Slashdot Mirror
The United States Space Arsenal
ntmokey writes "When China tested a missile on its own satellite in January, the nation's aggressive statement immediately raised eyebrows among the world's other space-faring nations. Popular Mechanics looks at the implications of a conflict in space — including debris that could render space unusable for decades — and examines the United States' own space arsenal."
Whatever happened to the Strategic Defense Initiative?
The United States' Space Arsenal.
It really makes no sense for one state to be united.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Most spacecraft -- including spy sats -- are in low Earth orbit, which stretches 1240 miles into space. As the Chinese test proved, such targets could be hit with medium-range missiles tipped with crude kill devices. GPS satellites are far higher, orbiting at about 12,600 miles. Many communications sats are in the 22,000-mile range. Destroying them requires a much more powerful and sophisticated long-range ballistic missile
Most of the strategic targets are in a much safer place, sure they could easily knock out our spy satellites, but there are alternatives to those.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
What's that?
Judging by how humanity acts on Earth it was a logical step to bring war to space as sad as that is. what happened was China took out one of their clunky near-dead weather satellite with a missile [kinetic warhead I believe] which basically tore the hell out of it with sheer speed and mass. They failed a few times before but by the rate their military spending is going it wont be long before they actually out pace us [if not already] this combined with their long standing rivalry with us on economic, political and cyberspace issues we very much need to watch this a lot closer than Iraq/war on terror because of the real implications of possible future conflict.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
What I'd like to know is what can we do to clean up the space junk that is already up there? I know eventually everything will burn up in the atmosphere, but that could take hundreds of years. Maybe I've watched a few too many Sci-Fi shows, but could they send up a satellite to look for some debris and zap it with a laser to vaporize it?
What happens if we set of a nuke in the upper atmosphere? Will debris be vaporized? Would it cause other problems? Maybe I'm just being naive, but I think we need to think about this.
P.S. Space Roomba?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
What -could- be considered shocking is that they'd litter their own skies with junk debris, thus making it harder for them (and everyone else) to use space in the future.
Why worry so much about space junk? Just push for affordable private sector space flight, and before you know it, you'll have soverterestrial salvage crews!
Take a sheet about a mile wide and hold it at all 4 corners and basically grab everything while you set up an orbit that basically covers a big part of the earth.
Then when it's full, you tie four corners together, and drop it on china.
Frickin' commies.
Better there than here.
Reagan was a moderate who stopped the hardliners like his vice-president Bush from arming space. Instead he listened to his people and worked towards arms reduction which ended the cold war.
He also didn't change his policy when he was shot by a complete looney.
Where did all the moderates go? Even Obama seems like a hardliner to me.
a war in space
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/ 4218443.html?do=print
And if you need a laugh
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070627 [proof al gore invented the internet]
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
To build and maintain those robots.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
so if china does it it's shocking, i wonder what it'd be called if you yanks did it
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
But I guess he looks pretty good compared to the current fella.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
And not because it is about China so don't assume the comment is rascist.
Look it up in wikipedia.org and who owns the magazine.
Right now the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Eurasia and Asia are jockeying for who will be the next big power, the next Pax Romanum of the modern world.
It's clear to everyone but Americans that the USA will become a cross between Brazil, Mexico and Russia, e.g. dysfunctional, within the next 25 years, and so a successor is needed.
No one wants to acknowledge this little war of ours on earth, but we're getting ready with spying, infowar and infoterror units, military hacking units and of course virtual realities.
Who's going to win? Whoever can stop playing pussyfoot and acknowledge the goal first, of course. My money is on the Chinese or Europeans.
Anti-Globalism
"Today the United States blew up one of it's satellite creating an expanding cloud of debris. It's purpose was to show to the world it's military might and not to fuck around with them."
Yeah, I think shocking would cover it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The 4th of freaking July!
we would call it history We yanks have had the demonstrated ability to shoot down satellites for more than 20 years.
