Satellite warfare: An arms race is brewing in orbit
economist.com
economist.com
Are laser brooms the current state of the art when it comes to deorbiting? From this article [0], it appears to be quite slow but at least highly parallel, "cleaning" an object in 3-4 years but all addressable objects in ~5 years. It's still unclear to me if the principles required for them to function effectively are currently available, or if more development is required first.
Another concern is that large installations may be viewed with suspicion, given their potential applications as anti-satellite weapons, especially against surveillance satellites whose sensors (I assume) would be more sensitive to high-intensity illumination. Any ideas on how these concerns might be mitigated?
In general, the economics of debris removal are also really unclear, because the actual risk of collisions is still pretty slim and the potential legal risk of touching another nation's spacecraft are high. Many objects are also too small to be tracked. The community is largely shifting towards debris avoidance, rather than mitigation - i.e., tracking and maintaining custody of debris, and maneuvering out of the way when necessary. This is pretty straightforward, since we already do a lot of space object tracking and maneuvering anyways. A variety of commercial companies have already moved into this space, including giants like AGI [1].
[0] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354773A1.pdf [1] https://www.agi.com/missions/space-situational-awareness
The idea of combat in orbit is insanity, the Space Force will just ground itself if war ever breaks out in orbit at any scale. It's like building a navy that would be unable to leave port if you were to ever actually use it. It's like... well, nuclear weapons, except perhaps less likely to result in human extinction.
It seems pretty obvious that they've identified the strategic importance of being able to reliably launch and move in space. Now does this mean picking up all the debris after all the Starlink satellites are hacked and turned into missiles by adversaries? Probably not. It's more likely to manifest as either exceptional detection capabilities (and there is an entire section to this in the Space Force), or some sort of shielding technology that brings the risk level to an acceptable tolerance.
In its current state it probably means a lot of people thinking about ways of dealing with Kessler syndrome in a variety of ways so that if it ever happens, there is a plan ready to go.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a...
They’d have to have something to ground first. The so called Space Force is a navy without so much as a dinghy.
US Space Force, government agency that's supposed to "Conduct space operations" and "Preserve freedom of action": No rockets, no capability to perform manned missions.
I know who I'd want on my team in a Moonraker-style space laser battle.
as if the rest of the military think that long for any conflict.
From past performance, they will probably install a terrorist organization and/or dictator in orbit.
Fast food places produce grease. Gas stations have lots of small to medium size spills. Agriculture produces toxic runoff. Etc.
Compliance can definitely suck, especially when it comes to small, non-obvious producers - like a mom and pop diner.
I don’t know if there are “mom and pop” satellite launchers.
I suspect satellite management is an easier industry to regulate.
If anything ever goes wrong and something like the Kessler syndrome occurs, humanity will be so monumentally screwed you'll have trouble putting a dollar amount on the amount of damage done. No amount of insurance is going to make it right. It will be a large setback for humanity as a whole.
What you want to do is: Have companies follow the precautions you dictate and ensure compliance before they're allowed to launch.
The only reason to use higher orbits is to save money on satellites and complex communication systems. Orbits that allow space junk to hang around for centuries should be banned.
There are some satellites like telescopes that need to be far from the earth. But the vast majority could be banned from orbits beyond a distance where they won't decay in a reasonable amount of time, with the only downside being cost
That being said, this:
> I think there needs to be rules about orbital distance. Low earth orbit satellites like Starlink aren't risky because their orbit decays rapidly without constant boosts. Its the perfect failsafe.
doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea. Obviously you are correct about the second part however.
Edit: removed a redundant statement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination_change
https://spacenews.com/op-ed-u-s-satellites-increasingly-vuln...
> Russia and China would like a formal treaty banning all weapons in space. Both are keen to prevent America from deploying space-based anti-missile systems which might threaten their own nuclear forces. America and its allies resist this. They argue that it is impossible to define a space weapon—anything that manoeuvres in orbit could serve as one—and that it would be easy to cheat.
In the U.S. the current leaders and those making decisions rotate, adjust over time, so there's less certainty and a foreign nation will have to do their best to know and read the political climate. With China's CCP there isn't so much change and so their actions are much more determinant of their future actions.
Of course no situation is black-and-white, however all things considered what I described is their strategy, that is my conclusion for their strategy; I hope you see the pattern of Putin's Russia every 5 years or so killing off the main opposition leader, like recently happened - Alexei Navalny in a coma currently. Do we ignore that and believe that we'll trust Putin will change if he claims he will? He'd never agree to a treaty though that hurts his position of power/control though, just like this "no space weapons" doesn't hurt Putin's or CCP's position of power - because they don't wield that power or capability, and so of course they want a treaty against it.
Let's hope the free, democratic world rallies in creating multi-lateral trade agreements to syphon off buying from CCP controlled China and this is enough wake them up economically, unfortunately it's possible that it will only to cause the CCP to be able to tighten their grip on the Chinese people (control, censorship, security systems of the hierarchal tyranny) - creating more internal pressure that CCP can continue to make the narrative that it's the U.S. and other democratic nations that are the cause, rallying hate and anger which then they will direct where they see fit.
