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China Tests Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon
schnippy writes "U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China has successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon by destroying one of their old weather satellites. The test, if confirmed, would be an order of magnitude more provocative than earlier reports of Chinese blinding lasers being. Arms Control Wonk has a good writeup on what this will mean for U.S. policy."
Or is it OK for the USA to have it but no one else ? I suppose it depends on who you consider the bad guys. I note that China has invaded fewer countries in the last 50 years than the USA has ... so what is the answer to the question ?
The problem is two fold. Initially, it the debris now clogging up the orbit. This will cause damage to other satellites, possibly knocking them out completely (debris is a huge problem in space).
Secondly, it opens up an arms race in space, with money thrown into space weapons research, testing, and bigger and heavier weaponry.
I do disagree with some of the conclusions drawn in the article (the author was berating a Short sighted Chinese government for development of space weaponry). The US has quite active in the ASAT department for some time. The only reason the politicians didt create some treaty to ban or restrict research was that there was no space arms race. So, rather than sign up a treaty and lead saying We can do it, but we wont, if you wont, they went ahead, and now people are surprised that other sovereign nations are doing exactly the same thing.
Yes, another arms race is a bad thing, but it was all avoidable if the politicians on the US side had actually had the foresight to pull up a treaty in the first place, rather than going ahead believing they would remain the only show in town.
And this is different from any other country how? Maybe they feel it's just about time for China, the largest and oldest nation on earth, to keep up with the competition?
c++;
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I dont see the USA caring all that much for the environment nor global warming Censorship is on the rise also, particularly of scientists "do as i say, not as i do" anyone?
America first, dude! A dictator in the whitehouse, military running amok all over the middle east (watch this space), global warming contributions, funamentalist influence. Don't act like the US is some beacon of how a country should be run. To the rest of the west it's quite the opposite. I apologise if this sounds like an anti-US rant, but I guess it technically is, as it's countering an anti-Chinese rant by demonstrating the hypocrisy employed by many people with regard to not acknowledging their own country's short comings, and jumping on another's.
i find the reaction among american media sources stunning, Its as tho the chinese premier had taken a shit in the white house garden. American military spending approaches 500 billion dollars a year. Chinese military spending verges on 90 billion. While it was irresponsible for the chinese to have endangered orbital vehicles, it is nowhere near the chest beating call to war that some of the linked articles have made it out to be.
prepare the survey weasels.
Things like censorship, product safety, military issues, global warming contributions, and anything that seems enough of a problem to become a law in western countries should be forced upon the Chinese government.
Half of these things the US is guilty of:
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
I certainly won't claim that China wouldn't have pressed ahead with its anti-sattelite weapon if the US hadn't stated space hegemony as its policy objective, but in terms of being provocative it really seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The US space policy is confrontational if nothing else.
I'm fairly confident that the recently unveiled US space policy caused a massive "Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" response among China, Russia, India, and perhaps others too.
It is a provocation in the same way any new weapon is a provocation, but the response won't be military or economic. The response will be that the US starts upgrading their own anti-satellite weapon if they have not already done so and building in more stealth features to their old satellites. This starts a potential arms race, but that is it. Even then, I doubt it is going to be much of a race. The US has had known anti-satellite weapons for decades. It probably has other still classified anti-satellite weapons waiting in the wings as well.
The real 'provocation' in this is what it means for Taiwan. The US has been quietly backing away from its promise to defend the democracy of Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion. Even now, the prospect of fighting over Taiwan makes the US uneasy. The US could certainly win today, but it would be far more bloody and dramatically more costly then Iraq. Such a war would have both nations getting itchy nuclear weapon trigger fingers. Now, to top it all off, China has the capacity to knock down US satellites making the military game much more dangerous while at the same time offering up a way to put a real hurt on American economic interests.
It is a good old fashion Mexican standoff. A war between the US and China is a war that both sides could lose (read that as going nuclear). Even if both sides agreed to take nuclear weapons off the table, the economic damage done to the US would only be matched by the massive economic destruction wrought on China. The whole issue is messy and ugly, and it is coming to a head. China WILL make a move again Taiwan in the next 10 years.
Well, technically, photons have kinetic energy too (even though they have no mass): E=hf.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It's as funny as nations conducting nuclear testing on their own soil!
Wait, that wasn't really funny at all. Maybe you had to be there.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Well, countries as well as people vary in the degree to which they can recognize enlightened self interest.
Throwing your weight around is not always the best way to get what you want, a lessone we've had to relearn here in the US these past few years.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Neither America nor China can afford a cold war. The cold war was born of a different political climate, post world war two, such a situation is unlikely to recurr. For one thing China has no Stalin. Contrary to what american politions were claiming, every soviet leader after Stalin tried to bring the cold war to and end, it was America's refusal to take part that messed each event, and it only ended when the USSR collapsed, which as it turns out was the worst way for it to possibly end, bar a war. The most they were able to do was agree not to blow up the entire world.
In light of the stated goal of the US to dominate space militarily, this is not something the can bitch about. China can legitimatelly argue, as the US would, that they are merely improving their ability to defend themselves.
> Censorship - Look at the things your government does eg censorship of games,
Violent games are not political speech in any meaninful way.
> trying to prevent flag burning,
When has the US ever tried to prevent flag burning. That would be very dangerous ground -- flag burning, although repugnant, is inherently an essential form of protected political speech, and MUST be permitted -- but I must have missed that news item, because I was not aware of its having happened. Can you cite an example?
> monitoring citizens/bloggers etc
Okay, monitoring is a privacy issue. Granted. Although comparing it with China's vigorous political censorship program is a bit... over the top. Nonetheless, it *is* an issue.
> Product safety - Right...
Agreed, the OP was being stupid on that one.
> Military issues - Whose government is an international joke for the wars it starts?
Germany, but I don't see how that's relevant here.
> Global warming
A stupid complaint also, yes.
> Forcing their government what to do - They are a soverign nation, not the 51st State of the USA
Agreed. We can't force anything. All we can do, at most, is break off relations. Which even at that could be construed as a little extreme.
We *should* be a little less timid about publically saying what we think about some of their more inane policies, however. The One China policy springs immediately to mind.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Throwing your weight around is not always the best way to get what you want, a lesson we need to learn here in the US.
T,FTFY.
Secondly, it opens up an arms race in space, with money thrown into space weapons research, testing, and bigger and heavier weaponry.
Why do people keep thinking this is new? It's not. The only new thing is that it's China doing it.
The USA successfully tested an anti-satellite missile over twenty years ago. And when I mean "successfully tested," I mean we did just what the Chinese did here: destroyed an actual satellite in actual orbit around the actual earth. And it wasn't something like NMD, where we had to test it a dozen times to get a single kill. There was one test, and it just worked.
The Soviets had a working anti-satellite program even earlier than that, basically big fragmentation warheads that they'd launch into a matching orbit and then maneuver into kill range of the target satellite. Seven interceptions. Hell, the Soviets even launched (unsuccessfully) an armed orbital battle station.
All of this was decades ago. So why the fears of opening up an arms race?
OTOH, throwing your weight around is usually a good way to get what you want. A lesson that the US, China, and many other countries know.
You know Russia and Canada are both larger then China right? Heck the US is almost the same size depending if you count Taiwan
d _outlying_territories_by_area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_an
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