Weaponization of Space

Just doing some cruising online, I found an article that talks about, basically the evolution of weapons. China wants "in" on more space weaponization of which they feel the U.S. gov't has practically overpowered them.

A new arms race with weapons that would have been thought to be the stuff of science fiction 50 years ago is on the horizon.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Weaponization of space ? Its .... poop, i carnt see how us placing weapons in space is going to come across to other races in the universe, we can NOT do long race inter galatc travel, so a race of people who can, dont have weapons to match our own >?

Placing weapons, which i would think would be nukes, is not a good idea, make one do a 180 and BAM! its pointing at YOUR country. Sounds liek another step in war to the poor countrys of the world.

Take Care, Vix

I would be very upset if we weaponize space. what's the reasoning behind that? are we going to fight the space invaders? I don't get the premise. I am already wondering why we weaponized earth. weapons only cause problems, deaths and wars. There is no need for weapons in space or on earth. and that's my true belief.


jedimiller.

reply to post by Vixion


Who need nukes when you've got the acceleration of gravity to give your orbital bombardments more bang?

Check it out:

Wiki: Kinetic bombardment

Project Thor, Rods from the Gods... how large the human ego is...

No, we've already got some, and have had for a while.

The point of putting weapon platforms in space is obvious - not to fight space invaders or whatnot, but to take out your enemies' spaceborne assets as fast as possible after hostilities commence.

Spaceborne stuff generally falls into C3I, and it's imperative to knock that out as much as possible, as quickly as posslble, with the exception that it might be useful to leave some stuff that's subverted, if you can do it.

We've got several generations of weapons up there now, from hydrogen fluoride lasers to little semi-autonomous robots.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
We've got several generations of weapons up there now, from hydrogen fluoride lasers to little semi-autonomous robots.

No kidding? You've got a link for these claims? I wanna read them myself

It helps a lot when you work in the field. I see stuff I can't pass on easily.

I'm also about to head out for the day to a customer site. Here's you a starting point. Start with THEL. Where did THEL come from?

THEL is a derivative work from TRW's H-F spaceborne laser. They used deuterium to change the wavelength so it will work in air, and added a bunch of downstream mods to recombine the exhaust gas into deuterated Freon, CO2 and water (for the most part, still is greasy from jet fuel and stinks).

But the original work was a TRW spaceborne H-F laser platform, which you'll find was "never implemented" hardy har har har.

As for the robots, I'll have to dig, there was some exposure on that one which is why I mentioned it. I think GB got all whingey when we finally got some up and cruised by one of their spy sats, which I think almost made the news.

Think of them as little evil R2D2's. Mostly all tank for propellants, low mass, and some tools. They can damage satellites by ramming, by grabbing on and spinning them out of the slot, drilling them etc. I think they're trying to minimize the blowing up option due to debris. But when you see the military funding all this "repair in the air" stuff with little robots, yeah, that's true but the real intent is to develop ways to trash the other guy's stuff. I'll see if I can find something in the civilian press on it.

Tom Bedlam what do you do for work then ?

And thanks beachcoma for that link, its very...intresting lol. I guess we could do that, if we ask them politely to stay still whilst we get aim and fire.

Take Care, Vix

We design stuff.

Half commercial and half military stuff, some classified at various levels. All mil would be nice but it's cyclic and sometimes it dries up. We do one-off oddball designs sometimes.

Me personally, I'm hardware. I do some software but it tends to be BIOS and driver type code. I don't do web pages.

Originally posted by Vixion
Weaponization of space ? Its .... poop, i carnt see how us placing weapons in space is going to come across to other races in the universe, we can NOT do long race inter galatc travel, so a race of people who can, dont have weapons to match our own >?





Take Care, Vix

excuse me.

just a minute.


Other races can go and take a running hike.

We dont need them.

I suggest they get out of our way and move out to someplace else as we will colonize the galaxy once we invent the star drive in the next 30 years.


I am totally confident America will achieve this in the next 30 years.

our techonology is advancing exponentially.

look in the dictionary what that means..

look.


space is big....very big.

if you gathered all the galaxies together in a corner they would not even occupy o.ooooo1% of space.


space is big...very, very big....


really BIG.


I MEAN REALLY ,REALLY BIG.


you got that?


it's infinite.


it's the best place to have wars....

let all the combatants incouding the scum politicians with their lapdog generals and advisers go there and blow each other up...


i am all for it...

it's the best way of getting rid of the nasties.


no one gets hurt on Earth if you have wars in space.


so stop whining about wars in space.


as space is really big...

i mean really,really big.


you got that?




