14 ms·

Ad Astra: The coming battle over space

130 points by Hooke 5y ago

neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/uEHuP https://archive.md/uEHuP
natded 5y ago
Elon already won this for the US. Excluding China stealing the Starpship technology so they can match the lowered cost per tonnage, there are no competitors. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...
- rkk3 5y ago
  How is that at all relevant to the asymmetric vulnerabilities the US faces in LEO & GEO, which is the focus of the article?
  - wcoenen 5y ago
    Starship would allow the US to quickly and cheaply replace any lost infrastructure in space, therefore that vulnerability would be mitigated. (I'm not sure this would be an advantage for long though. Once a working cheap launch system has been demonstrated, it will soon be copied.)
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Just because you have launch capability doesn't mean you have the payload to utilize that.
      - wcoenen 5y ago
        If launches are expensive (e.g. 400M USD for a Delta IV Heavy launch) then you have to engineer the payload to make it worth that launch cost. It needs to be super reliable and last a long time, it needs to provide a lot of value, and you may get only one shot to get it right. There's not going to be a backup James Webb telescope if there's a glitch with the first one. If launches are cheap (e.g. a few million USD targeted by Starship), you can use more off the shelf hardware and iterate to see what works. Replacing satellites is not such a big deal.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Starlink, which can be used for both communication and geolocation (and some observation), does, though. I think people don’t understand the scale that Starlink operates at. SpaceX is planning to ramp up Starlink manufacturing capacity for STARSHIP, too. Falcon 9 does 40 200kg satellites at once. And plans to operate them eventually at below 400km, which makes them resistant to debris.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Are there actually asymmetric vulnerabilities in space? I also don't think that's the focus of the article and doesn't pertain to space. The article gives lots of examples of new competition from china & russia, but explicitly says for example that "the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities" which implies parity if not advantage. To me that asymmetric quote from Oriana Skylar Mastro seems to more reference what I do genuinely find scary: the US military's heavy heavy reliance on technology and tech controlled via space. can any of our planes even fly without computers? I assume all major powers can hack basically anything. I would hope the smarter than me military advisors have thought that through... "China attacked U.S. satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. In the latter case, they gained control of the craft, but stopped short of issuing it commands" "Among the spacefaring nations, the United States is by far the most exposed" "I think it’s no-holds-barred. Because the U.S. has the most to lose." Just by growing from behind technologically adversaries might have an advantage in they have stuff that works without computers & satellites. Though I would personally bet we might still have a small asymmetric advantage in space defense and offense. we obviously have an advantage in rapid deployment. Have been flying a mini shuttle for over 10 years. Have SpaceX. Seems wise to me to have extra satellites lying underground for rapid deployment. And hopefully we have more stuff that isn't trackable - it seems some of the shuttle stuff we know about is at least hard to track by amateurs.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      The asymmetric vulnerabilities are simply because USA has so much more satellites compared to everyone else that give it various economic and military advantages. This means that an escalation that wipes out all space resources for everyone is effectively a major loss for USA, as they lose a lot of capabilities, investment and comparative advantage, while those who had less resources up there did not suffer much because they had much less to lose; If anyone would be starting a major land/sea/air conflict with USA, then taking all space stuff out of the picture would be very useful for them.
- brandmeyer 5y ago
  Reproduction does not imply theft. National pride, sufficient resources, and prioritization are sufficient to replicate the technology.
HenryKissinger 5y ago
From 3 years ago: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22941/russia-has-four-potential-killer-satellites-in-orbit-at-least-that-we-know-about https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22941/russia-has-four-... Russia Has Four Potential "Killer Satellites" In Orbit, At Least That We Know About > The problem is that any satellite that can maneuver itself very close to another one, and may have small arms or probes to physically interact with its target, is inherently capable of being a weapon. Any such repair system could easily smash sensitive optics and other components, or simply slam into the target, acting as a kinetic weapon The future of space warfare, as it's currently understood, will involve: 1- Satellites attacking other satellites with: 1a- robotic arms 1b- small projectiles 1c- jamming device 1d- lasers 2- missiles fired from the atmosphere 3- jamming stations on the ground (https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/space-force-first-weapon-satellite-jammer/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/space-force-first-...) More generally, space isn't safe for blue team anymore. Russia and China have aggressive ambitions to be able to dominate space and aren't restrained by any code of ethics, something China is also doing in artificial intelligence research (not bothering with "frameworks" and "guiding principles for responsible AI"). Most experts agree that space will become another area of strategic competition where the major powers deter each other with mutual destruction doctrines, because the loss of global satellite communications, weather satellites and positioning systems, and the potential creation of millions of orbital debris that would result from a confrontation would be too dire to credibly contemplate.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Personally I believe the US is still capable of being extremely unethical as well, we just have to find ways to cover it up. So really we’re not at too much of a disadvantage.
- Retric 5y ago
