A Russian satellite appears to be shadowing an American spy satellite
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
It’s beyond bizarre to think that we all live in a time period in human history where it is feasible for mere mortals to potentially venture (with appropriate protection) into the vacuum.
Let’s hope our governments will keep it pleasant so that we may all have a chance to experience the great void.
> KH-11s are believed to resemble the Hubble Space Telescope in size and shape, as the satellites were shipped in similar containers. Their length is believed to be 19.5 meters, with a diameter of up to 3 meters.
More than is publicly known, at the very least. With no atmosphere, a small telescope is gonna give you a pretty good look at that distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
Here's the orbit info: https://www.heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=39232
But yes, 300km is pretty close in space. Since you have no issue with atmospheric distortion, the optics become a lot more simple.
This is quite a small satellite - "mini fridge" someone said, which does limit what you can put in it. 300km is a fair distance away and you'd need an enormous focal length to resolve small features on the other spacecraft. It's possible they just want to test how well they can track another satellite. For a Hubble class telescope (~50k mm focal length) you'd get around 20cm resolution for a 4MP sensor.
A more general way, since we don't know what sensor is onboard, would be to calculate the diffraction limit for the largest mirror you could put on the satellite (sibling comment suggested 1 m, which is about 1 arcsecond at 540nm). That works out to 20cm at 300km, or about 1cm at 20km. Of course you still need the focal length and sensor to make this useful.
I guess you could compare Trump's images of the Iranian launch site which were taken at a similar distance, but with a much larger satellite.
But one got as close as 20km (in which case, 1cm details...): https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1223420130576818176
I think it's way less than .00000000001%
~0%
20 km distance between the satellites, not 20 km altitude! Those satellites actually have an elliptical orbit with an altitude between 276 km and 1010 km.
There's effectively no atmosphere up there for optical purposes.
Shadowing a satellite isn't an act of war. Responding to it with an ASAT missile would be.
I am a huge fan of space exploration, however I was really disappointed by the online space community’s lack of objections at the further militarization of space.
Maybe it is still not entirely inevitable and there is a precedent of global agreement on no weapons in space[0]. I know that most folks have industry ties and maybe that is the cause of their acquiesce.
I have an argument which I believe to be an entirely non-political and objective reason as to why we need to continue down the evolutionary path of becoming a nearly non-violent species. We also need to do that in relatively short order. I was really hoping that space exploration was going to be that shiny leading example of non-violence. If anyone wants to talk about that further, then please give a reply.
Lol who's that?
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/
[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/about/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeQYemGBA3zkt2WY5dpRxsw
[3] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/
Maybe I missed some places where space geeks were not so happy about Space Force. If so, please share.
It doesn't ban communications satellites, a huge strategic military asset. Same for spy satellites. There's a reason the US government has historically put so much into space, and it's not NASA research. (USAF or NRO research, instead)
In regards to your second point, I am simply talking about offensive weapons here. I believe that the only offensive weapons currently in space are likely to be the handguns which Soyuz Cosmonauts bring to the ISS "for protection against bears upon landing." IMO a treaty should have long been in effect which bans everything including any ground-based anti-satellite weapons entering space (energy or kinetic), and the Russian handguns. Of course treaties are not foolproof, but perfect really is the enemy of good in this case.
Most non-violent movements are religious at their core, and if people don't already believe in non-violence and don't believe in a religion which tells them not to be violent, they are not likely to be convinced to change their ways and adopt non-violence.
It's possible, though currently unlikley, that leaders of religions who interpret their scriptures as calling for non-violence as a core value become more influential in society. Unfortunately, the world seems to be heading in the opposite direction right now, and as we saw with the assassinations of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, such leaders are vulnerable to being eliminated by people who have no problems with violence.
To ultimately be successful there has to be a grassroots, widespread, decentralized change in consciousness among the masses, and we are very far from that.
The one distant ray of hope that I see is more widespread use of psychedelics, which have the potential to increase empathy and a feeling of connection to and unity with the world and others. This is a pretty long-term hope, however, and it still has the potential to be squashed if there's another backlash from the powers that be.
