The New Space Race

This was originally going to be an update to one of my earlier threads *Star Wars: It has begun... but thought this deserved it's own discussion on how things are progressing on the Space front. In that thread we went into various types of potential weaponry and advancements. This thread however we see the opening salvos as it were. MORE funding is needed, more so than is capable of being hidden in countries 'Black Budgets'.

This is why, in my opinion, they are making these requests known publicly.

It was only a matter of time before China became the newest and biggest perceived bad guy to the West. The Soviets then later, just the Russians were the ones to watch out for but now, the Chinese are to be kept an eye on as well. From the 'Chinese' perspective, it's the US and her Allies that need to be watched. Thus we have a fairly silent and not too obvious Space race beginning to really take shape. Now these endeavors are said to be not solely militaristic in nature.

Earlier, back in April of this year it was reported that China will be increasing it's abilities to deal with potential threats/situations...

China's President Xi urges greater military use of space

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the air force to adopt an integrated air and space defence capability, in what state media on Tuesday called a response to the increasing military use of space by the United States and others.

While Beijing insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, a Pentagon report last year highlighted China's increasing space capabilities and said Beijing was pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

Fears of a space arms race with the United States and other powers mounted after China blew up one of its own weather satellites with a ground-based missile in January 2007.

A detailed analysis of satellite imagery published in March provided additional evidence that a Chinese rocket launch in May 2013, billed as a research mission, was actually a test of a new anti-satellite weapon.

Interesting.

I see no reason to doubt that China is researching space based anti satellite capabilities. I wonder what the Chinese military knows about US space systems that we the public do not? Conversely, what does the US see being developed by the Chinese that we are not also aware of? The US, not known to stand on the sidelines for very long comes out very publicly with this recent request for even more funding, I say 'Even more' simply because it's black budget pays for quite a bit we the 'public' do not know of.

The US military already has the largest defense spending on the planet and now are requesting additional funding. Are the Chinese advancing quicker than previously thought and is the US maneuvering to maintain either superiority or at the very least, future parity?

U.S. Air Force Seeks Funding For Space Surveillance Satellites

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force plans to request initial funding for three surveillance satellites to track objects in space as part of its fiscal 2016 budget request, a top Air Force general said Tuesday.

General John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, told the annual Air Force Association conference the satellites would be a relatively inexpensive follow-on to the Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite built by Boeing Co.

Hyten declined to give details on the amount of funding required for the new program in the 2016 budget, but said it would clearly be less than the earlier program.

He said the new satellites would build on capabilities to be demonstrated by the Operationally Responsive Space 5 satellite, which is due to be launched in 2017.

Dual purpose use I'd say. Monitoring of or being able to separate defunct satellite/space debris from active foreign satellites would be crucial in a space based or related future conflict. Now those two stories alone should be enough to prod some increasing awareness. Then recently Japan announces it's intentions to increase their space based abilities.

Japan to launch military space force: report

TOKYO - Japan is planning to launch a military space force by 2019 that would initially be tasked with protecting satellites from dangerous debris orbiting the Earth, a report said.

The move is aimed at strengthening Japan-US cooperation in space and comes after the countries pledged to boost joint work on monitoring space debris, Kyodo news agency said Sunday.

Japan would provide the US military with information obtained by the force as part of the joint bid to strengthen ties in space, the so-called "fourth battlefield", Kyodo said, citing unnamed sources.

So if you weren't previously paying attention or were simply not aware of what's been transpiring consider yourself now informed. This next level of space capabilities by various nations won't just slowly fade away. We are talking real money, Real Tech and Real developments. We are seeing, by extension, what we have seen all throughout human history in that as one produces the next advancement their potential competitor/adversary maneuvers to counter.


Now the more conspiratory minded may see a more nefarious potential here by the proverbial 'PTB' where we humans need to start monitoring our space neighborhood for other worldly potential threats that TPTB have determined we the sheeple people too simple minded to handle and may be afraid we'd collectively 'lose it' and panic etc if we were informed of the true threat.

Be what it may...


I'm all for the peaceful exploitation of space. Military developments have often been dual edged swords, many major military advancements have had peacetime beneficial applications. Now, if this Space Race eventually helps us as a species to make access to space cheaper, easier and safer then I'm all for it with one major caveat.

Which is, that we don't eradicate ourselves before we see the peaceful benefits/spinoffs of these newer space toys presently being developed.

