US Satellites Dodging Chinese Missile Debris

GSGKT writes "Today's Washington Times runs a story about the increasing problem with space junk orbiting the earth. Debris from the anti-satellite missile test by the Chinese military last year threatens the integrity of more than 800 operating satellites, half of them belonging to the US. Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged soon after the incident. Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, director of air, space and information operations at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado, estimates that "essentially (Chinese anti-satellite tests) increase the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth by about 20 percent", and the debris might threaten spacecraft for up to 100 years."

Comments

Well

[Icarus1919]

On the other hand, it looks like the missiles really do work.

Re:Well

[porkchop_d_clown]

made the space over China less habitable to spy satellites

You're not real familiar with how orbits work, are you?

Since that crap is in low orbit, I'm pretty sure it circles the entire planet every couple of hours.

Unless, of course, the Chinese have developed some sort of non-newtonian thruster system that lets their space trash hover in one place.

Re:Well

[CrazedWalrus]

If that wasn't the intended effect and was just a fortuitous (for them) side-effect, you can bet they've learned the lesson, and that it *will* be the intended effect next time.

"We didn't attack your satellites, we attacked our own (*cough*and used it to create a floating fragmentation grenade*cough*)"

Re:Well

[S.O.B.]

The satellite and resulting debris field in question are in low Earth orbit not geostationary orbit and therefore do not remain over the same location on Earth.

SanctionThem?

[Adambomb]

I find the tag of sanctionthem rather odd as how, realistically, would one impose these sanctions? Economic sanctions would be met with retaliatory tariffs; Do not forget that economically, North America needs them more than they need us (i'm not sure of the situation for the rest of the world).

What's left, political pressure? Because of how much China listens to political pressure concerning their own policies? Military pressure?

I do not see it.

Re:SanctionThem?

[Flavio]

I think the SanctionThem was meant to be sarcastic.

With the US economy decelerating and the loss of confidence in the US dollar, the US can't afford to stop trading with China. This move would essentially crash the global economy, and the US has the most to lose due to its massive foreign debt.

Most people don't realise just how rotten the American economic policy is. Back in 71, Nixon realised that the US could no longer finance the Vietnam war without printing money like mad. But the gold standard prevented the Fed from doing that, so he unilaterally cancelled the Bretton Woods system that made the US dollar convertible to gold. This was a total surprise, because he neglected to consult international bankers, and became known as the Nixon Shock. So from that moment on, the US effectively started printing gold. Of course this move didn't fool the bankers around the world, so the Fed had to raise interest rates to 21%/year to convince them to carry on using dollars. Over many years, the markets sort of returned to normal, despite the fact that the US debt had risen to unprecedented levels.

In 2006, the Fed was printing so much money that it stopped publishing the M3 money supply data in order to hide this fact. So now no one really knows how much money the Fed prints. We just estimate that the US foreign debt grows at the rate of $3 billion per day, mostly due to overseas military spending and interest on the already existing debt. This is despite the fact that the US is creating money out of thin air to partially cover this debt. A consequence is that the dollar has fallen in value about 15% in the last year against the Euro.

It bothers me a lot when the Fed governors propose what they call "financial incentive packages". These are usually composed of tax rebates and the central banks injecting money into the markets. Again, it's more money that was created out of thin air, and the tax rebates reduce the government's capacity to cover that money or to cover the debt. It's a temporary fix to the longstanding lack of financial discipline.

The general population typically doesn't care, and this includes Slashdot readers. They think that economics is awfully boring and complicated, and that the government is capable of taking care of policy. But the opposite is happening, and the US debt is getting out of control. This spending obviously makes politicians and contractors a lot of money, so they'll keep doing it until the economy crashes.

Well? What would you expect from Xeonphobes?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just their way of building the Great Spacewall of China.

Weapons

[ShieldW0lf]

Kind of makes US reliance on space based technological dominance in the theater of war into a bit of a joke, doesn't it. If some dumb nation were to weaponize space, this is how easily they and their efforts could be shut down. Kind of makes the whole idea seem really stupid.

Give it time...

[Tastecicles]

...with all the debris already up there and the continual adding to it by the Chinese, we'll eventually find ourselves planet-locked with nowhere to go without having to run the gauntlet of bolt-sized particles travelling at 17000mph+. Someone's gonna have to go up there and sweep up while at the same time avoiding adding to the mess that's already there. Can you say Planetes?

