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Well, if we've been more or less operating under a peace treaty for 50 odd years but technology and military technology "planning" programs have been pursued th

Well, if we've been more or less operating under a peace treaty for 50 odd years but technology and military technology "planning" programs have been pursued that entire time, well... Yeah, if the gloves come off and all the "planning" projects are "actualized", things are going to change very quickly. Orbit isn't like the ground though. You can see that offense is relatively straightforward (kinetic weapons and lasers), defense is practically impossible (hard to stop lasers and kinetic weapons), and the collateral damage is akin to nuclear fallout: space junk will persist for long after the seconds-long battle lasts. I think what would be necessary is some sort of perverse royal kidnapping: you'd need high-level leaders of space factions have family and friends in all the habitats to dissuade military action. The challenge to settle space is that civilian habitats are extremely vulnerable to extremely basic attacks, and we're simply too warlike. But if we don't even get to the point of space habitats, and a long orbital war poisons near-space with junk, we may have imprisoned ourselves. It almost makes the need to get to mars and the moon even more paramount in the relatively brief armistice in space.

PeterisP 5y ago
LEO junk can't really imprison us. First, LEO junk decays - especially if it's in non-circular orbits such as caused by collisions/explosions; Second, space is large - if LEO is "full" of junk then that means that long-term orbits have a high chance of some collision, preventing us from launching Starlink-like constellations, but launching a rocket through LEO (to e.g. Moon or Mars) would still be reasonable even if it's "full" of junk (i.e. a hundred thousand fragments flying around in undetected orbits) as such amounts of fragments still don't cover that much space, they don't make it impassable, launches would merely become not as safe - if a launch has a 1% chance of exploding because it hits something, that sucks but it does not really imprison us.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Hmm, according to [whee!] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford Fifty years later, in 2013, some of the dipoles that had not deployed correctly still remained in clumps, contributing a small amount of the orbital debris tracked by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office. Their numbers have been diminishing over time as they occasionally re-enter. As of March 2020, 36 clumps of needles were still known to be in orbit. I wouldn't want to be hit by that, while being in not much more than an inflated tin can ;)
nradov 5y ago
Economics are a far greater risk to space habitats than any weapon.

PeterisP 5y ago

LEO junk can't really imprison us. First, LEO junk decays - especially if it's in non-circular orbits such as caused by collisions/explosions; Second, space is large - if LEO is "full" of junk then that means that long-term orbits have a high chance of some collision, preventing us from launching Starlink-like constellations, but launching a rocket through LEO (to e.g. Moon or Mars) would still be reasonable even if it's "full" of junk (i.e. a hundred thousand fragments flying around in undetected orbits) as such amounts of fragments still don't cover that much space, they don't make it impassable, launches would merely become not as safe - if a launch has a 1% chance of exploding because it hits something, that sucks but it does not really imprison us.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Hmm, according to [whee!] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford Fifty years later, in 2013, some of the dipoles that had not deployed correctly still remained in clumps, contributing a small amount of the orbital debris tracked by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office. Their numbers have been diminishing over time as they occasionally re-enter. As of March 2020, 36 clumps of needles were still known to be in orbit. I wouldn't want to be hit by that, while being in not much more than an inflated tin can ;)

nradov 5y ago

Economics are a far greater risk to space habitats than any weapon.