SPACE: SATELLITES EXPLODE, LASERS REVEALED, AND INTERPLANETARY OPS ...
This has been a very odd time for space news. Odd, because the stories, taken individually, aren't all that odd. But taken or viewed together over
a long period, present a very chilling picture. So, consider these
stories, shared by K.M., T.M., and G.B. Firstly, there was that story of
the Russian spy-satellite that exploded:
As the article indicates, the likely cause
of the explosion was unused propellant in the satellite. End of story
(for the moment, but we'll get back to it.)
Then there were stories about Russia(from
2018), France (from last year), and Israel(from this year) revealing
powerful new ground based lasers, in France's and Russia's case, for
anti-satellite capability:
(Now, needless to say, ground-based Earth
laser anti-satellite systems will have to have a mastery of phase
conjugation to counter-balance atmospheric distortion of the laser beam.
That Russia and France are revealing these systems means this is
largely a solved problem.)
And finally, there's the US "Space Force":
Note from the last article these statements:
Maj. Gen. John Shaw, leader of Space Force’s Space Operations Command said the new service is building itself for the far future.“This is a huge opportunity. We have the opportunity to create a warfighting service from scratch,” Shaw said Friday at an Air Force Association event in Washington. “I’ve been telling the team, ‘Don’t think about a warfighting service for the next decade. Create a warfighting service or the 22nd century. What is warfighting going to look like at the end of this century and into the next?’”That may include interplanetary operations, Shaw said. (Emphasis added)
In other words, weapons and troops and ships for interplanetary
operations. But, relax, that's all for the "far future," unless, of
course, one wants to factor Ben Rich's strange end-of-life statements
about "finding errors in the equations" and being able to "take ET
home." Or, in this context, bring war right to ET. Oh, and lest we
forget, remember the American general's statement recently about having
to fight "little green men?"
I submit that all of this context puts that explosion of the
Russian satellite into a very different interpretive matrix. Russia
isn't talking of course, but to my mind, that raises the possibility
that the explosion of the satellite was not accidental to a greater
likelihood. If it was accidental, there'd be little reason for the
Russians not to say so, even if it was a very secret satellite with very
secret mission capabilities. And a pin-prick from a ground or space
based laser system on its propellant tanks may be the cause. Perhaps it
may have even been a test of Russia's ground-based anti-sat
systems. But if so, again, there'd be little reason to keep it quiet,
and every reason to crow about it.
So why the silence? Well, consider today's high octane scenario. It
is quite likely that the Russian satellite had a very sophisticated
instrumentation suite, one for example that could detect, fairly
instantaneously, the heat blooming signatures of being targeted by a
laser. Very likely it had some sort of "all-around" sensor suite
allowing it to determine give three-dimensional 360 degree detection
capability. After all, "blind spots" on a spy satellite or an
anti-satellite satellite would be analogous to the chink in the armor on
the HMS Hood, and we all know how badly that ended. Such
all-around sensor capability would have allowed the Russians a
reasonably accurate picture of where any laser or other kind of
energetic attack came from, whether from the ground, or space, and done
so in that short period of time between its acquisition and its
destruction by "whatever." To make a long point short: if it was
deliberate, then the Russians have a good idea of who did it, and how.
So we might be looking at a very real shooting war "up
there," and if the perpetrators were terrestrial, then expect similar
"accidents" to occur to other nations' satellites in the future as
retaliation. But if the silence continues, perhaps that's an indicator
that someone else may have taken out the Russian satellite.
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