  The deltaV requirements for matching orbits with another satellite are seriously prohibitive. It’s vastly easier to simply launch a projectile on a collision course. Further, it’s even easier to launch up and into the path of a satellite than reach orbit. Especially if you’re launching from an aircraft in a large parabolic arch. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT Critically launching from aircraft to orbit is not that helpful, but if you don’t need to orbit it makes a huge difference.
caseyf7 5y ago
I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship. Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the material in orbit dramatically. The issues astronomers currently have with Starlink will be the tip of the iceberg. Will we need UNESCO World Heritage Orbits to protect our views of space?
- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  Some pollution is an inevitable consequence of economic development. It would be great if we could move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars.
  - goodoldneon 5y ago
    That’d be inconceivably far in the future. It’d need to be more economical to transport goods through space…
    - abecedarius 5y ago
      Two-way cargo transport through vacuum has zero net energy cost, just like a counterweighted elevator on Earth, only more so -- no vacuum here. With reasonable intelligence and infrastructure we should approach that limit. Design sketch from 1978, with numbers: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/papers/free.txt https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/pap...
      - goodoldneon 5y ago
        There isn’t energy cost between bodies, but there are huge energy costs getting into orbit, leaving orbit, and getting into the destination body’s orbit
        abecedarius 5y ago
        Factories, refineries, and raw materials don't need to be on planets. There are disadvantages to siting on planets besides the added transport costs. > getting into the destination body's orbit I said round-trip energy costs. The delta-v for arriving cargo to enter orbit equals the delta-v for departing cargo. Over a full cycle of sending equal payloads both ways, the net change of energy and momentum is zero. I linked to an analysis of one way to harness this. When the skyhook in the linked example boosts a payload from Venus-Earth Hohmann to Earth-Mars Hohmann, the skyhook's orbit gets perturbed; but it gets the opposite perturbation on the boost on the opposite traffic. (This is not the only non-rocket approach to free-space transport with potentially low marginal cost.)
pezzana 5y ago
The main takeaway from this article is that the militarization of space if moving fast. There is this document called the Outer Space Treaty that was written at the dawn of the Space Age. It has never been updated, and was written for a world divided into two Cold War spheres of influence. The world today looks nothing like the world of the 1960s. It looks a lot more like the world of the early 1910s and 1930s. Multiple countries vie for advantage. > Since 2015, Russia, China, India, Iran, Israel, France, and North Korea have all established military space programs. China’s and Russia’s space commands are close on the heels of the United States, and according to the Secure World Foundation, the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities. ... There's a theory of what causes war among major powers that goes like this. Wars result when one side miscalculates how the other side will respond. You can see elements of this in WWI. Certainly the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor fits the bill. And it almost did us in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Combine multiple players jockeying for position, a close connection between space and nuclear weapon command and control, and a new domain that blunts the advantages of incumbants, and you get a fertile breeding ground for crisis. Then there's the "use it or lose it" angle to consider and the fact the US has the most to lose in all of this: > All military assets are surrounded by a “use it or lose it” ethos, says Joan Johnson-Freese, the author of Space Warfare in the 21st Century and a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. Once conflict begins, all holdings are seen to be at risk: you need to fire that missile before it’s taken out. “The military is taught to assume the worst, and to react to it,” she told me. “Because space assets are so far away, and there is a high potential to not be sure what is happening, high risk and threat must be assumed.” This is commonly referred to as “the tyranny of distance.” When the rules are not plain, whether in peacetime or war, the situation is “exponentially” more dangerous. ...
- tudorw 5y ago
  Do hypersonic weapons give a new first strike capability and is this the end of the M.A.D. policy, do we actually need a new race, post-globalisation it looks like authoritarianism, closed borders and increased surveillance might be the focus, in which case the military industrial complex still has a good fit, just a new enemy, a constant war against people as it were.
zabzonk 5y ago
Trivia: "Per ardua ad astra" (through hardships to the stars) is the motto of The Royal Air Force (first independent air force). But when it was coined, I don't think they were concerned about satellites being blown up.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Spend less money on spy satellites and more on spies. I wonder how many agents the CIA are running in China?
- fuckcensorship 5y ago
  Not as many as the CIA might like [1]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ In 2007 and 2008, hackers believed to be from China attacked U.S. satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. In the latter case, they gained control of the craft, but stopped short of issuing it commands. The Russian government, meanwhile, has been accused of widespread, malicious signal jamming, including, in 2018, disrupting GPS transmissions during a NATO exercise in Scandinavia and disabling American surveillance drones in Syria.” Would be so interesting if a nation state ever takes over a future starlink. Definitely cheaper to hack it than rebuild SpaceX.
- thefounder 5y ago
  >Would be so interesting if a nation state ever takes over a future starlink. What to do with it?
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Only allow their military global internet…
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    Access and store any information flowing through it