What's shocking about the Chinese effort is that most folks tend to underestimate them in the progress they've made in their space program. What they don't take into account is that they are able to stand on the shoulders of giants...they won't need nearly as much time to develop theirs as we did since most of the "hard work" of basic designs and calcs has already been done and is readily available in textbooks. All it takes is money and will at this point...something they have plenty of due to the trade imbalance and their desire to be taken seriously as a world power.
Of course. "We Have Always Been At War With Eurasia."
I forget the name but it was written years and years ago. It's from the perspective of a young canadian watching the first return trip to space since WWIII. He thinks back to how things were before the war, the assumptions made around the globe. The US and USSR were so intent on mutually annihilating each other that no concern was given to any other nation, including the one most of the warheads would be flying over. The Canadians developed a secret WWIII plan. Special tunnels were carved into mountains, angled at the trajectories the missiles would be sure to follow over the pole. Gigantic atom bombs were created in a secret program. These bombs were placed at the bottom of the tunnels and the intervening space was filled with aerodynamic shrapnel. When the button was finally pushed and the missiles flew on their way, the Canadians pressed a button of their own. Their bombs went off and powered what were essentially giant shotguns, blasting debris into unstable orbits. The blast destroyed most of the warheads in the first exchange and continued to remove large fractions of each subsequent exchange. There was a bit of luck with bombers being more vulnerable to interception than prewar doctrine had anticipated with the net result being both sides running out of weapons before civilization was destroyed.
So our narrator is watching the first rocket trying to get back into space in the twenty years since the war. The night sky is still full of shooting stars as the debris comes back down into the atmosphere. All but the highest of the pre-war satellites were destroyed and nothing new has been able to survive making it through the shrapnel cloud. The thought is that most of it will deorbit in the next hundred or so years. The hope is that armored rockets might be able to survive impacts. The narrator sees this new rocket struck by debris and destroyed, the astronauts lost along with it. Mankind survived the war but lost space in the process.
The story probably isn't as scientifically accurate as one could hope but it still has emotional impact, an visceral truthiness.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think the threat from a debris only weapon (small tungsten carbide balls/cubes?) is something a rogue nation can do cheaply .. no need to develop sophisticated technology other than being able to get up into space.
Parting a little from the premise of the article's main idea, I can't help but point this out...
With the mention of "space debris", making space unusable: Well, wouldn't this give us a brief glimpse into the possible job descriptions of the future? Crews of "space garbagemen" drifting off into the abyss to clean up this debris.
It seems quite interesting to think about it. What new occupations will arise if space, or another planet were conquered and colonized? Would there be scores of men, eager to become a part of this great new frontier? Will they become unionized?
We can only speculate.
... that I get to reference a nearly 50 year old article as insightful commentary on the issue of today.
In the Feb 4, 1958 issue of The Atlanta Constitution noted historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote about just this issue. He represented that the competition with china over space as if it were a game of football was a perilous and ill considered game.
Now if some kind soul would just tell me where to get the text of that article I would be immensely grateful.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Actually, The Elements of Style expressly contradicts you. It states that one should use the form "Chris's book" unless the proper noun is a biblical persona. So "Moses' book" or "Jesus' book" is proper.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
A US fighter pilot has accidentally shot down a LEO satellite some years ago with a regular air to air missile.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I can hear Farnsworth already: "Maybe we bring all that debris down with some sort of space elevator!"
(I'm not aiming for this to be flamebait)
> Of course, it helped that the enemy that we faced was morally bankrupt
> and couldn't have possibly won the cold war.
Yup, but the genuis of RWR was in realizing that the way to defeat the Soviets was by breaking the taboo on SAYING that. Before Reagan 'all right thinking people' believed: (or were too afraid to disagree with in public)
1. That socialism was the future.
2. That the Cold War was either just a dick size contest between two 'great powers; equally bent on world domination' or just the death rattle of the West as we finally accepted the socialist future. Basically either a moral equivelence or the West as villian.
Reagan was having none of that crap, he pronounced the Soviets as "The focus of evil in the modern world", "destined for the dustbin of history" and summed up the Cold Was simply as "We win, they lose."
