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."
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.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I happen to know several people who were on the citizen's committee that came up with the idea. The whole point was for it to look like something we just might be able to pull off so that the Soviet Union would have no choice but to try to copy it and bankrupt themselves in the process. You see, we could afford to build all that stuff, provided we could get it to work, but they couldn't. When they tried, it brought their creaky economy crashing down, and their government soon followed. Believe or not, I don't care, but the people I know who were involved in the planning all tell the same story.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Nice way to not address the poster's points, and instead resort to rhetoric.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of a coup, a radically reformist government, and breakaway republics. The Soviet Union's economic might declined radically from the sixties to the eighties. The Soviets themselves recognized this and wrote about this. It's one of the main issues that brought Gorbachev to power. There was already wide discontent because their industrial production couldn't provide their people the sort of standard of life that the west's did, because of widespread corruption, repression, and so forth. Soviet military spending during Reagan didn't even match their inflation rate. After the 1982 Afghanistan disaster, Andropov made it an economic strategy to disengage from foreign conflict. The big military expenditure boosts in the late Soviet Union's history were the waste that was Afghanistan and their two-way Cold War with China as well as America (largely because the two couldn't agree on what was the "right" form of Communism).
Here's an article from 1991, published in International Affairs, analyzing the (already circulating) claim that the US military spending increase caused an increase in Soviet military spending, bringing about the country's downfall. The full article isn't online but you can read the abstract.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
> 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
The Soviet Union collapsed because of a coup, a radically reformist government, and breakaway republics. The Soviet Union's economic might declined radically from the sixties to the eighties. The Soviets themselves recognized this and wrote about this. It's one of the main issues that brought Gorbachev to power. There was already wide discontent because their industrial production couldn't provide their people the sort of standard of life that the west's did, because of widespread corruption, repression, and so forth. Soviet military spending during Reagan didn't even match their inflation rate.
That's doubleplus good doublespeak you have there, comrade.
First off, soviet economy was about to "collapse" late sixties already but they were bailed out by the oil crisis. Yeah. They ran the circus for additional 20 years with the oil income when the crude prices quadrupled due to the middle east oil czars getting their act together. Economic collapse is not quite that straightforward in the planned economy either as the value of goods was strictly controlled by the goverment. In any case sovs economy was in better shape late 70s than late 60s, cf age of stagnation in Brezhnev era. Interestingly enough to soviet citizens this may be the "golden era" since the system "worked" at that time.
As for military spend. GROWTH may not have exceeded their inflation rate, but so what? First off, the real inflation value was astronomical due to the central banks printing money with prices of goods fixed by the goverment. Yeah, you may have got cheap shoes from the shops but the tricky bit was finding the shop that actually had any shoes. Secondly, USSR military spending of their GDP was huge. See for reference the soviet tank production figures and other conventional munitions.. They could have fairly easily overrun NATO in 70s and 80s (Please, no red storm rising fantasies here. Yes, Leo 2A4 is much better tank than T-72, but if you have 10x the numbers in strategic reserve in one side, you can concentrate them on 1:100 numbers locally) if not for the pesky first strike and the whole mutually assured destruction-deal. So mainly soviets were exceeding military production combined NATO countries with economy that was basically crap. Doesn't leave much room for decent consumer goods production there. Plus, well, since prices were goverment sanctioned and there was waiting list of years for the crappy car, what for improve the product?!