SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say
reuters.com
reuters.com
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle
I'm not going to argue whether building it is a good idea, but it also seems like Starship has the potential to make launching a kinetic bombardment system [1] possible given the large payload capacity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles#Brilliant_Pe... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#2003_Unite...
In the near future that will stop being the case. The ICBM has to have, after all, a nuke, and a nuke will never be very cheap. The kill vehicle is simply a block of steel, or some other metal. A maneuverable one, but still, a much cheaper piece of equipment than a nuclear warhead. By the way, the fancy term for the nuclear warhead is "reentry vehicle", and, as the name implies, it has to be build to withstand the tremendous shocks of reentering the atmosphere. Not so with a kill vehicle: if it needs to reenter the atmosphere it means it failed to do its job and it's not needed anymore.
Of course, Russia and China have seen the writing on the wall, and that's why they started looking for alternate ways of delivering nukes. I'm talking here about hypersonic, nuclear capable, weapons.
Regardless, my point is that in the near future, SpaceX will get some eye-popping contracts from the Pentagon, and specifically for missile defense reasons.
I suspect that missile defense constellations would have to be truly gargantuan though, because of some N thousand missile defense sats most will not be able to reach the missiles being launched at any given point, thus to counter a 1,000 ICBM/SLBM threat the missile def constellation might have to have 20x -maybe even 100x- that many space-launched anti-missile missiles. That seems prohibitively expensive even if internal Starship launch costs ever come down below $5 million each.
How would that work?
Starship uses cryogenic fuel, and thus isn't something you can keep on active standby for years at a time, ready to be launched with a few minutes notice. It takes hours for a Starship to be loaded with liquid oxygen and prepared for launch. By the time you finished getting it ready for launch, it would have been nuked by the other side's second wave.
The only way Starship could be practically useful for missile defense is by launching some kind of defense system stationed in orbit.
Kinetic bombardment is possible by launching a satellite with (for example, since its a popular description) heavy tungsten rods, that are parked in orbit. The launch can be years ahead, and disguised as a communications hub.
The satellite can “shoot” at targets from orbit. A rod carries no explosives, and is hard to stop.
The speed due to falling/gravity makes the kinetic impacts huge, its basically small asteroids.
They can even be guided, like the landing boosters.
And to go full circle: the concept of aero-flaps on Falcon-9 (and later Starship Booster) was inspired by designs for falling guided bombs, where fins did not perform at the speeds achieved.
Compared to that, just keeping a Starship fueled for a long period of time, then emptying it, performing various checks, and refueling it for another period of duty seems quite mild.
In other words: if a country wants to play this game, reusability is a hard requirement.
On the other hand, if you're talking about having Starship launch interceptors in response to an incoming missile, it's entirely the wrong kind of rocket for the purpose. Being cryo-fueled makes it unrealistic to keep it sitting ready for launch, and it has way too low of a TWR for missile defense purposes. Missile defense systems need very high TWR, and hypergolic or solid fueled rockets, which can sit around fueled for years on end.
The calculus is even better for the most-probable launch scenario, over-the-pole, since all the high-inclination interceptor orbits will converge in the same region as the ICBMs.
For SBLMs the calculus is theoretically a bit less favorable, but most of Russia's SSNs will be in the Arctic Ocean anyway to avoid USN attack submarines.
Would we be better off?
We'd be in the same position (MAD), only a trillion dollars shorter and also nuclear war now has a 30-second latency instead of a 30-minute one. And also we've created a novel type of nuclear instability: one where we have the possibility of a preemptive strike by orbiting interceptors against orbiting nuclear weapons, one that happens in seconds and is determined entirely by AI. False positives and false negatives are both extinction events.
Remember, with Starship the US will have at least 1/10th the cost of space deployment (goal is 1/100th).
My point is one escalation leads to another so the lead you think you’ll have is not as big as you’d expect. You just provoke the other side to escalate too.
1) Putin is the one invading and threatening nukes on the doorstep of NATO
2) MAD only works, kind of ironically, if both sides aren't mad/insane. But authoritarians are often a bit nuts. There also were the false alarm scares from the cold war. Putin has highly consolidated power, and it would appear Xi has even MORE power and cult of personality
3) I think it works best as an unknown capability. One of the things about nukes is that people know what they can do, know if you have them, know the consequences. But what may work better than the game theory of MAD is that MAD is the BEST CASE for someone launching a strike. With unknown missile defense capability, the worst case is you launch a strike, get nothing from it, and the only assured destruction may be yours.
1) we brought nato next door to putin in Ukraine. That’s why there’s a war. Go read more about this if you aren’t sure why the war is happening. It’s quite interesting.
2) it’s impossible to keep some capability like that secret. Do you know how the Soviet Union got nukes in the first place? They ‘borrowed’ the technology from the USA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies
There is no reason to believe the USA could keep this info secret. And every reason to believe it would result in Russia / China finding out and then doing whatever is necessary to counter it = probably nukes in space if that’s their only option.
The main problem with all this, and why MAD probably still applies, is that even if one single thermonuclear weapon gets though, you’re totally screwed.
It could have continued functioning as a buffer state, but then Russia seized Crimea.