[edit on 8-9-2007 by esecallum]

everyone is launching weapons in space,and one satelite is destroyng the other.these weapons are for planetary defence,we probably have a ring network doing a complete 100% defence and for attacking the planet also...like they will probably do with iran
particle cannon launched

you people are a little..."out there". lol

Unisol, I very highly doubt we have such an infrastructure, the only satellite networked system that covers the whole globe in GPS...which grant it, is military by its nature...but it has no weapons...but is used to guide weapons. all the GPS sats also can detect a nuclear explosion anywhere on earth.


esecallum - .........star drives...come on.

yes, technology is moving at a quick rate...but not THAT fast.
We have been using jet engines as our fastest means of travel for decades...and I don’t see something surpassing them in the near future.
face it, the really cool stuff get classified by the US Gov. "Black" Aircraft are the highest tech things we have.
One of the most interesting propulsion technologies out there is PDE, but the vast majority of info on it is classified.
Aero-space tech used to move fast, because of big wars, and then the cold war, black aircraft were revealed....like the SR-71 Blackbird, F-117, B-2 bomber. But currently the AF has ZERO reasons to show off the latest and greatest tech......because there is no point.....who will it scare? no one, cause are current "enemy number 1" is terrorists...which for the most part, don’t control a country, or have advanced weaponry.

China is picking up steam, and Russia is picking up the pieces of its soviet days and are re-gaining some of their lost power back. So if the USAF went ahead and un-classified one if its black projects, all it would do is make the enemy try and copy it, and steal its designs, and build their own....so it’s better to just keep the "latest greatest" hidden until the proper time.
Unfortunately, that hinders are advances. PDE's and SCRAMJET engines are much more advanced then we are lead to believe.

Are space propulsion methods have a long way to go, currently there is a satellite heading towards Pluto, it was launched last year and it won’t arrive until 2015, that shows you how underwhelming are space advancements have been.
I think the biggest thing that will boost space tech, is going to be the space elevator, hopefully will be operational by around 2030.....that will drastically change are view of space.

...But star drives......don’t count on it, and least not in your lifetime.

Originally posted by Murcielago
you people are a little..."out there". lol

Unisol, I very highly doubt we have such an infrastructure, the only satellite networked system that covers the whole globe in GPS...which grant it, is military by its nature...but it has no weapons...but is used to guide weapons.

GPS isn't the only global satellite network constellation. There are quite a number out there, and GPS isn't even the largest satellite constellation.

• GPS -- 24 satellites
  
• Globalstar -- 40 satellites
  
• IRIDIUM --66 satellites
  
• GLONASS (Russian GPS) -- 24 satellites

And those are just the ones we the public know about.

If you've ever used the program Celestia along with the satellite add-ons turned on, you can barely see Earth unless you turn off the satellite labels. In fact you can make out a thick ring of satellites in the equator. Granted it's not to scale, but it's still a ring of satellites nonetheless.

Originally posted by Murcielago
you people are a little..."out there". lol

Unisol, I very highly doubt we have such an infrastructure, the only satellite networked system that covers the whole globe in GPS...which grant it, is military by its nature...but it has no weapons...but is used to guide weapons. all the GPS sats also can detect a nuclear explosion anywhere on earth.

Wow, the first thing that came to MY mind was the old DSP network, which certainly 'covers the whole globe'.

There's several more you don't hear a lot about - a couple of different military comm sat networks such as Milstar for example, and by now they should be putting some of the laser sats for sub communication up for tests.

edit: and that's not counting the intelligence satellite networks...so yes, yes indeed there are global military & intel satellite networks of different sorts.



[edit on 9-9-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Beachcoma

GPS -- 24 satellites

Globalstar -- 40 satellites

IRIDIUM --66 satellites

GLONASS (Russian GPS) -- 24 satellites

I dont believe there currently is a world wide coverage of satellites that can "attack".
and I believe there is currently 27 operational GPS sats.
Globalstar & Iridium are telecommunication sats (as is milstar).
and GLONASS is a joke, they dont have that many sats, they have no where hear world wide coverage....they can only see like 1/4 of the world.....and most of that...is them.

I would bet that USAF is building a solid state laser satellite, but that would be considered an anti-satellite weapon....and not one that could strike ground targets.....that tech is around 15 years off.

