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It works the same way in space as it does in the ocean. You can mess with other people's stuff under the pretext of doing something legitimate, and you might g
by MichaelCollins 4y ago
It works the same way in space as it does in the ocean. You can mess with other people's stuff under the pretext of doing something legitimate, and you might get away with it or you might provoke a conflict.
It depends on who you are, who you're messing with, who your friends and their friends are, whether they stand to lose face or can pretend they didn't notice it, etc. The US once tried to steal the wreck of an entire Soviet nuclear-armed submarine off the bottom of the ocean (and mostly failed.) The Soviet response was a request to stop talking about it, because it wasn't worth a war and Soviet leadership didn't want to explain the incident to their own public.
- _carbyau_ 4y agoWhich is my point. This isn't just about "removing junk". This is about space capability vs others in space.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoDepends. If they're building satellites that grapple dead satellites, that can certainly be used to attack active satellites too. But laser brooms wouldn't be effective against anything larger than a few centimeters. A space broom might be a cover for a more powerful directed energy weapon, but not necessarily so. Anyway, China is already toying around with the first sort, and they didn't ask anybody for permission. Their 'authority' to do it is being a sovereign nation. https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/sj-21.htm https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/sj-21.htm