Won't be much point in space war if LEO is filled with space debris before the war even begins. The Chinese constellations going up at 800-1200km altitude are more than sufficient to destroy safe access to space for centuries, before you even consider the fact that their upper stages appear to explode into thousands of pieces every single launch after releasing their payload.
Every hundred kilometers of altitude increases orbital lifespan by about a factor of ten. AFAICT Elon voluntarily reduced his proposed orbital altitudes, apparently without any pressure from regulators, when it was recognized that debris from 20-year-old SpaceX satellites would likely destroy 1-year-old SpaceX satellites reliably enough to cost SpaceX debilitating amounts of money. Even at ~550km, the concerns are significant for a 10^5 satellite swarm.
Conversely, if we load up on SEP and fly a billion satellites (with a B) at 300km altitude, shooting each other with buckshot, it's safe to fly again in a very short period.
If we can't get some kind of international agreement on restricting mega-constellations to very low altitudes, with a quickness, and with a consensus strong enough to hold during wartime and in the face of competing profit interests, then the game is lost before we even begin.
Mid to Upper LEO is uniquely uncompromising to a race that refuses to cooperate with each other; A war up there would have qualities of MAD, but even a peacetime competition is sufficient to lock us out.
If you want to be really safe, you need to fly so low that you have to exert a few millinewtons of steady thrust to overcome inertia lost to atmospheric drag. The natural orbital lifespan is less millennia or centuries, and more months or weeks; this is what keeps debris out of your path and out of having significant figures in any exponential growth equations.
Ion thrusters can now do this continuously for a decade from quite small, inexpensive argon propellant tanks, and that sort of thing now flies on every Starlink satellite already for orbital adjustments, albeit with undersized propellant tanks.
Do this right, low enough, and you can run something like a global cellular network with a million nodes without even having to think about avoidance maneuvers. Fly too high with too many satellites, and no amount of avoidance maneuvers per day will be enough.
If you want to be conservative about human spaceflight, ban all large constellations above or at ISS altitude (or some arbitrary safety altitude); It's virtually impossible for debris to go higher, while all high debris will ultimately decay into lower debris.
Good. The only thing that can create a lasting peace with authoritarian regimes abound is facing them from a position of strength. As the roman saying goes. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
This is what America thought all the way up until 1983. That was the year we ran one of the most elaborated and sophisticated war games to date, Proud Prophet. [1] US military policy to date at that point had been trying to compel cooperation through force and displays of strength. So the wargames were to simulate what might happen if this strategy reached its logical conclusion and the Cold War turned hot.
In literally every single scenario that was trialed, you ended up with a rapid escalation to nuclear war, and the complete extermination of the Northern Hemisphere. About half a billion died from the immediate nukes, the rest from starvation and nuclear fallout. These wargames are what caused US military policy with regards to the USSR to take a sharp turn towards de-escalation, and within a decade there'd be McDonalds and Donald Duck in the USSR, and the entire nation would collapse.
By contrast we went for force in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and so on endlessly. And all outcomes have been catastrophic from not only a humanitarian point of view, but even from a morality-free geopolitical point of view. And those were conflicts with nations who were ostensibly incapable of fighting back.
>Good. The only thing that can create a lasting peace with authoritarian regimes abound is facing them from a position of strength.
Problem is the USA doesn't. You have one party that wants to abandon its partners and has no interest in supporting Freedom and Democracy and you have another party that is so hesitant and non committal that it only encourages authoritarian regimes. It is playing out around the entire world with North Korea, Iran, terrorists, Russia, China, etc.
Unfortunately the USA has no one who can project strength and decisiveness. Just look at what is happening with Ukraine, a good lesson that the West has no resolve or willingness to let Ukraine win and end the war. We're screwed until someone comes along that is right for the job ahead and unfortunately there are no good candidates currently.
> You have one party that wants to abandon its partners and has no interest in supporting Freedom and Democracy and you have another party that is so hesitant and non committal that it only encourages authoritarian regimes. It is playing out around the entire world with North Korea, Iran, terrorists, Russia, China, etc.
This is my favorite post in this thread so far, because I don't know which party you're assigning to which side!
I by no means intend that as a slight, by the way. It's striking to me how easily statements with clear meaning to one person can be viewed in with completely opposite meaning by the "other" faction.
> Just look at what is happening with Ukraine, a good lesson that the West has no resolve or willingness to let Ukraine win and end the war.
I'll be a bit more specific about my own views for this part.