130 points by Hooke 5y ago

https://archive.md/uEHuP https://archive.md/uEHuP

Elon already won this for the US. Excluding China stealing the Starpship technology so they can match the lowered cost per tonnage, there are no competitors. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...

rkk3 5y ago
How is that at all relevant to the asymmetric vulnerabilities the US faces in LEO & GEO, which is the focus of the article?
- wcoenen 5y ago
  Starship would allow the US to quickly and cheaply replace any lost infrastructure in space, therefore that vulnerability would be mitigated. (I'm not sure this would be an advantage for long though. Once a working cheap launch system has been demonstrated, it will soon be copied.)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Just because you have launch capability doesn't mean you have the payload to utilize that.
    - wcoenen 5y ago
      If launches are expensive (e.g. 400M USD for a Delta IV Heavy launch) then you have to engineer the payload to make it worth that launch cost. It needs to be super reliable and last a long time, it needs to provide a lot of value, and you may get only one shot to get it right. There's not going to be a backup James Webb telescope if there's a glitch with the first one. If launches are cheap (e.g. a few million USD targeted by Starship), you can use more off the shelf hardware and iterate to see what works. Replacing satellites is not such a big deal.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Starlink, which can be used for both communication and geolocation (and some observation), does, though. I think people don’t understand the scale that Starlink operates at. SpaceX is planning to ramp up Starlink manufacturing capacity for STARSHIP, too. Falcon 9 does 40 200kg satellites at once. And plans to operate them eventually at below 400km, which makes them resistant to debris.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Are there actually asymmetric vulnerabilities in space? I also don't think that's the focus of the article and doesn't pertain to space. The article gives lots of examples of new competition from china & russia, but explicitly says for example that "the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities" which implies parity if not advantage. To me that asymmetric quote from Oriana Skylar Mastro seems to more reference what I do genuinely find scary: the US military's heavy heavy reliance on technology and tech controlled via space. can any of our planes even fly without computers? I assume all major powers can hack basically anything. I would hope the smarter than me military advisors have thought that through... "China attacked U.S. satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. In the latter case, they gained control of the craft, but stopped short of issuing it commands" "Among the spacefaring nations, the United States is by far the most exposed" "I think it’s no-holds-barred. Because the U.S. has the most to lose." Just by growing from behind technologically adversaries might have an advantage in they have stuff that works without computers & satellites. Though I would personally bet we might still have a small asymmetric advantage in space defense and offense. we obviously have an advantage in rapid deployment. Have been flying a mini shuttle for over 10 years. Have SpaceX. Seems wise to me to have extra satellites lying underground for rapid deployment. And hopefully we have more stuff that isn't trackable - it seems some of the shuttle stuff we know about is at least hard to track by amateurs.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    The asymmetric vulnerabilities are simply because USA has so much more satellites compared to everyone else that give it various economic and military advantages. This means that an escalation that wipes out all space resources for everyone is effectively a major loss for USA, as they lose a lot of capabilities, investment and comparative advantage, while those who had less resources up there did not suffer much because they had much less to lose; If anyone would be starting a major land/sea/air conflict with USA, then taking all space stuff out of the picture would be very useful for them.
brandmeyer 5y ago
Reproduction does not imply theft. National pride, sufficient resources, and prioritization are sufficient to replicate the technology.

HenryKissinger 5y ago

From 3 years ago: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22941/russia-has-four-potential-killer-satellites-in-orbit-at-least-that-we-know-about https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22941/russia-has-four-... Russia Has Four Potential "Killer Satellites" In Orbit, At Least That We Know About > The problem is that any satellite that can maneuver itself very close to another one, and may have small arms or probes to physically interact with its target, is inherently capable of being a weapon. Any such repair system could easily smash sensitive optics and other components, or simply slam into the target, acting as a kinetic weapon The future of space warfare, as it's currently understood, will involve: 1- Satellites attacking other satellites with: 1a- robotic arms 1b- small projectiles 1c- jamming device 1d- lasers 2- missiles fired from the atmosphere 3- jamming stations on the ground (https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/space-force-first-weapon-satellite-jammer/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/space-force-first-...) More generally, space isn't safe for blue team anymore. Russia and China have aggressive ambitions to be able to dominate space and aren't restrained by any code of ethics, something China is also doing in artificial intelligence research (not bothering with "frameworks" and "guiding principles for responsible AI"). Most experts agree that space will become another area of strategic competition where the major powers deter each other with mutual destruction doctrines, because the loss of global satellite communications, weather satellites and positioning systems, and the potential creation of millions of orbital debris that would result from a confrontation would be too dire to credibly contemplate.

xwdv 5y ago
Personally I believe the US is still capable of being extremely unethical as well, we just have to find ways to cover it up. So really we’re not at too much of a disadvantage.
Retric 5y ago
The deltaV requirements for matching orbits with another satellite are seriously prohibitive. It’s vastly easier to simply launch a projectile on a collision course. Further, it’s even easier to launch up and into the path of a satellite than reach orbit. Especially if you’re launching from an aircraft in a large parabolic arch. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT Critically launching from aircraft to orbit is not that helpful, but if you don’t need to orbit it makes a huge difference.

caseyf7 5y ago

I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship. Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the material in orbit dramatically. The issues astronomers currently have with Starlink will be the tip of the iceberg. Will we need UNESCO World Heritage Orbits to protect our views of space?