Then why mention GPS? Though it's a military satellite constellation first, it's far from being an "attack satellite."

China upped the ante when they blew away 'their own obsolete satellite' with a basically kinetic device. I remember Los Alamos up in arms 4 yrs ago due to highly sensitive data being recoinnared. And a laptop found behind a copy machine days later. Was it their sat that got poked sending thousands of fragments of potentially lethal space debris in orbit? Who really knows. I do believe usa has weapons platforms in space to deter alien critters who do not have our best intentions in mind. A big stretch, yes. Gut feeling yes.

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Then why mention GPS? Though it's a military satellite constellation first, it's far from being an "attack satellite."

It was the closes thing (that I could think of) to what "unisol" was talking about. (forgot to mention DSP & SBIRS)

I was basically saying we have no sats that are for attacking an enemy on the ground.


"jpm1602" - Yeah, that little "display" got the worlds attention, and pissed off most of it. What many didn't like was their complete lack of respect for debris being scattered throughout the most used region of space (Low Earth Orbit).

Originally posted by Murcielago

I was basically saying we have no sats that are for attacking an enemy on the ground.

Oh, now THAT I agree with wholeheartedly, with the exception of noting that once Sandia completes the designs on the no-maintenance nukes, then orbital nukes will present an option that they currently do not.

Lasers are not a viable ground attack weapon from a satellite because they just don't pack enough punch, and the 'easy' wavelengths don't penetrate atmosphere handily. TRW's (now Northrup's) hydrogen-fluoride laser weapon was designed to damage satellites in similar orbits. You couldn't use one from LEO to the geosync belt, for example, there's too much divergence. And you can't turn it on ground targets, because the wavelength is strongly absorbed by the atmosphere.

OTOH, there is a LOT of interest in ground-orbit-ground laser weapons using orbital mirrors with active correction. "Lot" including putting up some mirror sats and firing low and medium power beams at them for tests.

[edit on 10-9-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Murcielago
I dont believe there currently is a world wide coverage of satellites that can "attack".

Neither do i.

and I believe there is currently 27 operational GPS sats.

I can't do much with beliefs.

Globalstar & Iridium are telecommunication sats (as is milstar).
and GLONASS is a joke, they dont have that many sats, they have no where hear world wide coverage....they can only see like 1/4 of the world.....and most of that...is them.

Why is there such a large disparity between what you clearly want to believe and what is true?

The system offers a standard C/A positioning and timing service giving horizontal position accuracy within 180 feet (55 meters) and vertical position within 230 feet (70 meters) based on measurements from four satellite signals. P is a more accurate signal for Russian military use.

There are very few inexpensive GLONASS-only receivers for consumers on the market. However, commercial GPS receivers often are capable of receiving both NAVSTAR and GLONASS data.

This GLONASS system provides accuracy that is better than GPS with SA on and worse than GPS with SA off.

www.spacetoday.org...

Comparative Overview of GPS and GLONASS

A comparative overview of GPS and GLONASS is apropos before proceeding.
GPS and the Russian GLONASS system have some similarities and some
substantial differences as well. While GPS space vehicles operate with one L1
frequency for the entire constellation, GLONASS satellites each have their own
discrete frequency. The frequency allocation scheme for GLONASS, which
employs the Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) technique, is 1602 +

K(0.5625) MHz , where K = the frequency channel number. Each GLONASS
satellite is identified by a unique orbital slot number.
Another difference between the two SATNAV systems is that the Russian
government does not implement a policy of signal degradation on the L1
frequency. Hence, the stand alone accuracy of a GLONASS receiver is
measurably better than that of a CA Code GPS receiver. L1 GLONASS rms
accuracy is about 16 meters; L1 GPS is 100 meters rms with SA on

pro.magellangps.com...

Since we do not know the capability of the Russian 'reserved' mode it's hard to know which is best for military applications.

The navigational signals transmitted by the satellites are received by GLONASS-receivers. These receivers determine object’s position by the method of received signals’ triangulation. Used by the civil marines the code allows determine position of an object with the accuracy up to 50 - 70 meters. In the mode of usual access the GLONASS system exceeds the GPS system in accuracy, at the same time providing opportunity for operation in areas of higher latitudes.

www.dkart.ru...

I would bet that USAF is building a solid state laser satellite, but that would be considered an anti-satellite weapon....

Sure they are but so is everyone.

and not one that could strike ground targets.....that tech is around 15 years off.

I would say that tech is at least 25 years old..

stellar