As always
Stay tuned...

a reply to: SLAYER69

Awesome thread. And thanks for compiling this info. As a space studies major I have always been concerned of the apparent stagnace in the development of space tech and sadly I believe that this next space race is just the thing the industry needs.

It saddens me that competition and dominance in a field drives such fevor in advancement but tis what got us to the Moon in less than a decade so.....

If it works.....so be it.

I just hope that in the end we will all be less greedy as a world society and begin true human progress based on the betterment of humanity and not greed/power based ambitions.

Excellent thread !



Otherwise, we can always expect this for 2016 :

a reply to: SLAYER69

I think it was Spock (a Vulcan) who called space the "final frontier".

Like any "undiscovered country" to the victors go the spoils.

You can't reach for the stars if you're busy being a victim to every domestic issue on the planet.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Interesting premise Slayer.
S&F.



What I will say, is that as far as I know, the U.S. public has in recent times been hesitant to fund any sort of Space programme...

So it may have been necessary to exploit China's destruction of their own weather satellite in a bid to raise more money, just a little propaganda never hurt anyone.

With that said, I doubt we'd have heard about China's endeavors without some sort of idea in the back of the mind of "PTB" to get additional funds, two birds, one stone... so to speak.


At the same time, I see China's destruction of its own satellite to also be two birds, one stone.
In the sense that maybe it was a defunct and they had testing capabilities why not shoot it down in an attempt to see how their ground-to-space work is coming along.

What it does say to me though, is that China must have funds to burn in such a circumstance, I don't see many countries willing to destroy their own satellites, in fact I'd expect them to let it descend for pick up and re-engineering.


We'll see where this leads us in the next few years!



A final note, the US has already reached Mars, so if it's truly a Space Race, China will have to up their game!

a reply to: SLAYER69

What I don't understand is why TPTB always use "satellites" as the reason for most Space tech advancements when it's so painfully obvious that there is so much more going on up there than what we are told. The US spends more on its military than all of the other nations on Earth combined, if I remember correctly. Plus Black Budget(s) on top of that so what's really going on...?

I appreciate everybody's reply.

I thought some here would find it interesting.

If I recall correctly, the Chinese blew up a defunct satellite with a ground to space missile. They were successful, but the amount of debris created by the satellite destruction is now a major threat to everyone's satellites.

The US then countered a little while later by destroying a military spy satellite that never reached the proper orbit. It had a full tank of Hydrazine fuel that they claimed would be potential hazard when the satellite came back to earth. So, they modified a missile and launched it from a Naval vessel. It was successful and did not create the giant cloud of debris that the Chinese created. Apparently because the hydrazine vaporized the hardware when it exploded.

If I understand the current funding request correctly, the Air Force wants to put a defensive network in place to destroy missiles aimed at the geostationary satellite array. Those are a lot more difficult to replace the LEO units.


Dex

As someone who believes in the secret space program theory, I can't help but wonder how secret space technology plays into this situation. Would this forbidden technology find its way into use if it could give one side a clear technological advantage? Or would it continue to be withheld even during an all out space war?
My guess is that it will stay hidden as long as possible, no matter the situation, for the main reason it's hidden today - because of whatever's "fueling" it.

a reply to: cleverhans

Clinton sharing sensitive Missiles tech in the 90s with China then turns a blind eye abut the spy who was caught. Soon there after Chinas space program makes huge strides. Rumsfeld coming out early in the next administration stating the Pentagon cannot account for something to the tune of 2.3 Trillion etc.

a reply to: SLAYER69

[Edit]Star and Flagged! [/edit]

Interesting.

I see no reason to doubt that China is researching space based anti satellite capabilities. I wonder what the Chinese military knows about US space systems that we the public do not? Conversely, what does the US see being developed by the Chinese that we are not also aware of? The US, not known to stand on the sidelines for very long comes out very publicly with this recent request for even more funding, I say 'Even more' simply because it's black budget pays for quite a bit we the 'public' do not know of.

The US military already has the largest defense spending on the planet and now are requesting additional funding. Are the Chinese advancing quicker than previously thought and is the US maneuvering to maintain either superiority or at the very least, future parity?

Well there is the EmDrive ...

The editor of Wired magazine who covered the experimental results relating to reactionless drives reported that he received some comments from the Chinese researchers stating "the publicity was very unwelcome, especially any suggestion that there might be a military application" and that Yang told him that "she is not able to discuss her work until more results are published".