By actually saying these things it forced people to either accept it or argue against it. Because when the Cold War was just a dick size contest most of Europe could straddle the fence or even dangle their feet over the wall onto the Soviet side. But once Reagan called em 'Evil" those people had few choices. Argue that they weren't evil (a very hard argument to make) or admit it and say "yay evil!" Morally bankrupt people (the French come to mind) don't mind making a deal with the devil, so long as people don't KNOW they are making a deal with the devil, appearances matter.
So yes, SDI, the defense buildup, the 600 ship navy, etc. helped financially bankrupt the Soviets. Arming the Afgans and causing the 'invincibility' of the Soviet military machine to come into question helped defeat the Soviets. But the biggest weapon was the Will & the Word. Ronald reagan's having the courage and clarity of moral vision to speak truth to power forced Evil to retreat.
The current problem's solution is equally obvious.
Democrat delenda est
Peace makes for bad press and doesn't sell newspapers. At first there was a huge discussion in the media and such about putting weapons in space. So when Reagan began arms reduction talks after the Star Wars program was cancelled it barely made news...?
This is probably just to justify the increasing military spendings in the US. If anything, the Americans should be celebrating that the Chinese is around 20 years behind in this field of weaponry.
Please also look at this article I found:
According to Wikipedia, too, China has been trying to negotiate with the US on banning space weapons. Yet the US would rather not do it.
Of course, don't expect any of this to be on your local newspaper...
...their long standing rivalry with us on economic, political and cyberspace issues we very much need to watch this a lot closer than Iraq/war on terror because of the real implications of possible future conflict. Why are we assuming it's all about us? Could the Chinese have other concerns than trying to match the US militarily?If I were the Chinese leadership, I'd be more scared of my own people. Look at it from their point of view: the US does not seem to be able to get it's political leadership together to really crush someone since WWII. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, etc. ( Ok, we crushed Grenada, but they could have been taken out by the SWAT team from any major US city )
But their own people are becoming more educated, wealthier, and more connected. They are slowly becoming a middle class, which as any historian can tell you, is the group that usually starts successful revolutions. The current leadership remembers Tienamin Square. The people who survived that are starting to reach middle age, and maybe thinking of trying again, but this time with better planning and better communications. If they start a revolution, it would sure be nice to be able to cut of all communication with the rest of the world in 24 hours.
...when he said "Great, kid. Don't get cocky"
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Popular Mechanics looks at the implications of a conflict in space -- including debris that could render space unusable for decades
If there is a conflict big enough to F-up space, I am sure that there will be far worse problems back home such that space junk would be the least of our worries.
Table-ized A.I.
Heh, no. There are no air-to-air missiles in the U.S. inventory with enough energy to do it "accidentally"...the AIM-54 (phoenix) would be the only one that would *remotely* have a snowball's chance in hell of making it that high, and you'd have to put the plane into a ballistic profile at max attainable altitude to do it..hardly an "accidental" scenario. Even then, there's no way the phoenix would have enough umph to go the additional 100+ miles straight up (I'd have to do the calcs to figure it's max altitude, and I'm feeling lazy tonight...but since it only has a max *horizontal* range of a little over 100 miles it's pretty clear that traveling 100 miles vertically against gravity isn't going to happen)...especially considering it only has aerodynamic surfaces for guidance so there'd be no way for it to maintain course at extreme altitude and would corkscrew wildly like an inflated balloon that's been let go to fly about the room while the solid booster was burning. Not to mention the F-14 (the only plane that carried the missile) doesn't have an optimal thrust/weight ratio that would provide best initial energy to the missile. The YF-12 was to carry a predecessor phoenix called the AIM-47 that had a bit longer range, but it's basically the same story besides the fact that both were very short-lived projects. The Soviets, on the other hand, had a couple of missiles that might have come closer...the ones that were designed to kill the SR-71. A decent write-up on several of these missiles can be found here though I haven't cross-checked all the facts for accuracy.
n ). That was a specially-made missile for the task..and its success was no accident.
