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U.S. Announces New Space Security Policy
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Oct 19, 2006 02:52 PM
from the i-want-to-visit-the-space-pearl-harbor-memorial dept.
from the i-want-to-visit-the-space-pearl-harbor-memorial dept.
hey! writes "The Bush administration has announced a new space security policy, which includes the statement that 'Consistent with this policy, the United States will preserve its rights, capabilities and freedom of action in space ... and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.'" More from the article: "Eisendrath, co-author of a forthcoming book, 'War in Heaven: Stopping an Arms Race in Outer Space Before It Is Too Late,' says the United States is wasting its time. 'Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says we need to protect against a 'space Pearl Harbor,'' he says. 'But we're still the dominant power there.'"
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And that means ... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So
Satelites can be taken out by ground-based lasers. Any major power planning a war with the US would need to have that capability.
With vulnerable satelites, the next level would be a moon base. There's not much an Earth-based attack can do against a moon base. We're at the bottom of the gravity well.
Damn the morons who voted for these idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Space Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Funny)
Fear & Hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod me as flamebait but this is one of the stupidest and beligerant announcements I've heard in quite sometime. Appearantly, the rest of the world aggrees. Allow me to quote the headlines I see right now on websites (foreign and US):
- US turns space into its colony - Asian Times Online
- Bush asserts right to deny space access - Boston Globe
- Bush issues doctrine for US control of space - Mail & Guardian Online, Guardian Unlimited
- US insists it has right to keep its enemies out of space - Scotsman
- US Says 'Keep Out of My Space' - ABC News
- Space: America's new war zone - Independent, UK
- America wants it all - life, the Universe and everything - Times Online, UK
- America aims to control the space - The Money Times
- United Space of America - Hamilton Spectator, Canada
- US Claims Monopoly on the Use of Space for Weapons - ShortNews.com, Germany
- Emperor Zurg Has A Tiny Tiny Wiener And Must Be Told - OpEdNews, PA
What kind of feelings do you think the rest of the world is going through based on that?Is this the new SDI? I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat or Independent, this isn't about keeping bad people out of space. This isn't about securing space. It's about doing what we want the rest of the world to do. It's childish colonial imperialism and it's complete bullshit.
Re:Fear & Hatred (Score:5, Informative)
1. The USSR tested and deployed anti-satellite weapons.
2. The USSR armed manned space craft and I don't mean pistols for the crews for survival in case they came down outside the recovery zone.
3. The USSR tested a fractional orbital bombardment system for the SS-9.
So what the US is saying is simply this.
They intend to develop systems that can
a. take out anti-satellite systems that could be used to target US satellites.
b. take out other countries spy satellites.
Spreading fear of the US is a fun past time for many news services and government. They know that the US will not really harm them so they can try and act tough with no risk.
Truth is China is already stated that they are going to develop space based weapon systems. The USSR/Russia has already developed space based weapons systems and deployed them. Only their current lack of money is keeping them from deploying them right now. Of course they might be selling them.
The only big problem is making it public instead of keeping it a black program.
Space was militarized back in the early 60s. ROSATs, Elint satellites, and optical satellites are all deadly weapons and they have been in use for over 40 years.
So this is really worth about a yawn and a stretch as far as news. Makes nice scary headlines though.
Parent
Re:Fear & Hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bush says to the galaxy... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a predictable policy (Score:5, Informative)
For 50 years we've pretended that things were different in space; everyone would ignore national rivalries and history and stare with awe at the daring feats of cosmonauts and astronauts. It was a nice fantasy and flew in the face of reality. The Apollo missions grew out of a fear of sleeping "under a communist moon."
Here's the reality check. The US Navy exists to do a few things:
- Project power ashore (i.e. shoot and bomb things that don't float or fly)
- Guarantee US access to sea lanes of control
- Deny access to SLoCs to US enemies
Both the US Air Force and US Navy have space commands and with good cause. Clearly access to orbit is as critical now as access to the seas were 100 years ago. It is in every nation's self-interest to guarantee its access to orbit. It's not much of a leap to get from there to seeing that having technologies to deny that access to enemies is a strategic advantage. How many lives (on either side of a conflict) might be saved by neutralizing an enemy's communications and recon satellites? It's a no-brainer policy. (Insert Bush joke here...)A step toward nuclear space flight? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps Bush finds it easier to sell the treaty breakage as a security measure than to sell it as a first step towards Mars.
