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."

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.

Actually it was good strategy

[NeverVotedBush]

They don't have so many satellites in orbit but could be worried about all the spy satellites the USA has. So they blast one of their junkers into lots of little ballistic missiles that damage all satellites.

It doesn't hurt them so much but it definitely harms other countries.

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 [wikipedia.org]?

Was NBC visionary, perhaps?

[MrM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series) [wikipedia.org]

'nuff said...

MrM

Planetes

[lattyware]

Anyone seen the anime Planetes [anidb.net]? 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:I'll add this

[Anonymous Coward]

Kessler Syndrome [wikipedia.org]

Re:That's a laugh!

[peragrin]

Yes and no. Your right China could/would hurt us dramactically. but remember this. All that steel, copper, aluminum that we import is because American's couldn't produce those same materials for that price. pennsylvania is filled with steel even though all the steel forges have shut down.

I don't know if it was by accident or on purpose but we are using up china's steel. While keeping our own stockpiled natures way. Our companies can't compete on price, and closed down, but if price was no longer the issue then we have all sorts of resources available to us. Sure it would take a while to get going again. Lots' of little experience has been lost but If it came right down to it the USA is one of the few countries who could survive such an economic collapse.

Other than Oil and rubber the USA could be self sufficient. We have more than enough old tires floating around that rubber would last until we could get back up on our feet.

While It would hurt the long term repercussions wouldn't be any worse than the great depression. indeed another massive depression could very well be the spark that sets it off.

Re:That's a laugh!

[QuickFox]

Given that we are the most violent society on the face of the planet,

The US the most violent? You gotta be kidding. Iraq has political/religious terrorist murders almost every day, that's far more violent than the US.

Of course that's Iraq under the US military, but still...

Looking elsewhere, Darfur is much more violent than the US. Colombia too. Etc.

However I'm pretty sure the US is the most violent in the modern Western developed world. It may perhaps also qualify, among all countries, as the country with the most aggressively violence-prone foreign policy.

Re:40 years of spaceflight, and can't send crew...

[mikelieman]

Yes, I do realize that RIGHT NOW we don't have, and can't recreate the lifting capacity we had way-back-when. That is essentially what I was lamenting.

The only thing to NASAs credit today is JPL and the robotic missions. Those don't totally suck.

However, I don't think we can do it 100 years from now, given that we've gone essentially nowhere for the past 40.

Bizarro am happy.

Re:The US is telling lies

[thesupraman]

And when the US did their anti-satellite tests previously, it was different how? I refer you to October 13, 1985.

"In April 1988, the two Democratic chambers of Congress voted against extending the ASAT ban"

"The ban on using the MIRACL laser against space targets lapsed in 1996, when the new Republican Congress opted not to renew it."

"in August 2004 the U.S. Air Force published a doctrine on "Counterspace Operations" which affirmed its readiness to conduct "operations to deceive, disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy adversary space capabilities" in order to maintain U.S. space superiority."

Communications ...

[golodh]

Missile guidance systems may work fine without GPS, but as I understand, the military also makes heavy use of other types of satellites in Low Earth Orbit:

- communication satellites (all Command and Control over distances longer than say 20-80 Km; both voice and data).

- reconnaissance satellites (radar reconnaissance satellites, photo reconnaissance satellites, infra-red imaging satellites)

As far as I am aware, most of the emerging "networked" aspects of the military depend on satellite communications. The control of and imagery from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and all those automated little messages that collect information from many sensors to where it's combined, analysed, interpreted, and redistributed as terms of a coherent picture of what's where, down to the target coordinates. I believe that we saw both in Kosovo and in the Iraq war how extremely powerful those systems are.

In other words: if someone can destroy those satellites, the US military will -at a stroke- loose its single largest unmatched advantage. So one might imagine that there is some reason for concern.

Re:Well

[IT]

Well, there's not much the US can complain about since it has refused to sign an international treaty banning space weapons advocated by the Chinese and Russians. Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/world/asia/18cnd-china.htm [nytimes.com]

Re:That's a laugh!

[NoMaster]

If the US economy goes belly up a lot of that debt may very well become worthless paper, and at the same time China's primary purchaser of goods finds that it doesn't really have the money to purchase what it used to.

The thing is, the US will have to do everything it possibly can to prop its economy up - the real value of the US dollar is not in what it can buy & sell, but in the very fact that it's the de facto currency for buying & selling. Take that away, and the US dollar is at the mercy of its domestic economy - which, to be honest, unlike a lot of the rest of the world, is totally unprepared to stand isolated on its own strengths.

To the world, the US dollar is only important as a useful & fairly stable convenience to measure trade. To the US, that fact is fundamental to its huge economy. Take way that stability, and the US dies.

You only have to look at how the US government & markets react at the mere suggestion that some important part of world trade move to the euro to see this. Sure, the rest of the world would tremble - but only until it switched to trading in euros (or yuan, as an outside chance). And your huge money trading market will lead the exodus - the whole thing is based on having a reasonably solid and well understood reference point; when that disappears they'll jump to the next-best one.

Sure, it'll hurt China - but it's a huge economy in its own right, with solid physical fundamentals underpinning it all. They produce, or can produce, a respectable amount of the world's raw material demand and most of the world's processed product demand cheaper than anyone else. If I was a betting man, and thought the US was likely to cut its own throat to pull China down a peg or two, I'd be betting on China to come out on top...