[Insert rant about coordination problems / game theory / tragedy of the commons / Moloch] means the US needs to be there to counter other nations that are going to try to militarize it. In an ideal world, such a military force would only act defensively, not offensively or imperially (e.g. colonizing planets, moons, and rocks purely in the name of the United States), but I guess that's not too likely in the long-term.
When cyberwarfare started to become a real possibility and not just sci-fi, would you have argued that the US creating cyberwarfare divisions is wrong and shouldn't be done, even as just about every other major country was doing the same?
If you were president of the US right now, what would you do if you vetoed a space force and then a few months later, Russia and China simultaneously announced the creation of their own space forces? Given the current state of the world, I believe adding additional military capabilities is just necessary, even though I'm also an idealist who detests violence, war, and death of all kinds, targeted at any being.
If we lived in the year 2520 and all militaries have been disbanded for centuries and every country has been living in peace with one another for the same length of time, then, yes, I'd agree that breaking that precedent with the creation of a space force would be wrong. But unfortunately, we're not there yet, and it's possible we may not be even in 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 years from now. (Yes, I know there's a chicken-and-egg logic there, but I can only refer back to the implied coordination problem rant.)
The US used to lead, at least in some ways, towards a more peaceful world. Together with the Soviet Union, the US got rid of thousands of nuclear weapons. Now we are headed back in the other direction. The US still leads, but it's leading towards more conflict.
Over and over again you see countries following the US as it, for example, starts to justify assassinations, wars, and torture in the name of fighting terrorism. The US unilaterally withdraws from nuclear non-proliferation agreements and nuclear proliferation heats up. As you yourself point out, the US starts militarizing space and other nations follow suit. Just today it was announced that the US is reversing course on a ban against use of land mines.
A major nuclear conflict is likely to result in hundreds of millions if not billions of deaths. We have to pull back from the brink rather than always edging closer and closer to it, and this won't be achieved through more militarization.. especially not in a more multi-polar world where the US is daily losing more and more of its technological edge.
Achieving a non-violent world isn't going to happen overnight, and it likely won't happen without setbacks, but the US could take the lead and steer towards peace instead of towards war.
Yes, but you can substitute "US" for almost any other country. Russia starts militarizing space: US and Britain follow suit. Someone is inevitably going to be the first one to do it.
The land mines, I agree with. The nuclear situation is a little more complicated, since some believe nuclear MAD has actually (so far...) saved far more lives in total than if it weren't there, but I agree cutting back is probably a good idea.
I think these things are different from having a military presence in space. I think it's like creating an air or cyber force. It's a vacuum that's inevitably going to be filled with a host of entities, so you might as well be first.
This argument would be more convincing if Russia was the first to escalate, but they weren't. Yet again the US took the lead.
Even if Russia had been the first to escalate, the US could respond in all sorts of non-military ways before resorting to a military solution.
This also ties back in to many other aggressive actions the US has taken, arguably since WW2. If it didn't keep squandering its political and moral capital, it would be much more persuasive to the world at large in leading the way to peace. Instead, its self-serving aggression is resulting in ever more polarization, paranoia, and enemy-making. It would be bad enough if the US was simply digging its own grave, but it seems to be intent on digging a grave for everyone.
This is truly madness, and I don't see it ending in anything but a global fireball, especially if everyone keeps insisting on throwing more gasoline on the fire.
The world isn't currently in a state of peace and harmony, or anywhere near it. If it were, then I'd agree that this would be a disgusting and peace-threatening precedent set by America. But this is not the world we live in, even though I hope it will be the world at some point within the next few millennia.
To be clear, I'm not supporting or defending any other actions taken by the US since WWII. I empathize with the citizens of countries that our government has abused, exploited, and killed. I just see nothing wrong with creating a space force. If we have an air force, why shouldn't we have an above-air force? If your argument were "we shouldn't have an air force or an above-air force", then I'd be much more inclined to agree (though with caveats, given all the game theory coordination stuff I alluded to).
If we're going to have a military, why would you half-ass it? I think you should either have nothing but a token military like Switzerland, or one that tries to be capable of engaging in combat in every domain. Having a "just mostly pretty sort of capable" military doesn't make any sense. Shit or get off the pot. Again, I'd love it if everyone in the world only had a token military, or no military.