US the new Portugal (Score:5, Insightful)
What are "US interests"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should anyone die to protect "US interests", when we have no reason whatsoever to believe that corporate profits and cheap goods at Walmart lie outside that category?
Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll recall Iraq under the government of Saddam Hussein launched two unprovoked aggressive wars of conquest, one against Iran in the 1980s and another against Kuwait in the 1990s. How these countries might have fared had Iraq won either might be demonstrated by how the Iraq government treated its own citizens (e.g. the Kurds and marsh Shia) who were out of favor with the government: mass graves and poison gassing of entire villages seems likely.
You may also recall that North Korea launched an aggressive war of conquest against South Korea in the 1950s. The way they would have treated an occupied South Korea is probably well demonstrated by conditions inside North Korea now. (Where, for example, the average citizen now reaches adulthood significantly stunted in his growth from lifelong malnutrition.)
I assume against that record you want to set that of the United States in Korea and Iraq. You can look at how the US treated (or would treat) conquered Korea by examining South Korea today. Prosperous, democratic, peaceful. Likewise, you can gain a glimpse into conquered Iraq now. While the US may or may not be doing its duty to prevent the Iraq from tearing itself apart from its age-old Sunni-Shia fratricidal hostility, and while the US may or may not be successfully restoring the Iraqi economy and democratic institutions fast enough, or even at all, no one can imagine the US is in the process of deliberately "wiping out" Iraq in any ordinary sense of those words.
"Moral relativism" often consists of making judgements of actions based on those actions alone, and neglecting to consider the reason for the actions, the consequences and side-effects of the actions, and so forth. If you think borrowing your friend's CD without asking is the same as stealing it, then you're guilty of a form of moral relativism. Likewise if you say all deliberate death -- executions, killings of soldiers in battle, self-defense against home intruders, and premeditated murder of innocents -- are morally the same, you are also guilty of a form of moral relativism. And if you say all warfare is equally evil, you are guilty of moral relativism. That I think was the point.
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Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are, you can take your cultural/moral superiority and shove it right up some detainee's ass.
I think americans should take a long hard look in a miror before they start calling other countries crazy.
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Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who wrote this policy believes in the idea that any group or country not with us is against us.
Therefore, it states that we can prevent neutral nations from spaceflight.
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Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, it says the USA can act in anyway it chooses in space, and others can't. It basically says no one can fuck with our space toys, but we can fuck with anyone else's space toys. It basically says that "Rules Don't Apply to Us".
It is, very simply, typical fascist horseshit that the Bush Junta has been coughing up for years, only this time it affects satellites. nice.
I'm not going to cough up line item to line item - /. It's not THAT much to read, and it's all there in black and white. DIY.
Now, I'll propose that 90% of the responses to THIS will be from pink neocon dupes of the conspiracy, and yes, Bush DOES deserve demonisation for this, as it is part and parcel of his evil Evil EVIL neocon agenda. And for that, the pink neocon dupes of the conspiracy will likely mod me "Flamebait" or "Overrated" and anyone with half an ounce of sense will mod me "Interesting" or "Insightful".
Imagine if the Bush Junta said "the laws of the sea no longer apply to us." Imagine what kind of a row that would make. It's just the same thing, only in orbit in the vacuum of space.
RS
Parent
Re:A Prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
How the hell do you know that? From the linked article "The document, much of which is classified..." Good chunks of the document are classified. People HAVE to read between the lines.
Not that I'm agreeing with the anti-Bush, knee-jerkers, but you are also making unsubstantiated claims.
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Re:Not that I think this is a good idea but... (Score:5, Funny)
B: "Own what? There's nothing there!"
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Re:Not that I think this is a good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Not that I think this is a good idea but... (Score:5, Informative)
While it's not impossible to put something in space in such a way that it always stays over a single point on the planet, there are very limited number orbits in which this can be achieved, and they are all directly above the equator.
