Low-earth orbit satellites threatened by debris from Indian anti-satellite test

>Blind idealism/pacifism will wipe out countries/races/societies.

I'm sure Mahatma Gandhi & Co had to listen to such statements as well, glad that they didn't listen; Republic of India might not have been even formed otherwise.

> On one side is a country whose identity is defined by anti-India-nism. On the other side is China, need I say more

Two incredibly low blows, although I suppose this way you've made your isolated point of view very clear.

> Moreover, both these neighbors are ganged up by their mutual animosity of India.

Another way of saying this is they've been successful in maintaining strong ties via diplomacy and trade, to the benefit of their peoples.

> India doesn't have any options but to make sure there are deterrents in place. It's a necessity.

There have always been options; some of which India has rejected themselves, arguably leading to the souring of other international relations. This weapons test will hopefully lead to condemnations and repercussions, direct or indirect.

For example, I would welcome the IRSO being excluded from further policy-making as part of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).

The Himalayas are a pretty convenient deterrent already.

> Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan

Why would a former Beoing executive, who has had nothing to do with Beoing's space-related ventures in his 30 years there, know anything about orbital mechanics?

> the Pentagon stood by Shanahan's earlier assessment

Why would anyone at the pentagon who wanted to keep their job/position publicly release a conflict with a statement from their upper management?

US DOD was informed prior ASAT test & their non objection stems in we being their strategic partner.

It doesn't mean the number of debris in higher apogee or the their probability to cause harm is false(how ever low the probability might be). Anyone can verify the same, if they have the means.

NASA is answerable to public & that they did. Just like our ISRO is.

I see many, including media confusing between ISRO & DRDO in this context. DRDO was the one which conducted the ASAT test, even if ISRO was involved somehow it shouldn't be advertised; just like how NASA's involvement in any US defence related activity is contained.

The term 'peaceful space exploration' exists for a reason.

I'd call this anything but whataboutism.

The China's example is there because it puts the threat mentioned in the title into a perspective.

We definitely shouldn't destroy any satellites, but we already did. I don't see a reason not to compare them when we discuss how big is the threat.

EDIT: to those who downvote this comment, I'd love an explanation why you think I shouldn't make this comparison. As far as I know, no country destroyed more than one, so how else am I supposed to compare them?

You can reliably predict a whataboutism argument will be in the top comments on any HN post that follows the format:

[Country] did [bad thing] that affected [everyone/other countries]

It's to the point that there's typically limited discussion about the topic itself and a lot of back and forth whataboutism.

> We should criticize nations that did this before AND India.

Sure. Just that the "we" cannot be one of the nations that did this before, as is the case here. That's hypocrisy and entitlement.

This is a bit of a misunderstanding of the problem. Imagine you took a car and you drove in a straight line in any direction in the US where you'd loop back at the end. And now imagine somebody else did the same thing. How likely would you be to collide? You'd have either 0 or 1 collision point in your paths. Usually it'd be 0. And even in the case where you had 1, the chances of you both hitting that point at the exact same time would be infinitesimally low. Now have thousands of cars do the same thing. And all the above still holds true over one 'iteration', or two or three or... However, any two cars that have at least one intersection point will eventually collide (excepting a perfectly synchronized orbit timing) so long as they keep going. It might take a long time, as in potentially thousands of years, but if you get enough cars doing this and you run them long enough - eventually you'll get a pair that will have a collision within some foreseeable time. This is analogous to how things collide in space, except space is much bigger.

In other words Kesseler syndrome does not create some sort of impassable barrier -- in the above analog imagine your risk of getting hit by a car if you stand in one place for 30 seconds - again, basically 0. It just makes collisions, over the longrun, more likely to occur between orbiting bodies. There's absolutely no risk of impairing our ability to get off Earth -- just our ability to circle around it for years in fixed orbits. And in reality, I think it's almost certain we'll eventually see a Kessler syndrome type event. The first thing two capable nations involved in an armed conflict would do is to destroy each others' satellites, resulting in a severe mutual crippling of both offensive and defensive capabilities (as well as civil chaos - imagine if GPS/comms were all taken out tomorrow!) at very low cost. So the only way we do not see a Kessler Syndrome type event is if there's literally never a significant armed conflict between any of US/Russia/China/India, and whatever other future nations develop this technology. The odds of that seem to be pretty much 0.

I doubt that “we might be able to shoot down your satellites too” is a good deterrent. I also don’t buy that the US aimed slightly next to the targets and just accidentally destroyed satellites, no way that higher ups would be satisfied by that

> Polluting LEO to the point where we endanger our ability to get off the earth is extremely myopic.

Not a notable risk here. All this debris is short-term. If the Chinese satellite had been at the same altitude, all its debris would be long gone by now.

China faced no consequences, US faced no consequences a year after the Chinese one, and I doubt India will face any consequences now.

It's absolutely not okay and no country should do it. Saying "you shouldn't" to everyone else isn't gonna be effective at all when the precedent is set. Singing a treaty (like the nuclear treaties we've signed) might.

Would you kindly elaborate on how it’s justifiable to equate murder with a nations deterrance?

>So because the US engaged in nuclear weapons tests above ground decades ago, it's okay for everybody else to do it too?

Yes, pretty much. If a country doesn't want other countries to do a certain action then they themselves shouldn't do it either. You can't expect to be able to benefit from something and then deny other countries the same, unless you want to be a tyrant.

Don't know latin in any way shape or form. Just was curious and used this like a small puzzle. Added a bit more context to words that weren't very self explanatory.

    TOTUS - all/whole

    VESTRI - your

    ARCANA - secrets

    NOCTI - night? - 'used in formation of compound words' [0]

    NOBIS - us/we

    EST - to be - "can be translated as 'it is,' 'he/she is,' or simply 'is.' It is the third person singular of the present tense of the verb 'to be'" [1]

Sooo my guess would be something along the lines "All the secrets of the night belong to us?"

If someone knows any better I would love to be corrected.

[0] - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nocti- [1] - https://study.com/academy/answer/what-does-est-mean-in-latin...

[Edited with another mistake]

I suspect it uses the wrong case (declension) for some of those words and I'm not sure if arcana can be used as a noun--I've forgotten some of my Latin. My best guesses:

What was intended: "all the secrets of your night are ours"

It actually says something closer to: "all the secrets of your night are to us"

It should use noster, as opposed to nos (nobis in the dative case), if I understand the intended meaning correctly.

The reason I suspect wrong case is that nobis is in the dative case whereas I think it should be a nominative in order to agree with the subject (so "noster" in order to agree with totus).

All your bases are belong to us

From your link:

>The catastrophic scenarios predict an increase in the number of collisions per year, as opposed to a physically impassable barrier to space exploration that occurs in higher orbits.

Yeah but if a country with ASAT was going to be bombed, do you think they would give the enemy the benefit of GPS or communications satellites?

GPS satellites aren't in low earth orbit, though. I'd imagine taking out something 12,000 miles up is going to remain out of reach for countries like the DPRK.

There's some fear mongering over China related to this[1], but I don't think the capability has ever been demonstrated because of the implications.

[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-will-soon-be-ab...

Edit: I posted incorrect information. GPS satellites orbit at ~12,000 miles, not GSO at 22,000.

A runway is a tiny place. My point is that we are talking about an immense amount of space.

Replace 'years' with 'days' for this one.