For example, one such military application could be ...

Now where was I

Oh yes I was doing some maths and showing that a 3 ton EM spaceship would be doing 10% the speed of light after a year of constant thrusting at 1m/s.

That is the pretty picture ^^^!

Here is the dark side...

A 300kilo kinetic kill cargo [say simply the power unit itself as kinetic kill mass

] device, being 10 times lighter and therefor traveling 10 times faster, would reach near the speed of light after nearly a single year [almost 300,000km/s] and could be programmed to redirect back into the solar system and hit the planet within a few days to weeks.

1kg of mass traveling at 99% speed of of light [c] does about 132 Megatons of damage upon impact and I am talking about an object weighing 300 times that mass and that is roughly about 40 Gigatons of damage or 800x the Tzar Bomba explosion the Russians detonated [the largest nuke ever so far].

Such a device may cost in the realms of 10's of thousands of $'s, could be made and launched by any person with a grudge engineer and is a stupendously cheap way to cleanse the planet.

Relativistic kill vehicle

RKVs have been proposed as a method of interstellar warfare, especially in settings where faster than light travel or sensors are impossible. By traveling near the speed of light, an RKV could substantially limit the amount of early warning detection time. Furthermore, since the destructive effects of the RKV are carried by its kinetic energy, destroying the vehicle near its target would do little to reduce the damage; the cloud of particles or vapor would still be traveling at nearly the same speed and would have little time to disperse. Indeed, some versions of the RKV concept call for the RKV to explode shortly before impact to shower a wide region of space.

As providing terminal guidance for such a high-speed object would likely be difficult, RKVs are usually proposed as a strategic weapon targeted against large and predictable targets such as planets.

A 1 kg mass traveling at 99% of the speed of light would have a kinetic energy of 5.47×1017 joules. In explosive terms, it would be equal to 132 megatons of TNT or approximately 82 megatons more than the theoretical max yield of Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. 1 kg of mass-energy is 8.99×1016 joules or about 21.5 megatons of TNT.

So realistically we have one year to get the hell off the planet before some crazy guy ... why is everyone looking at me suddenly

... destroys us all!

That ^^^ is why everyone needs to seriously listen to me!

Further reading!

a reply to: SLAYER69

I see no reason to doubt that China is researching space based anti satellite capabilities. I wonder what the Chinese military knows about US space systems that we the public do not? Conversely, what does the US see being developed by the Chinese that we are not also aware of? The US, not known to stand on the sidelines for very long comes out very publicly with this recent request for even more funding, I say 'Even more' simply because it's black budget pays for quite a bit we the 'public' do not know of.

This is interesting as it shines a reflective light on the real status of espionage. We'll never know the 'truth' as all sides keep whipping up propaganda about who's penis is biggest and which enemy is the sneakiest and most devious.

US Intel has been ratcheting up the Surveillance State largely on the basis of the 'cyberwar' threat of Chinese hackers. We'll never know how extensive that threat is in practice. For years we've been reading about the Chinese hoovering up western technological secrets. So when I say 'reflective light,' we'll see how truthful the claims have been by the level of technology China demonstrate.

If China are less successful, it reflects the fact that our Intel have been creative with the truth and generous with the allegations. If they are more successful than the US and Russia, it might be evidence that, yes, they've been hacking to the full extent of the allegations.

What I don't understand is why TPTB always use "satellites" as the reason for most Space tech advancements when it's so painfully obvious that there is so much more going on up there than what we are told. The US spends more on its military than all of the other nations on Earth combined, if I remember correctly. Plus Black Budget(s) on top of that so what's really going on...?

With the cost of the ridiculously over priced military hardware the U.S. tax payers are soaked for is it little wonder ... Gotta keep the defense industry alive and well !

On a different note. Much of our targeting and just plain old navigation comes from spaces based assets (GPS). If I were Russia or China I would make sure in a real no kidding shooting match those assets would be some of the first to be taken out. ASATs whether dedicated platforms or other earth monitoring satellites with maneuvering capabilities are no doubt orbiting as we speak with secondary mission profiles... regardless of treaties and hand shakes..

If we need a buggar bear to get us back into space with something different than chemical rockets then so be it.. I used to think there was a possibility the black triangles were maybe something of ours... But I heard on C2C that they have been reported for longer than anyone had anything flying... Shucks and darn it !