Actual peace-threatening, provocative actions are things like cancelling the Iran deal, assassinating Soleimani, invading Iraq, Bay of Pigs; the list goes on for pages. I don't see the parallel between those and this. Now, if the government had announced our space force is going to colonize half of Mars in the name of the US, then I'd fully agree with you. That's a thing that could happen, and I certainly don't want it to. Trying to establish a true, fair one world government might be the only way to create lasting peace, but, again, sadly I don't think that'll be possible in our world for a very long time.
My main concern involves two major factors at play in our history.
On the one hand, we have been becoming generally more peaceful. On the other hand the ability to commit asymmetrical violence is becoming greater as technology advances.
My nightmare scenario is that we will advance tech to where something like CRISPR-cas9 will become taught at a level of high school bio class. The equipment needed will also become more common and cheaper. So if we achieve the ability for one or two smart people to create an efficient bio-WMD, prior to violence disappearing from our minds as an option, then we are going to have a bad time as a civilization and maybe even as a species.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...
edit: attempt at rephrasing
I unfortunately think it'll likely successfully occur at least once, and I think there will be other attempts from copycats (like people who idolize the Columbine shooters), Aum Shinrikyo-style death cults, terrorist organizations, and perhaps unintentionally from nation-states who greatly underestimate the capability of the deadly technology they're using. Maybe even intentionally from nation-states, if their government becomes hijacked by a terrorist group or death cult. I think such people will poke at every possible dimension: nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, nano-bots like that Black Mirror killer bee episode, seeding some sort of thing into the atmosphere to destroy it... there are going to be some people who will genuinely dedicate their lives to trying to end all known intelligent life, and there is a horrifying chance some/one of them might fully succeed; perhaps a small group or a lone wolf.
It will be a vanishingly minuscule percentage of the population who would ever consider something so abhorrent, but of course it only takes one. If you traveled from the future back to today and handed an easy-to-use WMD to one of the mass shooters we keep hearing about on the news, a good percentage of them would probably deploy it with little hesitation. If the Las Vegas shooter invested so much effort to be able to massacre hundreds of strangers, and you handed him an easy way to massacre millions, he'd probably be overjoyed at all of the work you just saved him.
This is a horrifying image of humanity's future. I think this is probably a greater risk than some sort of WWIII, though that's definitely also a risk. Unfortunately, I see no reasonable solution to this other than most countries' citizens collectively accepting an all-encompassing Big Brother-style surveillance state. Even then, it still might all be for naught, since it obviously can't catch absolutely everything. But maybe it's the only way to give humanity a fighting chance (at least hypothetically until there's some way to achieve near-perfect immortality, even in response to a super-WMD, maybe by scattering the galaxy with quadrillions of pieces of technology that somehow allow most consciousnesses to retain their existences, or something crazy like that? who knows - such a thing probably couldn't exist even in 50,000 years).
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.", yes. But what if you must give up essential liberty in order to have any safety at all? I think this is a terrible and wrong argument in 2020, and probably also in 2080, and maybe also in 2120. But in 2320? 2620?
We also don't know how AI or perhaps AGI may play a role in all of this. This sort of absurdly asymmetric destruction may be possible long before AGI is created, or perhaps only long after it. AI or AGI could be a great aid both to the people trying to prevent this and the people trying to perpetrate it. Maybe an AI not that much more sophisticated than the ones we have today could have an impact.
Thank you for this, in that comment you had stated the same idea much more clearly than I have in this thread.
> Unfortunately, I see no reasonable solution to this other than most countries' citizens collectively accepting an all-encompassing Big Brother-style surveillance state. Even then, it still might all be for naught, since it obviously can't catch absolutely everything. But maybe it's the only way to give humanity a fighting chance
This is also where I now find myself on this train of thought. I too abhor the idea of a true surveillance state due to my perception that our governance is often corrupt and short-sighted. If I could somehow truly verify that it was really aligned with the long term greater good, then maybe I'd feel better? Maybe this is where governance by open source algo is best? That sure seems a long way off as far as social acceptance. A global-scale war/terrorist attack might nudge people on this. WWII certainly led to a lot of changes.
