Satellite in space destroyed....

[chequita guevara]

Great, more space debris.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Tacc


It is a little more complex than that.

No it isn't. Which is why, as battle-ready ripped-shirt Kirk is, we cannot trust him to fight the commies

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Lonestar


No it isn't. Which is why, as battle-ready ripped-shirt Kirk is, we cannot trust him to fight the commies

The fact that the Federation continues to exploit its non-Earth workers, imposes artificial scarcity upon non-Earth worlds, has essentially allowed humans to dominate the entirety of government (despite almost certainly being a minority), the fact that it sometimes uses money for items that even under free market conditions no longer have cost (artificial scarcity, again), uses nominally worthless units of currency when dealing with foreign states, supports feudal regiemes that brutally oppress workers around the galaxy....

The Federation is not communist.

[pchang]

Low Earth Orbit

capability only. It takes a much bigger rocket to get things into mid and geo.

[TCO]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Band? What do you have against semiconductors, you bastard?

I want that Fermi level in the conduction band damnit.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Tacc


The fact that the Federation continues to exploit its non-Earth workers, imposes artificial scarcity upon non-Earth worlds, has essentially allowed humans to dominate the entirety of government (despite almost certainly being a minority), the fact that it sometimes uses money for items that even under free market conditions no longer have cost (artificial scarcity, again), uses nominally worthless units of currency when dealing with foreign states, supports feudal regiemes that brutally oppress workers around the galaxy....

The Federation is not communist.

You just described pretty much every 20th Communist state

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
In a war where our space assets are being actively eroded it is possible to take countermeasures to make it a lot harder. For instance, regular course corrections or dummy satellites.

What are you talking about?

These are satellites on fixed orbits, and they certainly don't have manuevering capability. That is specially true of the higher orbit GPS satellites.

As for "dummy satellites", how would that work exactly? You want to flood the orbit with just bigger pieces of space junk?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


The launch is only a part of the cost. The costs to design and test the satellite are larger. You have to do a lot of testing to make sure it will survive to orbit, and even more to make sure it will work probably once its there.

Yes they can and yes it would if we were going to be sending a bunch into space.

So your strategy would be to flood space with untested cheap satellites...great, so all the Chinese have to do is blow those up and create vast fields os space junk that would degrade our space assets anyways. Good job there....

Do you have anything serious to post on the topic?

[KrazyHorse]

I'm sorry, but I missed the part where either you or Wesley had the sort of specialised knowledge in orbital mechanics which would make your disagreement as to the viability of Chinese anti-satellite weaponry in a hypothetical conflict anything other than complete bull****.

FYI, GePap, GPS satellites orbit at ~20000 km, while the satellite which was destroyed was at an altitude of < 1000 km

I'm not even certain that the US has weaponry deployed which would allow them to take down satellites at the GPS altitude on short notice.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by GePap


You silly enough to think the missile the Chinese used to shoot down the satellite was a nuke??

Its far cheaper for the Chinese to shoot down a US spy satellite once they can do it with no problem than it is for the US to replace them, and certainly cheaper to gain parity on the battlefield by denying the US its space assets than investing the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take to match US space assets.

Did you note this 'attack' was launched from their space centre?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by GePap

As for "dummy satellites", how would that work exactly? You want to flood the orbit with just bigger pieces of space junk?

Why not? What do they shoot at if there are 10 blobs in a row? Assuming their launch facilities are still functional.

[KrazyHorse]

He's assuming that the buildup of crap in LEO would be enough to preclude further launches. I'm not certain of that, and unless he's been hiding an advanced education in astronautical engineering I doubt he is either.

[notyoueither]

I'm pretty sure China's ability to launch rockets with enough precision to take out satellites would last less time than it would take to clutter up any sort of orbit.

[notyoueither]

And even if it did, why not launch 10 inert blobs to cover for the one critical system? What do they aim at?

There's a heck of a lot of sky up there. A lot more than there is Earth surface. Maybe Gepap should consider that. How many sats could be laid end to end from New York to LA? Over 1,000,000?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I'm sorry, but I missed the part where either you or Wesley had the sort of specialised knowledge in orbital mechanics which would make your disagreement as to the viability of Chinese anti-satellite weaponry in a hypothetical conflict anything other than complete bull****.

I never said they couldn't shoot stuff down. I said if we wanted to we could put a lot more up at a lower marginal cost, and we could take limited countermeasures like decoys. All I claim to know is a little bit about satellite manufacturing (which I learned from a few guys who work at a company that designs and tests them).