It seems to me that the Democratic Party vocally and fairly consistently supports Ukraine, but that their measured approach and desire not to escalate is only extending the conflict. Meanwhile, the Republican Party seems split on the issue, and their Presidential candidate rather milquetoast when it comes to setting a clear policy proposal in this specific case.
So, yeah - I'm about 70% sure you and I are on opposite sides politically for most issues, but if we constrain the topic to the Russo-Ukrainian war, there really isn't a clear preference for either party. The choices seem to be "incur significant additional debt to keep Ukraine in the fight, but not enough to end the war" and "hope Trump chooses to fully support Ukraine if elected, but not be sure if he will or not".
US politics have been depressing my entire life, but this election seems to be particularly unsatisfactory for everyone involved, regardless of faction.
If we constrain the topic to the Russo-Ukrainian war, there really isn't a clear preference for either party.
I disagree with this analysis. All indicates are that a restored Trump administration (particularly with Vance on board) would steer Ukraine to a very severe compromise with Putin (i.e. recognized sovereignty for the Donbas + Crimea + likely then some).
They won't do so "in 24 hours" per Trump's bluster on the subject (like nearly everything else he says, that's just a stunt). And of course the deep state will remind them that it's actually important, and if they insist on disengaging, they should get as much out of Putin in return as they can.
But both ideologically and from their various statements (especially Vance's "I really don't care about Ukraine one way or another"), that's definitely the way they'll be leaning.
Putin knows this of course, that's why it seems he had been hoping (up until Biden's exit from the race) that if he would just keep his a foot to pedal, and keep throwing his people into the wood chopper, then come 2025 there'd be a good chance he'll get to sit face to face with Trump again (whom he normally wouldn't so fond of, but for this issue), as a kind of a Hail Mary pass.
You are right that the Democrats do appear to be dilly-dallying, basically -- and one could dissect this further as to whether it's simply a lack of resolve, or that they simply lack a clear vision of how to bring this thing to an acceptable resolution without incurring too high of a risk of a nuclear escalation (likely it's a bit of both).
But that's very different from the Trump-Vance position (and that of a majority of alt-right types it seems) of simply not giving a fuck about the basic principles of the situation either way, and openly saying so. (Or of perhaps caring sort-of about the basic principles, but being too caught up in their bubble world to understand the basic history of the region, let alone to figure out how to read the tea leaves of the current situation).
I am actually hopeful, as are the Ukrainians I talk to (though they will generally be ready to acknowledge that there multiple paths available to the long-term strategic victory that they ultimately seek). Especially now that Trump and Vance seem to be heading for the ropes.
So you'd rather if they didn't prepare? I'm sorry I don't understand the point of your comment. If USA turns to authoritarian principles, then it won't really matter what Space force does at this point.
It’s two different dimensions. A country can be democratic or authoritarian, and also a country can be driven by conquest or not.
For example, USA is a democratic, conquest-driven empire. While Russia is an authoritarian, conquest-driven empire. Living in democratic empires is usually nice for citizens in the metropolis (the USA), while it can be absolutely miserable for the conquered parts (millions killed in SE Asia in countries attacked by USA and its cronies, in Iraq etc.). While, in Russia’s case, life in the metropolis is only somewhat less miserable than in the conquered non-Russian-majority regions.
"Conquest" requires overwhelming military force, which of course the US has. What it lacks is the desire to annex "conquered" territory or to directly subjugate competitor nations.
I'd consider the US more of a modernized colonial power. The institutional goal of the US federal government seems to be to remake the world in its image, but to do so in a way that requires as little ongoing investment by them as possible. An example of this would be the concept of "regime change".
The US sees nations with incompatible types of political organization as almost defective. It believes that those nations would obviously organize as a representative republic if only given the chance to do so - in fact, it believes that representative republicanism is the only natural form of governance, which by extension means that any nation with an incompatible political structure is a nation that has been subjugated by outside forces. That's why we do things like invade Afghanistan, hang around for a decade or two, set up elections that mirror ours, and then leave... only for the Taliban to come right back, take power, and ultimately benefit from our involvement.
The older I get, the more I come to believe that some forms of governance - including representative republicanism - require a relatively well-educated populace that supports the concept. Lacking that, they revert to their previous state once US involvement withdraws.
That's good news for me, as I ultimately want to see my descendants living in a world without governments with a monopoly of the legitimization of violence. If countries that lean toward authoritarianism can be "transformed" into other forms only temporarily, that means the driving force behind a sustainable governance is ultimately not force, but culture. "Political change" must be a consequence of social/cultural change to be long-lived.