Instead, I think you are referring to the ASAT tests conducted by the Air Force using a F-15 in the 1980's (I linked it in my post above, but here it is again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapo
David Parnas, a Software Scientist, who formerly served on SDI Committees and who had no moral qualms about death and destricion ended up quitting SDI and debunking it when he realized the whole program wasn't plausible and a huge waste. It still isn't BTW, but politicians don't get science: billions of dollars regularly flushed down the toilet after it.
e rs/parnas_acm_85.pdfd /
http://klabs.org/richcontent/software_content/pap
http://www.wordyard.com/2007/01/05/parnas-sdi/fee
What? All of it?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
so if china does it it's shocking, i wonder what it'd be called if you yanks did it
Decades old history?
I wasnt aware the chinese public could privately build anything that the chinese government would consider worthy of building an anti-satellite defense system.
> so if china does it it's shocking, i wonder what it'd be called if you yanks did it
Successful. If by "you yanks" you mean the US Air Force. They launched the Vought ASM-135A ASAT against a "retired communications satellite" from an F-15 in 1985 and killed it. Note this was an air launched weapon (the "could this be next?" question on the article), not rocket launched as was the Chinese weapon.
If by "you yanks" you mean the US scientists who were at the time using the Solwind research satellite that the USAF actually shot down, I suppose it'd be called "what the fuck happened to our satellite?", until they figured out what happened. At that point it probably became "what the fuck did you do that to our satellite for?"
Since the official story is still that they shot down a retired communications satellite, rather than acknowledging the actual kill (the answer to the above questions being essentially "What satellite? Shut the fuck up."), we've no way to know if they missed their target and the ASAT locked onto Solwind by mistake, or if they just took out a target of opportunity that wouldn't cost them anything. Both are disturbing in their own way.
There's also no word on how much debris was created by Solwind's destruction. The US Space Surveillance Network knows they answer, but they're not saying. They are, after all, operated primarily by the USAF.
Although the ASM-135A ASAT project was cancelled soon after the Solwind kill, there's no reason to expect the USAF stopped ASAT development. The ASM-135A was built from an AGM-69 SRAM and Vought Scout B fourth stage (a Thiokol Altair III motor). These had both been operational for more than a decade when they put the ASAT together. They could have used much newer and more powerful, already operational hardware the very next day, taking it off the active armament shelf, bypassing the messy PR problem of using a defense contractor directly and so having to admit they launched something. The Vought project proved the feasibility based on older hardware. The US military doesn't readily let go of a proven idea they deem necessary unless it has something better to replace it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Even if he did invent the "I don't remember" defense from the drugs-for-arms Iran-Contra scandal which all the republicans use now. Do you remember Iran-Contra? Then how can you comment?
If you don't believe he was a moderate, research the 1980 primaries. He ran as a moderate when Bush sided with the reactionary right wing. He chose Bush as his running mate because he knew it would cinch the elections and unite the republican party.
Since Reagan, have you noticed all the vice presidents have been people nobody would ever want as president on either side?
So what is the story about? The United States' space arsenal, or the weapons tests conducted in outer space by China?
There kinda is a difference between the two.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I read the article, and it failed to specify which state has united to build an anti-satellite weapons arsenal.
Or perhaps the trained chimps who who are the editors/janitors for slashdot meant United States', but are too hampered by crippling illiteracy to know how to apply punctuation correctly so as to indicate plural possessive. That's OK though, because it's not like they're being paid to be editors, right?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Come on guys.
One big difference was the altitude of the test.
The US ASAT test occurred at an altitude of approximately 530 Km - most of the debris re-entered withing 2-3 years.
The Chinese ASAT test occurred at roughly 1400 Km - most of that debris will remain up there for decades.
I don't really attribute this to a greater responsibility on the part of the US - it's simply the altitude band they chose to target due to the interesting stuff that flies there. On the other hand, I have no idea why the Chinese chose such a stupid target.
s/"knows your there"/"knows you\'re there"/
Mea culpa.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You're right that Reagan left office with the biggest deficit ever, but he also set in motion the policies (hint: NOT trickle-down economics) that birthed the boom-time 1990's.
As for icy relations with Russia, after the Russian El Al bombing, Reagan had every chance to 'push the button' against Moscow, or if not go nuclear, start sinking ships and submarines. What did Reagan do? Talk to the Kremlin.
