Slashdot Mirror
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."
Aw crap, somebody read the article :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Send someone up with a really big vacuum cleaner.
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!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
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.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
USA threatened by Chinese junk.
Oh, that it's now also in space? That's the news here, I guess?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Clear, Dark Skies
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*)"
"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.