Obama's Proposed Space Weapon Ban

eldavojohn writes "Obama's proposed ban on space weapons is a complete 180 from George W. Bush's stance on them. Space.com looks at the two sides of the issue and quotes Michael Krepon explaining, 'The Bush administration rejected space diplomacy. We refused to negotiate on any subject that could limit US military options. We have a shift from an administration that was very dismissive of multilateral negotiations [as a whole], to an administration that is open to that possibility if it improves US national security.' You may recall discussing the necessity of space based weapons and Michael Krepon from 2005."

Comments

Saves money, too

[Kupfernigk]

As I recall, the US economy got a boost from reduction in arms spending post-Communism, in the Clinton era. I remember discussions in the UK before that on how Japan benefited commercially from not having a significant military, meaning that not only did they not have to pay for it out of taxes, but engineers who might be making missiles could work on things like better cars.

To generalise wildly, countries with large military R&D spending and manufacturing tend not to be good at consumer products. Military "GNP" is akin to making lots of expensive goods and then putting them all on a bonfire.

In the present case, Obama can achieve several things: reduce the cost of government, please the bluer segments of the US, and perhaps give Bill O'Reilly and co heart attacks. Potential triple win for the new Administration, and no-one gets hurt.

Re:Childish

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Finlander I don't agree your view of the Muslims hate Europe because they hate your freedom. I think the issue is more materialistic then cultural or emotional. The bottom line is they hate Europe because Europe is richer. By Europe I mean not only EU but also US. Actually I should even call it Christendom as oppose to Muslim world. Also there is the element of exploitation of Europe those countries. Maybe Finland as a country did not do that but England, France etc. those countries did their fair share of colonialism in Middle East. So this issue of Muslim aggression is not something that is started yesterday it has its roots all the way back to 1800.

weaponizing space not so nice

[jollyreaper]

This is a game we can't afford to play. The cost of wrecking satellites is trivially low compared to the cost of replacing them. I would put space warfare on the same level as chemical warfare, if not in terms of human cost but damage done to the treasury. In WWII, both sides had the gas masks in case the other side used it first but neither did for fear of the chemical counter-attack. And this is in a war where carpet-bombing cities was considered an acceptable tactic.

Here's a question: years ago I read that a poor man's ASAT would be a booster capable of reaching a retrograde orbit on the same orbit as the target. It doesn't contain a guided kinetic kill video, just a big bucket of sand. The sand is released after the orbit is circularized and it becomes a giant, fine-grained shotgun blast that will destroy any satellite on the same plane. Is this one of those hoary chestnuts that just isn't true or is it very plausible?

The other question which I know is serious and yet unanswered: how much shrapnel would be left from an unrestricted space war? Would we be denying ourselves the use of certain orbits for hundreds of years? Low earth orbits will see the junk slowed by the atmosphere and burn up in time but high orbits would be free from the drag and could be there indefinitely. Would it even be possible to armor satellites sufficiently to survive the debris or would we have screwed ourselves but good?

Re:Childish

[je ne sais quoi]

I've been trying to figure out how to tell people that Obama is a man who happens to be black, and because of this hysteria, he has arguably been given far more trust than any president should be given.

The rest of your post I more or less agreed with, but I differ with you on this comment. Were you asleep during the last 8 years? Or did you just fail to notice that the majority of American people trusted George Bush Jr. to invade a country on completely false pretenses. Moreover, often those that questioned that line were denounced as traitors. Not just the government, we the people allowed this. I'd say the American people trusting Obama has nothing to do with the color of his skin, it has to do with that the American people are gullible, they treat every president that way at first.

Re:Childish

[oodaloop]

but comments along the lines of "They hate us because we are free" speak much truth.

Bush gets so much criticism because of statements like this, but it is very true. They see our freedom as the antithesis to Sharia Law and responsible for our moral decay.

Examples

[Kupfernigk]

OK, then explain why it is that Samsung and Nokia are eating Motorola's lunch in mobile phones, VW, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and Honda seem able to make better designed and built cars than the US, US white goods are generally inferior to those from Bosch, Electrolux etc., most LCD monitors come from Korea, Taiwan or China, laptops get designed in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, the Long Island railway runs on imported French trains, most printers come from Japan, China or Korea, and how long is it since Kodak was last a major camera maker (though a lot of their Retina models were actually German.) As for the UK - well, we have massive military R&D per capita and our consumer products, such as they are, are obligingly made for us by foreign owned firms.

As for your knowledge of WW2 history - I'm sorry, it is utterly inadequate. Apart from the possibility that, had Britain defeated Hitler in the mid-30s the main language of Europe would be Russian, what makes you think the US, which was pretty pro-Hitler at the time, would have let us? Roosevelt had to overcome some pretty entrenched attitudes to give the UK the limited support that he did.

If you read the European history books, you will see that the 30s were pretty much a diplomatic failure. Had the West had the support instead of the fence-sitting attitude of the US, had Britain and France properly supported Austria, Poland and the Czechs, and had Weimar been supported instead of undermined, would Hitler have been allowed to form a Government? We will never know, but one thing is clear: despite its military buildup, Germany lost.