> ... But maybe it's the only way to give humanity a fighting chance
Our entire evolution on this planet seems to indicate that we have been barely winning against crazy odds. It's all a game of percentages so far, why stop now? We need every chance we can get.
> "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.", yes. But what if you must give up essential liberty in order to have any safety at all? I think this is a terrible and wrong argument in 2020, and probably also in 2080, and maybe also in 2120. But in 2320? 2620?
Sadly this is something that may be necessary and is very much against my personal ideals. But even using modern tech, things like unsolved murders in major cities could be obsolete if we were all chipped and recorded everywhere, right? Again, maybe I would trade that freedom for the right to stay alive if the system was "non-biased," and nearly transparent with complete accountability.
The other likely victim in this scenario is "publish everything" research. Now this is an area where I have had interesting exchanges with folks like a physicist at CERN. The mere suggestion that some research should be hidden from the public is basically heresy in that world, and they have a really good argument! I am very thankful for the fruits of published research. But there has to be a rational limit in some cases, at least theoretically, right? This is an area where I have had no success getting even a “maybe” out of my limited discussions with scientists online.
On a personal note, while I do find this kind of thinking grim, and maybe the outlook is not good, a bad outcome just means we failed as a species. We didn't deserve the role of immortal galactic-level intelligence. Oh well, the universe has 100 billion to trillions of years to try again. It would be a crying shame, but only for planet earth? That's how I try to feel OK about this anyway.
Also, if this basic concept is universal, we can rest assured that violent hyper-technological alien life does not exist!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, also just FYI, I had rephrased my parent comment prior to noticing that you had responded.
As the world stands it is mostly run by people with the most resources, aka money and/or power. I think this has always been the case throughout history and I don't think we have time to entirely change that right now.[a] Also, in this case maybe this is a good thing. Rich people have the majority of the power and influence, and they are the ones that will be the first to experience the Overview Effect[0] as orbital space tourists.
> The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space.
> It is the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, "hanging in the void", shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this "pale blue dot" becomes both obvious and imperative.
This is exactly what we need. At least it is a glimmer of hope and a great self-selected alignment of people who need a cognitive shift, and those who can afford it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
edit: [a] To be clear, I do not mean to discount the population and the power of grassroots movements at all, it is also necessary for the non-violent utopia which is required to avoid a "Great Filter"[1] event.
Well, I can't speak to that specifically. I am not aware of any astronauts who declared themselves as pacifists. However, it sure seems like a catalyst towards unity and pacifism when reading the quotes.
The fact that so many of the experiences are attributed to ex-military astronauts is also significant to me. I would expect independent civilians to be even more open-minded and verbose about their overview experiences.
Some interesting quotes on the subject:
> Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’” [0]
> Neil Armstrong, astronaut & moonwalker: “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” [0]
> Edward Gibson, astronaut & Skylab 4 pilot: “You see how diminutive your life and concerns are compared to other things In the universe … The result is that you enjoy the life that is before you … It allows you to have inner peace.” [0]
> Anousheh Ansari, space tourist: “The actual experience exceeds all expectations and is something that’s hard to put to words … It sort of reduces things to a size that you think everything is manageable … All these things that may seem big and impossible … We can do this. Peace on Earth — No problem. It gives people that type of energy … that type of power, and I have experienced that.” [0]
> Shuttle/ISS astronaut Ron Garan: “When we look down at the earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile … Anybody else who’s ever gone to space says the same thing because it really is striking and it’s really sobering to see this paper-thin layer and to realize that that little paper-thin layer is all that protects every living thing on Earth from death, basically. From the harshness of space.” [0]
> “From space I saw Earth—indescribably beautiful with the scars of national boundaries gone.” ~Muhammad Ahmad Faris, Syrian Astronaut (cited in Hassard & Weisberg, 1999, p. 1) [1]
> “If somebody’d said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?' I would have say [sic], ‘No, no way.’ But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the moon, I cried.” ~Alan Shepard, NASA Astronaut (cited in Nardo, 2014, p. 46) [1]
[0] https://www.phactual.com/14-awe-filled-quotes-about-the-over...
[1] https://www.psychologyinaction.org/psychology-in-action-1/20...