Now obviously satphones use very different protocols from these modern internet constellations but I wouldn’t bet my life on them being impossible to triangulate.
Don't bet anything at all. A drone with a phased array antenna pointing down will draw you a map directly to every transmitting base station that exists.
Give your antenna a cellular connection, route over a few hops, cover your tracks.
mesh network/TOR for uplink can solve that. not to mention it can work as a backup connection when the high bandwidth downlink satellite is nuked/lasered(?) from orbit.
It's just slow for the most part.
I know cellular was blocking it during the peak of the war in Syria.
Also wont nation states be able to tell Starlink to not transmit in china if they dont want Tesla factory nationalized or other similar threats?
Jamming Starlink would require satellite tracking and high gain antennas. And you would have to have separate jammers for each spotbeam that the starlink satellite casts on the ground.
A old times radio receiver, it cannot be detected? Or can it
Or TV antenna? That receives only
Old times radio receivers are low power transmitters. Their local oscillators leak out of the antenna enthusiastically.
The physics hasn't changed. There is far less leakage in modern receivers, but our detectors are way more sensitive as well. And if you're a nation-state and free to fly drones over rooftops looking.... yeah, don't believe anyone that claims they can operate anything involving electromagnetic energy without risk of detection.
It is a simulation of satellite warfare in low Earth orbit. The players are the USA and the APU (Asian-Polish Union). The object is of course to destroy your opponent's satellites and such..."
The proliferation of satellites, however, is only the beginning of the new space race. Spacecraft have always been limited by the impracticality of refueling them. They have only as much fuel as they could carry into space, and when it is gone, they cannot actively propel themselves any farther. This has restricted spacecraft to orbiting Earth, but emerging space technologies are changing that.
These technologies are being developed now. In the coming years, it will be possible to service, assemble, and manufacture complex orbital infrastructure in space that would be impractical to launch from Earth. This could include vast space-based solar power arrays to capture more of the sun's energy than is possible on Earth, where our atmosphere absorbs or deflects it. Power-beaming technologies will transfer that energy around space. Space-based mining technologies could extract ice from the moon or asteroids, utilizing the underlying oxygen to fuel rockets and support human life in space. The means of production to support space operations will increasingly shift off Earth and into orbital bases and perhaps onto the moon, where spacecraft and other critical space infrastructure could be produced using 3-D printing and advanced manufacturing. It sounds like fantasy, but it is not.
In time, space will be transformed into a unique warfighting domain, and this will inevitably have military applications. Space operations in the coming decades will come to resemble maritime operations in the nineteenth century, when industrial age great powers built global networks of coaling stations and other infrastructure to project naval power in defense of their expanding commercial interests. A similar dynamic will occur in outer space, and the two states that will most shape humankind's spacefaring future will be China and the United States. It is hard to imagine their strategic and military competition will remain confined to Earth.
Source: The Kill Chain, Defending America in the future of high-tech warfare, Christian Brose, Hachette Books, 2020.
The US Space Force just released its capstone warfighting doctrine: https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/1/Space%20Capstone%20Publ...
> Not only are space operations global, they are also multi-domain. A successful attack against any one segment (or combination of segments), whether terrestrial, link, or space, of the space architecture ca neutralize a space capability; therefore, space domain access, maneuver, and exploitation require deliberate and synchronized defensive operations across all three segments.
Diplomacy would be much cheaper, but this would mean US would also stop doing this kind of shit and that would mean less money into the pockets of the military industry. Diplomacy seems also something that most leaders are missing.
War & force are simply continuations of policy with additional means.
Important to remember we’re in the infancy of this stuff as well, NPT for reference hadn’t even started being negotiated til the 1960s.
Obviously, that doesn’t exactly support my point though considering the chicken definitely came first there...
LOL there we go again. The US is the center of the universe. I mean there are actual reasons why you don't want China or Russia dominate the world (well, in times of Trump that is actually questionable what is the bigger evil here), but you have to bring the most ridiculous one: We are the US, and someone is challenging us, can't have that.
There is no value judgement if country's position is deserved or justified here.
And indeed, if you take any half decent IR class they will teach you that the state of international relations is anarchy.
I understand that lower costs of launching satelites massively changes the economics but I can't figure out how it might affect auxiliary industries/businesses. Satellites seem to be more related to communications which tends to come under utilities and is managed by government entities
Communications and surveillance are the two largest opportunities, and a variety of companies have already sprung up (Starlink, Kuiper, Planet, Spire...) in addition to traditional players (OrbCom, Iridium, Maxar). There are some esoteric proposals for other uses, like manufacturing or bitcoin mining [0], but I don't think they provide nearly enough benefit compared to Earth-based competitors at this point.
[0]https://www.space.com/25626-bitcoins-satellites-deep-space-i...
SpaceX isn't resting on its laurel letting newer startups show them up. They're working on catching million dollars crate and on their next generation systems.
But on the topic at hand, what about loosely coupled bots that individually use broom lasers to break down debris in manageable pieces?
My current guess is that with or without them, any major power war is likely to wind up with a lot of cheap gravel or even sand intersecting previously-useful orbits.
If you get some banks and companies trying to enforce compliance to a regulatory system, maybe. Anything outside of that does not cause a war in my mind.