Cis-lunar space and the security dilemma
thebulletin.org
thebulletin.org
They're plenty big enough, especially as you orbit around the points, not at them. Invoking scarcity as a reason to worry about "securing" them is wrongheaded.
But yeah, I think all this proto-space-war theory crafting is very stupid and harmful.
There's no military value to those orbits (or please think up one and defend it!) These are much farther away than orbits people are actually using, and far worse (by inverse-square laws) for any purpose involving things on Earth—communications, or observation. And it's outright risible to suggest the *United States* would want national security-critical communications relays in that sad orbit, when we just obtained a constellation of literally tens of thousands in LEO. Starlink is infinitely more capable than anything you could imagine placing in a Lagrange point.
I suspect the real arms race is between anti-satellite weapons and giant, survivable constellations of cheap unit costs, like Starlink. US has a massive head start. Putting expensive single points of failure in an orbit like L2 is a bad doctrine: that's a sitting duck at the outbreak of a potential war. China quite possibly has already deployed missiles intended to defeat this: they tested what the US thinks were anti-geosynchronous satellite weapons, more than a decade ago [0]. L2 orbits are only trivial amounts of energy more than geosynchronous (cost to intercept–not orbit-match).
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-space-report-idUSBR...
> Until now, the limits of that mission have been in near Earth, out to approximately geostationary range. [But now] the reach of USSF's sphere of interest will extend to 272,000 miles and beyond - more than a tenfold increase in range and 1,000-fold expansion in service volume. [...] USSF organizes, trains, and equips to provide the resources necessary to protect and defend vital U.S. interests in and beyond Earth-orbit [emphasis mine]
https://www.afrl.af.mil/Portals/90/Documents/RV/A%20Primer%2...
If there were known Chinese military "patrol and 'debris' removal" emplacements, for an area that famously can't retain debris in a stable orbit, no less, would they not mention it in that breath? Or maybe there are such things but they can't say?
Of course now there are going to be at least two such platforms, there inevitably will soon be four. Good job everyone, we have learned nothing from the entire Cold War. Hopefully the nice career in writing Scary Stories for Senators (and ditto on the other side without the alliteration) is worth it.
Honestly, the more you look at it, the more you realise this geopolitics nonsense just the kind of trivial tit-for-tat thing that you learn in playschool is not OK, but with suits, a multi-billion dollar budget and the survival of the species, rather than onesies, biscuits and crying fits.
I'm sceptical about the idea of space debris removal. Sure, you can remove/recover a spaceship; but you can't practically remove trillions of pieces of hypersonic gravel.
So it seems to me that the fate of any spacefaring race is ironically to be confined to their own planet as a result of their very success in launching spacecraft.
Life on the moon would be interesting. For a little while.
edit: besides in vacuum you don't need "discarding sabot". there is no air resistance.
so it calls for a completely different design.
I thought this article would be about the lack of lbgtqia+ astronauts. I should read less mastodon and reddit.