Reagan was also one of the most staunch supporters of the Polish Solidarnosë movement, leading to the end of Polish dictatorship. The Poles, today, are talking about a Mount Rushmore-like memorial to those who spearheaded the movement. Reagan is to be enshrined there as well.
Even Reagan's spending was marginally understandable in historical context. Because of MAD policies, the only way to avert nuclear holocaust was to out-spend the Russians and assure them that their destruction would be total and complete. And in doing so, Reagan served to stimulate the economy on many levels.
He may not have been the best president, but he was certainly a good one; one of the best of the 20th Century.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
We need MEGAMAID!
Since I already modded a different section of the topic, I'm forced to reply anonymously. I was thinking of just modding you as troll, but that would be incorrect - you're just flat out wrong.
The economy isn't tanking, but the overall population isn't benefiting. Median salary has increased by less than inflation in the last 5-6 years, while average salary has gone up. Employees are taking on more risks by having to pay larger health insurance premiums with larger deductibles. What does this mean? The wealthy are getting wealthier, the middle class is getting squeezed. Not the epitome of a tanking economy, but it ain't pretty either.
We don't have the capability of dealing with another war. According to the generals of the Army Reserve, we are at a breaking point with the troops - essentially, we can't stretch the troops any thinner than we are doing now without significantly lowering the quality of the overall force. Another war can only be fought by withdrawing troops from Iraq, which would mean we're essentially giving up on Iraq. Furthermore, just nuking a place is not a proper response either. You've apparently forgotten the saying "War is just diplomacy with other means." Nuking another country would mean we'd essentially be pariahs for the foreseeable future. Is that the price you want to pay? I suspect you'll be like every other warhawk who is now clamoring for a troop return because the war isn't working: too stupid to see the consequences of your actions, but not afraid of blaming others for when the chickens come home to roost.
We're not defenseless. But we're also incapable of dealing with a significant challenge in another country - not unless we just pull up shop and move the troops elsewhere. And don't forget that those troops have been redeployed at least once, and are probably on an 18 months tour right now. Life is indeed not bad. But if you think that we can do anything to Iran outside of diplomatic pressure, you're just as ignorant as Bush was when he ordered the invasion of Iraq. And the consequences would be similarly disastrous.
Is that those giant of yours were standing on the shoulder of a few genocidial mother fucker , otherwise named the Nazi. Ever heard of V2 and V1 ? The US and Soviet hand picked the scientist which were involved in those program and made their own space programs/ballistic missile programs out of it. Sure Von Braun after the fact said he was "forced" by the nazi but as far as we can tell between 1940 and 1944 he was not working on the "Vergeltswaffe" program with a revolver pointed in the back. He could very well have said that he would give up the program instead of entering the NSDAP (otherwise known as Nazi party). He could have given up way earlier. But at each point he continued. Which in my opinion make him as bad as his "masters" especially knowing the condition those stuff were built , tested. And what did he do after the war ? Continue working on wewaponry (primarly) this time for the US.
The history of space and missile does not start with being on the shoulder of giant, it starts by being a really awful shame.
Truman was a surprise (though he was very low rated in his day). Sense then they have learned to select better (worse) V.P.s
Johnson was another exception. Kennedy selected well, no one but a madman or Johnson himself would have considered assassinating JFK. But again lessons were learned, which is why no matter what happens Hillary will not be V.P. No one has that kind of death wish.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'll be happy to go around collecting space trash.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not shocking, nor were the Chinese ever underestimated from Australia's point of view. Our stock market has been mirroring China's more than the US markets for quite a while (read strongly in the past 3 years) now. Our current wealth has been generated by supplying them with raw materials, with a very high demand (they consume faster than we can supply) for the last 10 years. Our universities have had agreements in place for well over ten years now.
At what point did it become shocking?
.
Learn how to use a gorram apostrophe. This is pathetic. States is plural, the headline should read "The United States' Space Arsenal."
Which new country is this we're talking about?