Re:Huh?

[palegray.net]

Aw crap, somebody read the article :).

...so?

[Timothy Brownawell]

Send someone up with a really big vacuum cleaner.

Re:...so?

[Opportunist]

That's the joke, duh. Vacuum cleaner. Get it? Like, not a "vacuum cleaner", but someone cleaning the vacu...

Never mind, no joke gets better by explaining it.

Re:...so?

[maltwhiskman]

This is all about nothing.

That's a laugh!

[gbutler69]

North America does not *need* China in any sense of the word. That is a complete fallacy. We could cease all trade with China tomorrow and we would be perfectly fine. In fact, we'd probably be better off. Don't start in about all the "goods" we'd be missing. So what! We'd make 'em here. They'd be more expensive, but, that'd be a good thing. By the way, this WILL happen. As the oil reserves in the world dwindle, all nations will increasingly turn inward. Sorry to say it, but all the "international trade" and talk about "free trade" is economic voodoo! It's about to get UGLY! Real UGLY! Prepare for feudal times! By the way, this means the decline of human civilization and our inevitable extinction from this Galaxy. Free Trad, Schmree Trad. It won't matter one bit!

Re:That's a laugh!

[Adambomb]

What in the hell are you talking about? Theres more to prosperity than oil.

Remember who bought up all the steel reserves and is now slowly selling it back to the US? Have you ever been inside ANY manufacturing plant...at all..ever?

US industry would SHUT DOWN ENTIRELY if china pulled the plugs, or be cripplingly disadvantaged compared to the rest of the world if they decided to place punitive tarrifs. And if you think this is limited to crappy dvd players and laser pointers, do not forget that factory farms that are responsible for your daily food run off harvesters and harvester parts made primarily from components from china.

Do you have any idea how the world around you works at all?

Planetes

[lattyware]

Anyone seen the anime Planetes? It's all about people working collecting debris in the future, because there is so much up there, that it is a risk to the (now common and commercial) space flights. Interesting that this is becoming a topic of interest as of late.

Re:maybe that's what the chinese wanted

[RockMFR]

RTFA.

According to the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the commercial communication satellite Orbcomm FM 36 maneuvered to avoid passing within about 123 feet of the debris field on April 6. A NASA Earth observation satellite Terra was moved June 22 to avoid coming within about 90 feet of the debris.

Where's the news?

[Opportunist]

USA threatened by Chinese junk.

Oh, that it's now also in space? That's the news here, I guess?

Re:Right when the Chinese dump junk in space:

[Opportunist]

You've seen enough Ninja movies haven't you?

Let them come. According to the RIAA we got way more than enough pirates to handle them. Yarr!

Great Weapon

[3DKnight]

This is probably the best "Denial" type weapon developed. In the case of the chinese, if there was ever a major threat to thier sovereignty they could make the whole orbit plane into a huge denial zone, crippling the more advanced nation that relies on that area, while giving themselves the advatage of using an army that hasn't learned to rely on satellites. the whole mentality of "if we can't have it, neither can you" works very well in warfare. Scorched earth... just taken to the next level.

Re:Possible outcome.

[j. andrew rogers]

"The US military is completely dependant on their technology and the rest of the world knows it. Do their cruise missiles even work without GPS?"

The US has no weapon systems that are GPS guided and never has, precisely because it is vulnerable. The Chinese may have just now gotten around to developing anti-satellite technology, but the Soviet Union had it ages ago.

The core guidance package of US weapon systems is extremely high precision inertial navigation (all systems described as "GPS-guided" are actually inertial -- the media is a bit stupid about these things, as GPS is an optional untrusted overlay on inertial navigation systems). Some intelligent terrain following weapons also use optical geo-referencing. As a matter of policy going back to the Soviet Union days, the US military machine views satellite systems as "nice to have" but its infrastructure is pervasively designed to operate under the presumption that there are no satellites in orbit. The vulnerability of the US military to massive system outages is greatly overstated; the Soviet Union was a much bigger threat on this scale than the Chinese are, and the US military has always been pretty religious about designing systems whose functionality was robust and in the face of rapidly degrading military infrastructure and relatively decentralized. It is easy to forget it, but the Chinese have nothing on the old Soviet Union in terms of technology and force numbers, and that was the doctrinal enemy of much of the modern US military.