That’s the official story about itself that the US is telling to the world. Meanwhile, reality is very different. US does not care about „remaking countries in its image” and is very happy with supporting brutal dictatorships, as long as it is in its interest. In the end, it’s about geopolitical safety (securing critical resources, being able to place military bases right under the nose of potential rivals) and about allowing American capital to dominate the global economy.
Curiously, one of the first laws that was forced upon Poland after joining the American world order in 1989 was intellectual property rights protection - i.e. making sure that people who back then were making 50 USD per month, will pay their tribute to Redmont and to Hollywood.
The US is worried about conflict with China and Russia, and if you think the US is authoritarian compared to them you are a clown. Nobody's preparing for WWIII with New Zealand.
A nation can be authoritarian while being less authoritarian in degree than other nations. The US runs a global cultural and economic empire based on the threat of overwhelming military force and nuclear war - a threat every other power (including China and Russia) acts in response to, because the only credible threat of WW3 comes from the US either starting it, or escalating it. The US isn't "worried" about conflict with China and Russia, the US is planning for those conflicts because the American military industrial complex requires endless war to satiate itself.
From my point of view, the US (which just happens to be funding a genocide through a nuclear armed puppet state at the moment) looks no better than Russia and far better than China which at least tends to keep its authoritarianism to itself (harassment of Japanese fishing boats notwithstanding.) China today looks like what American domestic policy is becoming, and Russia today looks like American foreign policy in general.
And the political and cultural climate in the US has been creeping in an authoritarian direction for at least a decade. The US has a deeper and more invasive surveillance network than the Gestapo could ever have dreamed of. The US runs torture sites and a concentration camp where it detains enemies of the state under arbitrary duress without rights. American rights are nullified, arbitrarily, by an unelected and unaccountable panel of judges, and laws are arbitrarily enforced by a brutal militarized police force and government wholly insulated from consequence and the "will of the people."
Americans clutch their pearls over TikTok and Chinese influence while literally every form of media they consume is propaganda, much of it being openly fascist, designed to confuse, distract and scare them with fears of enemies within and without, or indoctrinate them into a pro-militarist ideology based on a corrupted and twisted view of the world and their own place in it.
The US is objectively authoritarian. You don't get to run the racket of Pax Americana without being an authoritarian regime, willing and able to commit violence abroad and able to quell any possible threat to the agenda at home.
"Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed)
"...a Latin oratorical phrase pronounced by Cato the Elder, a politician of the Roman Republic. The phrase originates from debates held in the Roman Senate prior to the Third Punic War (149–146 BC) between Rome and Carthage. Cato is said to have used the phrase as the conclusion to all his speeches, to push for the war."
Reminds me of a presentation I recently watched by Dr. Pippa Malmgren, which reminded me of space as an active domain for warfare:
"Discover how nations' expenditures on space programs, telescopes and interplanetary communications are shifting balance of power and influencing 21st century warfare strategies. This is an eye-opening dive into the terrestrial impact of humanity's cosmic curiosity and interstellar reach."
Maybe it's because up until recently, space has been tacitly off-limits for warfare... but then I remember the Star Wars program and I wonder if I'm misremembering.
The article is paywalled so I didn't read it, but isn't the point of the military to prepare for war and to actually engage in war? Is that not what the military is currently doing?
Chang resecured himself to the space station and made his way to the main hatch while Huan
brought Tiangong-3’s weapons online. The station crew had realized they were moving to war
footing twelve hours ago when Huan switched off the live viz feed of their activities. But it still felt
slightly unreal.
Once the taikonauts were all inside the station, Huan powered up the weapons module. The
chemical oxygen iodine laser, or COIL, design had originally been developed by the U.S. Air Force
in the late 1970s. It had even been flown on a converted 747 jumbo jet so the laser ’s ability to shoot
down missiles in midair could be tested. But the Americans had ultimately decided that using
chemicals in enclosed spaces to power lasers was too dangerous. The Directorate saw it differently.
Two modules away from the crew, a toxic mix of hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide was
being blended with gaseous chlorine and molecular iodine.
This was really it, thought Chang as he watched the power indicators turn red. There was no
turning back once the chemicals had been mixed and the excited oxygen began to transfer its energy
to the weapon. They would have forty-five minutes to act and then the power would be spent.