The technology is probably an inevitability at this point. Smart rocks aren't rocket science, they just ride up on it. Likely all the major powers have the necessary missile guidance, and delta-v is ... just a small rocket. But it would be hard to hide the testing of such things, unless SpaceX signed up to sacrifice an old rocket for an interception test.
What IS semi-exclusive to the US is the core economics of Starship. The strategic value of Starship militarily is quite substantial. It means rapid deployment of forces anywhere in the world, possibly with some armor capability, in an hour. It means moving previously economically infeasible amounts of hardware into orbit. It means practical dominance of low orbit for likely 50 years.
So if ABM is the next frontier, the gauntlet is for these countries that will be dealing with progressively more extreme demographics and economic isolation to compete with American capability that, for once, delivers far superior capability for far superior economics. You'll be asking China and Russia to deliver miracle-level space program expansion, and then an ABM atop it. Remember, both of these countries have astronomically high corruption, in particular Russia.
I'm not going to argue that some nukes getting through isn't a bad thing that should still keep MAD in place on the American side. No leader in America wants to go down as someone that lost a major city.
But... nukes getting through might hit remote missile silos. A single nuke can take out a city, but not the entire USA. Not even Tsar Bomba is that strong. Yes warheads are retargetable, MIRV, and all that.
It still remains that Russia is the one with the outright aggressive speeches detailing recapture of Soviet satellites in the eastern bloc, the one that has a litany of assassins killing Putin's enemies, the one using ghoulish human waves of shock troops composed of prisoners (how many are political) and non-Russian ethnic groups (racism). You're not talking to someone with rose goggles towards US foreign policy, but come on, Russia is being about as aggressor posture as they can be within a MAD umbrella.
I'm not advocating ABM in space, I simply think that the publicly stated goals of Russia and China combined with forthcoming Starship maturation means it is inevitable.
I guess my most basic point is, that an arms race just ends up wasting a tonne of effort and resources and each side ends up roughly where they were. Especially with nukes where it’s impossible to gain an absolute advantage. And especially when it’s well understood that both sides are really good at spying.
Russia already has hypersonic missiles that don’t seem to be intercept-able anyway.
Wouldn’t it be better to us this space-advantage for something way more useful than an arms race? The us and the west has the main problem of having fallen way behind in being able to actually manufacture stuff really well and really cheaply. Can we spend all that money getting good at that again instead please? Maybe we can manufacture stuff in orbit.
Yeah, it would be great if arms were redirected to climate change mitigation, or humanitarian ones like healthcare for all.
But... those people at the top so love their game of thrones.
Similar to WWI, where old tech (gunpowder, cast metal, etc) was scaled and automated to deliver a new scenario.
Given that, the only time an ICBM is vulnerable to a laser weapon is during the takeoff time. During that part of the attack, the ICBM are protected by the atmosphere itself. A laser maintains its power very well in vacuum, but not in air, especially if there are clouds. So, one needs to be close to the launch point. In other words, you need a very dense network of satellites that would carry these lasers to provide the coverage necessary. Even with such a network, it would be quite trivial to come up with inexpensive countermeasures: simply launch more missiles, some of which do not carry warheads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_musk
i can still tell them apart, but the rhyme is uncanny.
Yes published budget buckets tend to hide spending reality, but reported as a new contract with a new customer.
> hundreds of satellites… $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)… The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.
Uhhhh I meaaaaan kinda? It’s from 2021, and I doubt the NRO is open to switching partners for any reason, much less ephemeral foreign policy ones. Plus who would they even switch to, blue origin? They presumably are already behind 90% of existing NRO satellites.
As far as national security is concerned, I’m only slightly worried that the obvious Russian asset that is Elon Musk would be able to do any damage via this contract. To say the least, the NRO is a secretive and security-conscious organization. If I trust anyone to institute proper information security protocols, it’s them.
Well, other than that one time the president leaked their tech for fun at a press conference lol
Either way we agree that SpaceX is definitely 100% American no doubt.
He is probably one of the few to have fed Ukrainian tactical positions and plans to the Russians.
Musk isn’t a Russian asset. I prefer he be here than our sympathiser in China. But the reporting is far from overblown.
Musk retracted the claim that he spoke to Putin at all. But the view among Senate Armed Services Committee staffers I know is Musk, in an attempt at playing a diplomat, inadvertently gave up tactical information to the Kremlin.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-sha... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-sha...
Hence $1.8 billion.
I've still seen no evidence of an actual call with Putin. Only the Ambassador
Really? Did he say so him self or how is that known.
Until satellites get destroyed by "accidents" and we get a belt of debris which makes the use of satellites much more complicated.
Edit: accidents in quotes
Having spy satellites in low orbits is also something that only works if you can launch hundreds or thousands of them since each one will cover a fairly small area. Again, something only SpaceX can realistically maintain.
In fact, I think making higher orbits unusable for satellites would be extremely beneficial for USA right now, since they’re the only one who would have the capability of operating satellites in that environment without bankrupting themselves.
And making higher orbits unusable may be beneficial for the US military wise but really bad for all other purposes and countries which would be catastrophic in the long run.