DelayedReaction

Via Slashdot:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTe..._040330-1.html

I'm not sure how I feel about weapons in space. From a cost standpoint America is already overwhelmingly powerful, and spending additional money on orbital arms really doesn't seem necessary. In addition, the latest trend is towards heavily urbanized environments. What good is an orbiting death ray when your targets are hiding in a densly populated area?

On the other hand, the military value of space-based weapons is immense. Being able to strike at a target with near impunity is a universal goal, and the psychological effect of having fire rain down from the sky is pretty intense.

I would prefer space remain unweaponized. Despite the stratgic value and utter coolness factor, space should be commercialized before it is militarized. Putting that money into developments that would benefit everyone, and not just defense, would be more beneficial to society.

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Midnight_Son

On the other hand, if we had enough weapons up there…when Jesus descends from heaven, we could blow his ass back home. I for one would be all for that!

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Church

Yep, its the Star Wars program as Bush calls it. This has been cycling around the media for a while now, I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

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shakran

it was dreamed up by Reagan's boys actually, and it was stupid then and it's stupid now. They can't pass their accuracy tests even when they cheat, yet Bush wants to implement it anyway.

Just like he wants to be on mars by 2012, but he's cutting NASA's research budget so they can't do the research they need to in order to put us there. The man is simply not grounded in reality.

Cynthetiq

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Phaenx

I figured the Democrats would be against an orbiting death ray. I don't know what the world has come to when young men don't want a fucking death ray.

Wtf.

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bparker805

Thanks! That was some good stuff!

balderdash111

I think these systems would also suffer from 2 critical vulnerabilities:

1) ground-based weapons that can take out satellites (e.g., a beam of some sort). Are these possible today? Satellites move fast, but also very predictably, and I think most of the countries against whom these weapons would be used also have the ability to track satellites.

2) space-based anti-satellite weapons. from what I understand, it's much easier to knock out a satellite from space than it is to knock out a missile from space. So satellite-killers would be more effective than the satellites they are killing.

shakran

option 2 is much more plausible. Option 1 requires sending an energy beam (usually a laser) through the atmosphere at the satellite. Trouble with this is that as the laser heats the air around it it can create a condition called thermal blooming, which causes the laser to dissipate all its energy before it hits the sat. Also, if a laser were to hit something in the atmosphere on the way up (bird, parachutist, pilot) it would cause a rather dazzling explosion which could, if close enough, blind anyone who happened to be looking in that direction. Plus, such a system would be ineffective on cloudy, hazy, or smoggy days.

DelayedReaction

I've heard of Star Wars before, I just never really payed that much attentiont to it (it was killed while I was in middle school). From a technological standpoint, we've made significant progress in terms of lasers and whatnot since the 1980's.

I'm wondering about things from a social standpoint, as opposed to a technological one.

Nice one cnor.

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Arc101

Well with Bush's mini nuke programme, his chemical and biological programme and now this I'm wondering just how many ways he needs to destroy the earth !

Mephisto2

I thought the militization of space was outlawed by an international treaty?


Mr Mephisto

mingusfingers

Frickin stupid. Just like the missile defence program, just wasted taxes.

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DelayedReaction

You're not allowed to use weapons of mass destruction in space, but there's nothing against orbiting death rays. Death rays are neither nuclear, chemical, nor biological in nature. Well, they could be nuclear powered, but that doesn't make it a WMD.

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Arc101

Yeah but I would have thought you would have realised that treaties are for other countries to obey, Bush is above such things

kutulu

Bush doesn't give a fuck if there is a treaty.

denim

If we don't care about the "shielding", then that doesn't matter, does it.


Even military research benefits everyone, eventually. We can make a long list of such benefits if you like.

Space will be "weaponized". That's not a question. The question is, who will do it. Would you prefer the Chinese get to it before others?

denim

And it doesn't have to be anything like that. Have none of you heard of "Thor"?

Thor is a theoretical space-based weapon which just sits in orbit once it is deployed. It consists of 10m iron rods equiped with attitude rockets for aiming purposes.

At need, Thor can be brought down on any building, destroying it only minutes after the decision is made. There is no real defense against this except a VERY DEEP bunker, maybe. Given the terminal velocity of the dumb iron, the force involved would be like a small nuke IIRC, but w/o radiation. It'd look like a nuke, too. And it should be fairly cheap.

Just about any kind of mass would work for this: rock, iron, frozen water, asteroid material, whatever.

Yakk

Denim, by "fairly cheap" you mean "millions of dollars per tonne, just to get the damn thing into orbit". =p~

But yes, Thor is a classic in military science fiction. In one particular one (Footfall), the Thor's where programmed with a simple targetting AI that aimed themselves at a random "tank-shape" near their target location. Drop 20 of them at a bunch of tanks, and there goes the cavalry.

I think the point of militarizing space is it places American military assets out of range of people who don't have huge military budgets. Huge military budgets require a state, which can be attacked. A cruiser can be damaged for a few k dollars.

However, I find this position has issues. We really care far less about military assets than we do about civilian assets. And if civilian assets are in striking range, while military assets are out of range, why did we hide the military assets again?

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shakran

re: Thor

how are you supposed to keep it from vaporizing due to friction?

denim

Build it appropriately. That's not a big issue, just a matter of engineering. Ask an aerospace engineer. If you want an existing solution, try an ablative layer like on the old NASA capsules, or tiles like Shuttle. Or just make it bigger. Again, ask an appropriate engineer.

Again, it will happen: space will be militarized, even if it's started by commercial interests. They have to protect their assets, if nothing else.

denim

If you use NASA's methods and personnel, yes. But there are others working on the problem, and their results are much cheaper.

Yes, that's one "place" it was used, sure. But Niven and Pournelle were using someone else's idea there. Note what they did with "Orion", for another example of such an idea.

orphen

well, Microsoft has been collecting money to build their deathstar for a while now, i'm suprised you guys have realized that already. when they build their deathstar, everyone will have to buy windows product or else they will threaten to blow up the earth.. i mean, where do you think all that money you pay for windows is being invested? the interenet? bah~ it's the deathstar i say!

skier

I have a sneaky suspicion bill gates is saving up to buy a small country.

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denim

I have a suspicion he wants to buy the Moon.

BuddyHawks

OH NO, not SKYNET!!! Havn't we learned ANYTHING from Terminiator!?!?!

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Macheath

The human race doesn't currently have the maturity to put any kind of weapon into space. The proof - we can't even clean up the JUNK that's already orbiting the earth.

In orbit, a chip of paint is like a bullet and we can't even deal with that. All we can do is "track" it. Hell we don't even bother to get used oxygen tanks down from that dump, Mount Everest.

I foresee a future where the earth has a Saturn-like ring of garbage - history's greatest monument to impulsive sloppiness and aggression. The only question is, how lethal we want our malfunctioning rubbish ring to be to all life on earth?

Walson

So we use our space-based weapons to blow the crap out of the all that garbage.... good target practice for the inevitable asteroids if you ask me

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Astrocloud

Also featured in Akira where the military DID attempt to kill the messiah (of sorts)




Since we have the best standing Armed Forces in the world... I'm just wondering what the cost would be and if it justifies the need...

SVT01Cobra

I'll believe it when I see it.

Sounds too much like Reagan's "Star Wars" program to me.