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Some pollution is an inevitable consequence of economic development. It would be great if we could move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars.
- goodoldneon 5y ago
  That’d be inconceivably far in the future. It’d need to be more economical to transport goods through space…
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    Two-way cargo transport through vacuum has zero net energy cost, just like a counterweighted elevator on Earth, only more so -- no vacuum here. With reasonable intelligence and infrastructure we should approach that limit. Design sketch from 1978, with numbers: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/papers/free.txt https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/pap...
    - goodoldneon 5y ago
      There isn’t energy cost between bodies, but there are huge energy costs getting into orbit, leaving orbit, and getting into the destination body’s orbit
      - abecedarius 5y ago
        Factories, refineries, and raw materials don't need to be on planets. There are disadvantages to siting on planets besides the added transport costs. > getting into the destination body's orbit I said round-trip energy costs. The delta-v for arriving cargo to enter orbit equals the delta-v for departing cargo. Over a full cycle of sending equal payloads both ways, the net change of energy and momentum is zero. I linked to an analysis of one way to harness this. When the skyhook in the linked example boosts a payload from Venus-Earth Hohmann to Earth-Mars Hohmann, the skyhook's orbit gets perturbed; but it gets the opposite perturbation on the boost on the opposite traffic. (This is not the only non-rocket approach to free-space transport with potentially low marginal cost.)

pezzana 5y ago

The main takeaway from this article is that the militarization of space if moving fast. There is this document called the Outer Space Treaty that was written at the dawn of the Space Age. It has never been updated, and was written for a world divided into two Cold War spheres of influence. The world today looks nothing like the world of the 1960s. It looks a lot more like the world of the early 1910s and 1930s. Multiple countries vie for advantage. > Since 2015, Russia, China, India, Iran, Israel, France, and North Korea have all established military space programs. China’s and Russia’s space commands are close on the heels of the United States, and according to the Secure World Foundation, the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities. ... There's a theory of what causes war among major powers that goes like this. Wars result when one side miscalculates how the other side will respond. You can see elements of this in WWI. Certainly the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor fits the bill. And it almost did us in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Combine multiple players jockeying for position, a close connection between space and nuclear weapon command and control, and a new domain that blunts the advantages of incumbants, and you get a fertile breeding ground for crisis. Then there's the "use it or lose it" angle to consider and the fact the US has the most to lose in all of this: > All military assets are surrounded by a “use it or lose it” ethos, says Joan Johnson-Freese, the author of Space Warfare in the 21st Century and a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. Once conflict begins, all holdings are seen to be at risk: you need to fire that missile before it’s taken out. “The military is taught to assume the worst, and to react to it,” she told me. “Because space assets are so far away, and there is a high potential to not be sure what is happening, high risk and threat must be assumed.” This is commonly referred to as “the tyranny of distance.” When the rules are not plain, whether in peacetime or war, the situation is “exponentially” more dangerous. ...

tudorw 5y ago
Do hypersonic weapons give a new first strike capability and is this the end of the M.A.D. policy, do we actually need a new race, post-globalisation it looks like authoritarianism, closed borders and increased surveillance might be the focus, in which case the military industrial complex still has a good fit, just a new enemy, a constant war against people as it were.

zabzonk 5y ago

Trivia: "Per ardua ad astra" (through hardships to the stars) is the motto of The Royal Air Force (first independent air force). But when it was coined, I don't think they were concerned about satellites being blown up.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Spend less money on spy satellites and more on spies. I wonder how many agents the CIA are running in China?

fuckcensorship 5y ago
Not as many as the CIA might like [1]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ In 2007 and 2008, hackers believed to be from China attacked U.S. satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. In the latter case, they gained control of the craft, but stopped short of issuing it commands. The Russian government, meanwhile, has been accused of widespread, malicious signal jamming, including, in 2018, disrupting GPS transmissions during a NATO exercise in Scandinavia and disabling American surveillance drones in Syria.” Would be so interesting if a nation state ever takes over a future starlink. Definitely cheaper to hack it than rebuild SpaceX.

thefounder 5y ago
>Would be so interesting if a nation state ever takes over a future starlink. What to do with it?
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Only allow their military global internet…
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Access and store any information flowing through it