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The Polyus was a violation of pretty much every space treaty. It was a clear weaponization of space designed to shoot down US satellites. Gorbachev knew that an

The Polyus was a violation of pretty much every space treaty. It was a clear weaponization of space designed to shoot down US satellites. Gorbachev knew that any attempt to use it would bring US retaliation in a variety of ways the USSR couldn't handle: move more nukes close to the USSR, ramp up nuke production, launch Reagan's SDI missile shield concepts, build large missile shields in Europe, etc. Russia is not known for respecting treaties it signs, so I'm sure Reagan had some backchannel talks to Gorby over space weaponization that spooked him. Both backed off eventually. Reagan's SDI went nowhere and morphed into the SM anti-missile systems in use today and the Polyus, of course, failed to achieve orbit.

VLM 11y ago
I'm not quite old enough, but it was just before my time and there were some stories in the press that it was for shooting their own satellites, at least officially. Remember the space shuttle was being pimped as being all things to all people, including the military, right around that time and satellite retrieval could happen to Russian as well as American satellites, after all abandoned non working wrecks and right of salvage at sea and all that. Now it would be a pity if the Russians shot at a decommissioned spy sat while the Americans shuttle on a classified .mil mission was trying to steal that satellite... also run the numbers on low earth orbit satellites, a decent head shot to a low orbit satellite deorbits the main pieces and the little parts have an awesome surface to volume ratio so they naturally deorbit and the precious delicate space shuttle isn't going to fly thru a cloud of satellite parts to steal a russian spy sat, now, is it? The shuttle has enough delta-V that in the old days before advanced surveillance sats its not unrealistic it could have snatched a decommissioned low orbit russian spy sat while out of ground observation range. In fact, how exactly do you know what did or didn't happen during the many classified early missions... There was also a some popular press scientific claims. If "we" think "we" can shoot actively dodging incoming ICBMs out of the sky in the 80s, shooting a "big" asteroid should be pretty easy in the 70s, right? So wait for a close approach, record the spectrograph of the impact, compare to the known composition of the shell, report back on the first direct chemical analysis of a meteor in space before re-entry. This is a little impractical, but ...
x5n1 11y ago
Any rational actor does not respect any treaties. That's the normal way of business in international relations. It's a grand chessboard. The point is to put your opponent in check and keep it that way. In order to do that you can utilize any means necessary to do so while appearing as if you are following the rules. It's the same way all government organizations in the West operate.

VLM 11y ago

I'm not quite old enough, but it was just before my time and there were some stories in the press that it was for shooting their own satellites, at least officially. Remember the space shuttle was being pimped as being all things to all people, including the military, right around that time and satellite retrieval could happen to Russian as well as American satellites, after all abandoned non working wrecks and right of salvage at sea and all that. Now it would be a pity if the Russians shot at a decommissioned spy sat while the Americans shuttle on a classified .mil mission was trying to steal that satellite... also run the numbers on low earth orbit satellites, a decent head shot to a low orbit satellite deorbits the main pieces and the little parts have an awesome surface to volume ratio so they naturally deorbit and the precious delicate space shuttle isn't going to fly thru a cloud of satellite parts to steal a russian spy sat, now, is it? The shuttle has enough delta-V that in the old days before advanced surveillance sats its not unrealistic it could have snatched a decommissioned low orbit russian spy sat while out of ground observation range. In fact, how exactly do you know what did or didn't happen during the many classified early missions... There was also a some popular press scientific claims. If "we" think "we" can shoot actively dodging incoming ICBMs out of the sky in the 80s, shooting a "big" asteroid should be pretty easy in the 70s, right? So wait for a close approach, record the spectrograph of the impact, compare to the known composition of the shell, report back on the first direct chemical analysis of a meteor in space before re-entry. This is a little impractical, but ...

x5n1 11y ago

Any rational actor does not respect any treaties. That's the normal way of business in international relations. It's a grand chessboard. The point is to put your opponent in check and keep it that way. In order to do that you can utilize any means necessary to do so while appearing as if you are following the rules. It's the same way all government organizations in the West operate.