The United State's means the United State owns x not the United States' owns x
Anyway it was China that shot the sat. down not the good ole Uncle Sam... I know I don't like Bush's policies but I'd rather trust the US with space weaponary than China. (Though not by a fat lot....)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
A 0.3mm paint fleck nearly penetrated an armoured glass window. A ball bearing sized projectile is going to penetrate *any* conventional armour. If you were able to launch a spaceship that *did* have 10m thick armour in order to resist a ball bearing, then an attacker could use a bunch of projectiles the size of an apple. And so on. The point is that it doesn't scale: an attacker always has a huge advantage and it's easy and cheap for them to outgun you with something that'll put a hole in your assets...
People talk about the possibility of space debris as an unforeseen consequence of blowing up things in space. This is possibly a narrow focus. Currently, the US has a lot more to lose than China (or any other country) if space should suddenly become unusable. The possibility that most of the readers here are missing is that China may have been using this weapon in part to see how much junk they could generate from a single kill. In this respect, one of their contingencies may be "scorched space" policy where, if they know they cannot achieve dominance in space during a military conflict, they can now actually calculate a number of satellites that have to be blown up in order to level the playing field by choking it with debris.
"...by the rate their military spending is going it wont be long before they actually out pace us [if not already]..."
i tary-report_n.htm
That turns out not to be the case. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-11-mil
Note that the USA spent about $529 billion on armaments in 2006, whereas China spent nearly $50 billion - maybe 9 percent as much, 9.5 percent at most. When you bear in mind that China has about four times as many people as the USA, the disparity becomes even more glaring. At least the USA no longer spends more on arms than the rest of the world combined. In 2006 it contributed a mere 46% of the world total.
As one reader of US Today's article ("The Mick") points out: "The United States spends $40 per person on defense for every $1 China does. I don't see why China's spending is such a big deal particularly because it not only has a large land mass to defend, but it borders on near-lawless Afghanistan and a few near-lawless former members of the Soviet Union".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"We are the Borg... Life as you know it has ended... Your purpose is now to service us... Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own... Resistance is futile..."
Top dictionaries are listing a pronunciation of "nuclear" that rhymes with secular, so people who mispronounced it can now point to a respected dictionary and be vindicated.
Same way "gigabyte" got a hard G.
Same way "dissect" got a long I.
Same way every word changed, and why we don't speak like we are from hundreds of years ago.
Putting an apostrophe on the possessive of "it" is rampant on the internet. It'll lead the way for a change in the apostrophe rule. The new rule will be "do whatever you want, grammar is not important and we love your expression of individuality."
Maybe all the high-energy debris will protect the earth from a killer-meteor better than an Areosmith-inspired Bruce Willis.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
What you say may indeed be true, but it nicely steps around WHY the US would do this.
The US/Bush is trying to save Iraq for the US's/Bush's own benefit, not Iraq's. Over the past few years, more troops have been installed there, and more military infrastructure has been assembled. The US has basically controlled the Iraqi government to the point that the US will NOT be asked to leave. WHY? The US wants a major military base in continual operation in the middle East. (Saudi Arabia allowing the US some airfields doesn't cut it.)
So... we (the US) wouldn't "save" Iran because we've already pumped an insane amount of time & money into our new base in Iraq. We wouldn't "save" North Korea because the US already has military might through bases in South Korea.
Perhaps China rigged their test to panic us into accellerating our defense spending in hopes of causing our economy to collapse. Where have I heard this one before?
Have gnu, will travel.
I nearly sprayed coffee through my nose when I misread the headline as "Space Arse"
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I like your style, the condescension is palpable.
x .cfm?page=805687t vi/SETVI3AP.html
The problem in that "United States" is SINGULAR not plural as you seem to think.
Should you wish to retract your previous rant, I will allow you the opportunity to do so before I draw attention to the fact that you went through the process of constructing a particularly nasty rant that was, in fact, completely wrong.
It's ok, I'm sure you're not the first person to say something so stupid.