Parent
Re:Not that I think this is a good idea but... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the many problems with this policy is that those "certain portions of space" are six dimensional and time-varying. What the U.S. is trying to "defend" amounts to certain orbits. This is not like defending your coastal waters, which have zero momentum relative to your nation's landmass. For one, it is possible to change from an orbit that does not overfly a given country to one that does with relatively trivial delta-v.
Because of this, there is little or no practical value in preventing others from accessing just some orbits. Now, the U.S. government, particularly the Defense Department under Donald Rumsfeld, has a long history of doing stuff that has no practical value (often at the cost of American lives.) So it is possible that this policy will be acted upon in an ineffectual but relatively harmless way. But given the grip of fear that still has a big hold in the U.S. it is a matter of some concern that those who would put security before all else might decide to deny everyone access to all orbits.
Parent
more likely to be launch interdiction (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Iranians were to begin to launch satellites, or say they were, and there were sufficient evidence -- possibly some of it secret -- that their real intentions were to develop suborbital or quasi-orbital intercontinental ballistic missile technology, and the US decided it was possible to knock the test missiles down reasonably safely, then I'd have no problem with them doing so.
Where it gets tricky is if China wants to launch national technical means a.k.a. spy satellites that overfly US strategic assets, map out targets, et cetera, within the contintental US. Is this the kind of thing we'd want to knock down? It's hard to really say, for two reasons: (1) Experience in the Cold War showed that spy satellites were stabilizing technology, because they prevent hysteria and nasty surprises. When each side is well-informed about what the other has, and is up to, decisions tend to be calmer and better. (2) This business has been thrashed out before, in the 16th-17th centuries, with respect to navigation of the high seas. In addition to being a very expensive process, the end result was a general agreement that freedom to travel -- even for a warship -- peacefully anywhere in international waters is guaranteed, unless you are actually at war. Do we really need to repeat the bloody experiment in space to probably arrive at the same conclusion?
Parent
Re:Why is it so wrong to say (Score:5, Insightful)
There are currently no Hitlers taking over space. There are no weapons in space, either aimed in space, or aimed at us from space. There is nothing going on up there that Bush needs to react to.
Its like youre in a bar, and the guy next to you says "If you ever sneak into my house, I will shoot you and then beat the shit out of you. Do you understand me? Fuck with me and I will seriously fuck you up!" Meanwhile, youre just sitting there, having a beer, minding your own business. Why is this guy talking about beating you up? Why is he afraid of you breaking in? Why is he imagining you fucking with him? Its a beligerent, hostile action. He is over-reacting to a situation that is totally in his mind.
Same with the Bush administration. They literally made shit up as a pretext to invade Iraq, which is now a de facto clusterfuck. The whole world saw this and understands it. Now Bush is getting all high and mighty about blowing shit up in space. Not only has he foolishly over-reacted to a situation that *was not a threat*, he just hasnt learned his lesson -- he wants to also invade Iran.
Parent
Re:Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as that does not mean telling everyone else what they can and can't do..
You make it sound like it is something it is not. We are going to have a dominate presence, like our Navy has in space. Other Navys can exist, but like the sea or air, controlling it or more importantly the ability to control it, is vital. When shit hits the fan, I want to be the top dog controlling what we and what others are able to do either for or against us.
Just keep in mind that being the top dog also makes that you will ALWAYS be under attack.
The world is not a socialist utopia
That has nothing to do with this at all.
Trying to 'play nice' with everyone else who also tries to play nice is what is important. (please read that line VERY carefully and don't jump to conclusions about anyone not playing nice because that was not what I was talking about there)
and plans should be made for all situations, including space. We live in a world that fucked seven ways from Sunday and you must be ignorant to that fact?
I think you are being a bit ignorant yourself, and are feeling attacked beforehand. You are definitely right that plans need to be made for all situations, but it would be an extremely wise idea to get a lot more focus and publicity on things that are actually positive, instead of all this doom and gloom kind of thinking that the current US administration advocates.
I say we dominate space so we can secure that our lack of dominance wont be used against us.
I say you fell (again?) in the 'doom is everywhere, you MUST give us the power to do everything we need to fight this!!!!!!!!!!!' idiocy of the current USA administration.
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