The firing protocol for mankind’s first wartime shots in space was well rehearsed. The targets
marked in the firing solution had been identified, prioritized, and tracked for well over a year in
increasingly rigorous drills the crew eventually realized were not just to support war games down on
Earth. The long hours spent in the lab would finally pay off.
“Ready to commence firing sequence,” said Huan. “Confirm?”
One by one, the other taikonauts checked in from their weapons stations. Chang touched the
photo taped to the wall in front of him. His fingers lingered on the image of his beaming wife and
their grinning eight-year-old son. The smiling Ming, missing his two front teeth, wore his father ’s
blue air force officer ’s hat.
What the photo did not show was how upset his wife had been when he’d given Ming that hat the
night before. She thought it made her son look like a prop in a Directorate propaganda piece.
He moved his hand away from the photo and began his part of the operation, monitoring the
targeting sequence. He startled even Huan when he cried out, “Ready!”
For years, military planners had fretted about antisatellite threats from ground-launched
missiles, because that was how both the Americans and the Soviets had intended to take down each
other ’s satellite networks during the Cold War. More recently, the Directorate had fed this fear by
developing its own antisatellite missiles and then alternating between missile tests and arms-control
negotiations that went nowhere, keeping the focus on the weapons based below. The Americans
should have looked up.
Chang snuck another look at the photo and caught Huan pausing, his trigger finger lingering
above the red firing button. He appeared to be savoring the moment. Then Huan gently pressed the
button.
A quiet hum pervaded the module. No crash of cannon or screams of death. Only the steady purr
of a pump signified that the station was now at war.
The first target was WGS-4, a U.S. Air Force wideband gapfiller satellite. Shaped like a box with
two solar wings, the 7,600-pound satellite had entered space in 2012 on top of a Delta 4 rocket
launched from Cape Canaveral.
Costing over three hundred million dollars, the satellite offered the U.S. military and its allies
4.875 GHz of instantaneous switchable bandwidth, allowing it to move massive amounts of data.
Through it ran the communications for everything from U.S. Air Force satellites to U.S. Navy
submarines. It was also a primary node for the U.S. Space Command. The Pentagon had planned to
put up a whole constellation of these satellites to make the network less vulnerable to attack, but
contractor cost overruns had kept the number down to just six.
The space station’s chemical-powered laser fired a burst of energy that, if it were visible light
instead of infrared, would have been a hundred thousand times brighter than the sun. Five hundred and
twenty kilometers away, the first burst hit the satellite with a power roughly equivalent to a welding
torch’s. It melted a hole in WGS-4’s external atmospheric shielding and then burned into its electronic
guts.
Chang watched as Huan clicked open a red pen and made a line on the wall next to him, much
like a World War I ace decorating his biplane to mark a kill. The scripted moment had been ordered
from below, a key scene for the documentary that would be made of the operation, a triumph that
would be watched by billions.
As soon as it came over the horizon I could tell that its orbit had shifted radically. As I closed the distance, I could see why. Their escape pod had blown its hatch, and because it was still docked to the primary airlock, the entire station had depressurized in seconds. As a precaution, I requested docking clearance. I got nothing. As I came aboard, I could see that even though the station was clearly large enough for a crew of seven or eight, it only had the bunk space and personal kits for two. I found the Yang packed with emergency supplies, enough food, water, and O2 candles for at least five years. What I couldn’t figure out at first was why. There was no scientific equipment aboard, no intelligence-gathering assets. It was almost like the Chinese government had sent these two men into space for no other purpose than to exist. Fifteen minutes into my float about, I found the first of several scuttling charges. This space station was little more than a giant Orbital Denial Vehicle. If those charges were to detonate, the debris from a four-hundred-metric-ton space station would not only be enough to damage or destroy any other orbiting platform, but any future space launch would be grounded for years. It was a “Scorched Space” policy, “if we can’t have it, neither can anyone else.”
Like the TSA, spaceforce is just another government employment program. I'd prefer we waste less on the performative function and just pay more in entitlements.
Geospatial intelligence collection and analysis is extremely important, but before the USSF, this capability and mission was disjointed across multiple branches.
Furthermore, where should missiles lie? This distracts from the Army, Navy, and AF's core missions.
This is why ALL countries are constituting their own "Space Force" or "Rocket Force" - to manage missiles and geospatial intel gathering.
Back when nuclear weapons were relevant, every service wanted them. The air force wanted bombers and ground-based missiles. The navy wanted submarine-launched missiles. Even the army got in on it, with nuclear artillery.