Here are some links you can read so you know why you're wrong, and can therefore avoid saying something stupid like this again in the future.
www.bartleby.com/68/32/6232.html
http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/inde
www.uwm.edu/Dept/English/wcenter/WCO4/handouts/se
Like I said, it's ok. You can't be expected to know everything, although you should know what the fuck you're talking about if you're going to rant like you did. Too bad you didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, huh? Now you look like a pedantic ass who is too stupid to be correct when he's engaging in pedantry.
No it was not Ron's SDI plan to defend earth from us
No it was not FDR's Lend-Lease plan for EU
No it was not JFK's Domino/Containment plan you
No it was not Bush's Fear-oppression plan for US
YES! It was George C Marshall's "European Recovery Plan" [AKA: The Marshall Plan]
Folks it really is all about economics and education to create or waste for the very-long-run.
The past few to many decades we have waste economics for prophet (I know) and greed, but not for democracy and freedom from fear of our leaders and the demons they create in the world and themselves.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
We can't just go nuke our enemies, lol, "as if". If we alienated China, our economy would tank and we probably wouldn't be able to afford keeping our nuclear stockpiles ready to go for very long...
The world is changed. We DO care about fixing up other countries, think of WW2. The days when one country "wins" by raping and sowing salt in the other guy's fields are long past, at least for respectable first world countries.
Do you have any idea how much it would cost us to clean up a mess as a result a large nuclear explosion? Let's say that we nuked Iran, a very large country, much bigger than Iraq. Europe would turn against us, as would likely China, not to mention that every moderate Muslim would turn against us.
It would be like shooting the crook leaving your house with your laptop, but doing so through your own foot.
"United States" is a singular, compund noun. It is NOT plural, as you seem to think.
Why would you be so fucking stupid as to attempt a grammar troll and GET IT WRONG?
Kill yourself you loser ass, not able to use Google, attempting pedantry but too stupid to pull it off moron.
Jesus idiot, there are a half dozen other posters who have pointed this out and given links. How fucking stupid are you that you post this, which is wrong, without bothering to check if it was already addressed?
"'fucking adult'
How out of touch with reality are you?"
I'm an adult, I use adult language. How fucking pathetic are you that you post AC to defend yourself?
And this
"Jebus, try not to fly off the handle into Coulter-mode at the slightest jab."
Way to verify the "I'm a stupid liberal so anyone who doesn't insult Bush must be a Conservative" stereotype. You nailed it.
I see why you posted AC though, I wouldn't want stupid comments like that to be attributed to me either.
Kill yourself.
By their definition (and what they imply) the Space Shuttle is a huge ASAT. Wake up PM, every satellite can be an ASAT so is it neccesary to say XSS-11 could have been an ASAT? What about DirecTV? Is it a GEO ASAT? Oh no! Who will stop them?!
Morons...
P.S. I'm glad to see that Orbital has made their Pegasus rocket into a Single Stage To Orbit. Are the wings for added maneuverability on orbit?
You are correct to doubt your memory. Ronald Reagan went on the largest spending spree of any president since FDR in WWII. We will be paying the interest on that debt for decades to come. Hopefully we will pay the principal off someday.
Remember that when politicians say things lik 'I didn't raise your taxes'.
If they increased the national debt, they increased your taxes. They may not have increased your tax rate, but they increased the amount you owe, as well as the amount of interest you will have to pay.
If you look at how Republicans and Democrats spend your money, I mean really spend not what they say they are doing, you will come to two conclusions very quickly:
Sure, we may not be able to launch into LEO for a while, but hey, Earth would now have Pretty Rings!
Just change the gravitational constant for the universe, sheesh -Q
I have always pronounced it as "PU-36", but I had to double check it with the infallible wikipeda, just to be sure.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
The current problem's solution is equally obvious.
Yeah. So, umm, how's that reckless military spending and labeling of our enemies as evil going for us so far?
Any chance that we're going to bankrupt our enemies or get everyone to flock to our side against them soon?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In some cases, the good are the strong, and the strong are the good. If that frightens you, maybe you're not a part of either group.
If you aren't frightened by people that confuse strength with righteousness, then you almost certainly can't be counted amongst be the righteous. Might doesn't not make right, nor does it prove it.
