If we’re going to be servicing satellites (and we are), we have to accept the dual use of the technology. Space is a place.
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More from Space News.
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China’s plans to dominate space.
6 thoughts on “The Inevitable”
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Yes. Inevitably an arms race of sorts. It’s measures and counter-measures all the way down….
Commerce need not follow the military, but inevitably the military must follow to protect Commerce.
“The white paper suggests China intends to use its influence in the next five years to get nations to agree to a new treaty that is even more hostile to private property and individual rights in space.”
They have lots of allies among our friends to the left in the USA. How will be able to differentiate domestic anti-American actors from Chinese controlled ones?
Satellites are fragile things. If you can do proximity operations, there are many ways to temporarily or permanently take out a satellite without generating a lot of debris. We used to talk about that when I was a contractor supporting Air Force Space Command.
Distributed systems like Starlink are effectively immune to a-sat attacks as far as I can see. At least until they develop the ability to deploy similar bunches of a-sats. Like the internet, the bulk bandwidth a fully deployed Starlink network provides will eat into a lot of the market served by the geosynchronous constellation. Cellular modems have already replaced a lot of Earth stations.
Why shouldn’t Tonga have a veto over what we do in space?
Distributed systems: “What is the loss of one rat to the pack?”