Why have we waited until missiles are fading from relevance, years after the end of the cold war, and only now decided they need their own branch?
Basically, most countries need a dedicated org to manage A2AD and Geospatial strategy - Missiles, Rockets, Satellites, you name it.
Before the USSF the closest thing to this was a couple sub-departments within the USAF, US Army, and USN plus the NGA (which is just a supporting agency).
This has been something on the books for decades now [0]
At the end of the cold war. In the present day, a launch is inconceivable.
That's why we don't much care if the missile crews sitting around in underground bunkers are napping, playing xbox, wearing pyjamas, taking LSD and cheating on their proficiency exams.
And the fact there won't be a launch is a great thing - No reasonable person would enjoy it if mutually assured destruction was to occur.
one quarter of countries worldwide do not make or publish basic national statistics. Countries are political-economic entities and carry huge historical technical debt.. bombastic declarations about "all countries" are hallmark to shallow thinking
What is the substantive difference between a government employment program and entitlements in your view? Is it that people don't have to do the performative function of working for an entitlement?
Note that Social Security, pretty much the leading entitlement program, requires that you pay into it before being able to draw.
Space Force is an actual military branch now just like the Air Force, Navy or Army. It isn't an employment program because it's no different than the other branches. You have to go through all the standard army training, bootcamp, rules, etc.
US Defense spending is a US employment program. I really wish we would drop the pretense and just make it a full employment jobs program. Anyone that wants to work should be able to get a job.
The private sector can then get employees by paying above the minimum wage offered by the defense department job program.
Obviously the military doesn't literally do nothing. Many of the people involved work very hard; lots of hard physical work, risk of death etc etc
But the military is uniquely patient when, for example, an already-very-expensive jet fighter ends up 10 years late and 80% over budget. And uniquely able, among government departments, to buy things like Javelin missiles that cost $200,000 a shot. Or to send $12bn in cash into Iraq, as literal pallets and truckloads of banknotes, into Iraq and somehow... lose it all and not be able to account for it. Or to be unable to pass any sort of account audits, as they can't find about 63% of their assets.
What's more, from the perspective of a politician, military spending makes for a great jobs program - because you can reasonably require your suppliers manufacture in America from components sourced in America AND small government types will approve military spending AND you get to look tough and strong.
Those are all situations where a commercial entity has put private funds at risk.
Most of these defense contracts that have gone way over have left the taxpayer paying for it all. In many cases, the defense contractor ends up better off because of the slip. And even very troubled programs that would have been killed in industry ages ago continue to survive.
This is what he was referring to with "But the military is *uniquely patient* when..." It's not the failure that's the problem.
Government pay scales is public knowledge. You'd pay based on seniority and function. You'd have an outside committe audit the jobs. You'd have KPIs and fire people that weren't performing, same as you would at a business.
The government already exists and has solved these problems before, I don't know why explicitly having jobs programs would be any different. Calling for UBI is a failure of imagination. As a society we should take care of those on the lowest rungs of the ladder, but there's more than enough work and thus jobs out there to be done, the only problem is funding them. If the government paid out $100 for every tree planted, we'd do well for the environment and have a whole lot more gardeners.
1. Federal min wage would be a good place to start.
2. Uh, the same as now? Just because you work for the government doesn't mean you earn min eage. I'm pretty sure Generals make more than $15k per year.
3. People that have jobs spend money in the economy to buy things. Private sector economy benefits from this.
4. You would have to do tasks to get paid. It's a job if you want it. Not forced. The idea is to curb unemployment.
Every hundred kilometers of altitude increases orbital lifespan by about a factor of ten. AFAICT Elon voluntarily reduced his proposed orbital altitudes, apparently without any pressure from regulators, when it was recognized that debris from 20-year-old SpaceX satellites would likely destroy 1-year-old SpaceX satellites reliably enough to cost SpaceX debilitating amounts of money. Even at ~550km, the concerns are significant for a 10^5 satellite swarm.
Conversely, if we load up on SEP and fly a billion satellites (with a B) at 300km altitude, shooting each other with buckshot, it's safe to fly again in a very short period.
If we can't get some kind of international agreement on restricting mega-constellations to very low altitudes, with a quickness, and with a consensus strong enough to hold during wartime and in the face of competing profit interests, then the game is lost before we even begin.
Mid to Upper LEO is uniquely uncompromising to a race that refuses to cooperate with each other; A war up there would have qualities of MAD, but even a peacetime competition is sufficient to lock us out.