiwan becomes some other nation can abuse it's power.
Edit:Will provide citation in 2 hours currently in Mobile.
The article mentions the risk of any impact increased by 44% without giving the baseline. No idea what that is, but it's going to be some extremely low figure remaining an extremely low figure -- e.g. 0.001% becoming 0.00144%. And an "imminent" collision isn't imminent. The ISS has maneuvering thrusters, and in fact would gradually fall out of orbit without them! This [1] page shows the height of the ISS over time which is a convenient way of seeing how often it fires its maneuvering thrusters. Suffice to say, it's a very regular thing.
I think the bigger reason we're upset is because of the technology itself. As nations become more capable of independently defending themselves it chips away at America's martial dominance, which is a major source of our political clout.
Everyone seems to be gearing up for a new race of tic tac toe.
See also the non-proliferation treaty.
This is no argument. It is now recognised as an irresponsible thing to do by anyone.
The US dropped nuclear bombs on populated areas during WW2. Should it not try to stop countries that may want to drop such bombs in 2019?
However, the issue we face in your counter is that the US dropped 2 bombs, the world didn't end, and obviously they were happy enough with the results that they've kept a rather large nuclear arsenal in prime condition, ready to be used. I'm not even sure if the US apologised for dropping those nukes.
From a high-functioning-sociopath perspective, which is what large agglomerations of humans do frequently degenerate to, why shouldn't a given country not strive to emulate something that clearly worked? For the US to decry such mimicry is meaningless at best, hypocritical at worst:
1) If they think an act is against some great universal principle they should not have done it in the first place.
2) If individual politicians would almost certainly seek power by any means if roles were reversed, that is just the sort of people who become politicians.
It is fine if they want to boss countries around to support their own interests; that is sort of expected. To do more is to invite eye rolls.
And if we leave behind the bomb analogy, this was an action with global consequences. Not only potentially harming the ISS but risking escalating an arms race that could jeopardise all future satellites and space missions.
It's tone deaf for nations that already have nuclear protection to tell other countries not to develop the capability. It's like Bloomberg or Fienstien, or some other politician who lives somewhere safe and has a security detail telling a town hall meeting in the 48205 (a zipcode in Detroit that would make a lot of people here uncomfortable) that they'd all be safer if they turned in their guns.
1) Whataboutism doesn't help anyone. Two wrongs don't make a right.
2) India has the hindsight of history that the US and earlier Space programs didn't. Humanity did not consider these kinds of things earlier. Space was treated as essentially infinite. We now know better and know that this debree can cause a real threat to future space missions, even in the worst case dooming humanity to Earth as a prison[1].
By the way, the same applies to carbon emissions. Yes, the West got to industrialize by rampantly polluting the world. No, that doesn't mean China and India get a free pass for it.
Also, to the exploitation of countries/economies/people below you on the totem pole. Again, no free pass for what China is doing in Africa just because Europe did it for hundreds of years.
3) This is a slightly different point from (2), but back when Russia and US were rampantly launching rockets into space and exploding satellites, there wasn't a permanently occupied space station in orbit, crewed continuously by human beings from an international peaceful cooperating collective.
Where was/is US? Still supporting Pakistan, it really doesn't matter much what they do. Together with China. In light of these facts it doesn't seem so shocking, they had to do something. It doesn't make it right either obviously for all the reasons stated here, but I blame US and its stupid foreign policies for these kind of senseless escalations.
Not happy to see reality catch on so fast with science fiction to be honest.
* Most satellites and all crewed spaceships orbit Earth from west to east. Why would they hit each other?
* There is no way to travel between the Hubble and space stations like the way it happened in the movie. Especially not with that EMU with 25 m/s delta-v. That's like taking a cup of kerosene, pouring it into a Boeing 747, and traveling 9000 km. Hubble and the ISS have completely different orbits with different inclination.
* Overall, writers of Gravity have no understanding of orbital mechanics whatsoever.
* ISS orbit height is something like 400 km, for Hubble it's about 550 km. Most communication satellites are orbiting the Earth thousands of kilometers above the sea level. A circular geosynchronous orbit is 35 786 km above Earth's equator.
As for the ISS, the majority of debris created by recent India's incident are 300 km above the sea level. ISS is about 100 km higher.
According to this https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm objects with 300 km altitude will enter atmosphere in a month.
Please read the article.
24 pieces are (so far) known to have gone higher than the ISS. These are objects "10cm (six inches) or bigger". There are other pieces "which are dangerously large but too small to track".
A bit of an overstatement. Gravity got orbital mechanics very wrong, but it got orbital mechanics relevant in the first place. Most movies dealing with space are far less realistic than Gravity.
You mean the 2013 science fiction movie that was most likley inspired by a 2007 real world event?
As long as we are stating facts and blaming and shaming China and India on their activities, can we please get a full picture on the REST of the contributors to this debris of quoted total 10,000 pieces of space debris?
If China contributed nearly 3000, and India recently contributed 400, who did contribute to the rest of approximately 6600?
Not advocating that all countries should shoot down waste satellite and turn them into dangerous debris. Just wondering what standing does NASA have on this issue...?
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-junk-india-destro...
Then India proves they are so stupid as to do it again.
I can't imagine the decision process that leads to the go-ahead on something like this. The only scenario that enters my head is some Dr. Stangelove-grade military lunatics getting the hands on the launch keys.
However, the recent Kashmir conflict has not made their conventional forces look very good.
Ask North Korea and Pakistan, both of which are feeble in terms of economy and military. India is still extraordinarily poor today and in 1974 it was that much worse. They have zero global superpower reach either economically or militarily. Both economically and militarily they're still very much a regional power. The largest economies do not fear India's economic power, yet. The US is the sole superpower today and it most certainly doesn't fear India's economic power. The US is only just becoming concerned with China's economic might in the last six or seven years. China's currency has only a small amount of global reach and influence, India's currency wields almost none. Their GDP per capita is #139 in the world, below East Timor.
Given 30 years they should become a middle income country (assuming some setbacks along the way). In 50 or 60, if everything goes right, they could be a superpower.
The dick waving contest between India and Pakistan is probably the scariest situation on earth right now.
Having said that, we can't automatically assume that would never provoke Britain or the US to a nuclear response, wouldn't provoke a more extreme reaction in another country in different circumstances. Britain and the US were never existentially threatened.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
Furthermore the account in his book doesn't even match the actual sequence of events. French co-operation with us began immediately, not after the destruction of the Sheffield many months into the conflict. Furthermore missiles like the Exocet don't have 'codes' you can use to remotely disable them. Why would they? There's also no evidence the UK ever had or used anything like that. The whole thing is poppycock from start to finish.
You should assume that every weapons system that is on the international market has such codes. The F-22 wasn't sold on the international market, so it wouldn't have them, but the F-35 is being sold internationally. Every weapons supplier will do this. Buying surface-to-air missiles from Russia means that the buyer can shoot down all non-Russian planes.
So if Exocet had such codes, and given that the French gave the UK full and thorough support and assistance throughout the conflict including secret intelligence information, how come so many British ships were damaged and sunk by Exocet missiles?
Either the French had such codes and deliberately did not give them to us, stabbing us in the back in a way in which we would know for a fact they had done it to us, or the missiles never had such codes in the first place.