The winner is not always the just, but history will do its best to remember them that way.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I don't know... me working for lazy people's gain seems fairly evil to me. Maybe it's just Ayn Rand talking though.
I don't know... me letting people starve in the street 'cause I consider them lazy seems fairly evil to me. Maybe it's just Jesus talking though.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
no... that's not quite right...
The Admin and the Engineer
Us and the Ruskies have been there and done that already. (We even have missiles in the currently in the arsenal for this task, if needed.) I think the difference is that we learned quickly to make anti-sattellite missiles that do the kill on a return trajectory as where China's does the kill on outbound. So instead of polluting the orbit with buckshot, our systems have the upper atmosphere quickly mop up the mess. But then again, fouling the orbitals probably isn't a big concern to China, while U.S. and Russia have quite a bit of their own respective assets that could be hurt by a "dirty" anti-sattelite weapon. And of course the U.S. is probably alone in having a working system to capture enemy sattelites intact, but it's impossible to deploy secretly, ridiculously expensive to operate, and would have little to gain in doing so.
It was done during the Cold War - and nobody blinked because the reasons were obvious and accepted: the Nuclear Cold War involved heavy space based or space transiting resources. From ICBMs to famed orbiting lasers and orbital nuclear launch facilities.
Now, the reason is not so obvious or clear. Is China engaged in a cold war with the US as the USSR was? Is China planning to have the capability to launch ICBMs a the US or carry out a large scale open war? Are they planning to attack Taiwan and want to be able to threaten CONUS in an attempt to cause the US to break it's agreements and defend Taiwan?
Are any of those reasons acceptable?
"But the US might...!". And so might anyone else. Someone perhaps with more incentive. Rational thought shows that the likelihood of the US attacking China is infinitesimal barring some major action by China - an act of war.
Most of the defense against ICBMs is space based. Presumably China does not currently have the resources and capacity to meet the US in terms of nuclear ICBMs. If the US has an even partially successful ABM system (and we do), that amplifies the "need" for more missiles if you want to be able to make a first strike. If the US could knock down 20% of say Russian missiles, and China has 20% or less, the odds are pretty good a Chinese first strike would be ineffectual in terms of damage.
So there are two ways to counter this. One is to build more missiles, the other to build an Anti-ABM system you take out immediately prior to first strike. The reasons for the US developing ASAT were clear and stated, and the two matched. China's claims do not match the systems developed and deployed, nor is the "threat" clear, nor stated to be.
Now, some people say that China developing a combination of ASAT and increased ICBM capability is in counter to hypothetical US aggression. Yet most of the same people deplored the US increasing it's capabilities during the Cold War, and called for the end of such efforts after the end of it. A touch of hypocrisy? Or is it Alzheimers perhaps? Compare this to the more recent US response: more defense. More ABM capability, while still decreasing ICBMs.
How many people know about China's increasing stockpile and garrisoning of offensive weapons off the coast of Taiwan? By October of last year China had garrisoned some 900 CSS-7 missiles opposite Taiwan in the straight. And that number is still increasing at a rate of 100 per year. Of it's 1.4 million military personnel, 400,000 are deployed to the military areas opposite Taiwan. Anybody care to tell me what military threat Taiwan is to China?
It is "shocking" because everyone seems intent on keeping the underlying reasons out of the public eye. On this issue the Mainstream Press and the Pentagon are unwitting co-conspirators. China is the darling of the Press these days, so they don't want to expose the ugly underbelly of it, and the Pentagon doesn't want everyone spouting off about China as a threat. Not yet anyway. China is erfectly happy with this unwitting arrangement:
- Deng Xiaoping's "24 Character Strategy"
China still claims much land that is not currently theirs. Significant parts of Japan, India (IIRC ALL of India), and various other SoPac neighbors. "Unification" is an explicitly stated purpose of their military upgrades and strategy. For the last two decades, China (The PLA at least) has explicitly stated it believes in pre-emption (i.e. first strike) for anything. They say they are only developing for their stated military objectives. While it is true from a literal standpoint that their stated objectives do not say they would initiate a war or offensive campaign, they do include "territorial unification".
So with the combination of "territorial unification", a
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.