Posted on 08/30/2022 6:19:38 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Chinese military researchers recently called for the destruction of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites, an extraordinary threat for a state to make against a private foreign enterprise.
In December 2021, China filed a complaint with the United Nations, claiming that two of Musk's Starlink satellites had nearly collided with the Tianhe module of its Tiangong Space Station -- in April and October of 2021-- and that Chinese astronauts had been forced to maneuver the module of the station to avoid the collision. Starlink is part of Elon Musk's SpaceX and the satellites are part of a plan to make internet coverage from the satellites available worldwide, with the goal of launching nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
Space is becoming crowded and risks of collision -- whether with satellites or space debris -- are not new. Tellingly, China was among the first to help create much of that debris: In January 2007, China tested its first successful anti-satellite missile (ASAT), destroying one of its own inactive weather satellites and creating one of the world's largest space debris incidents. That space debris is still floating around in space, causing collision risks every day.
The United States rejected China's claims that the Starlink satellites had endangered China's space station. The US stated that if there had been a "significant probability of collision" with China's space station, the U.S. would have given notice to China ahead of time. "Because the activities did not meet the threshold of established emergency collision criteria, emergency notifications were not warranted in either case."
China is now taking things a step further: Chinese military researchers are threatening that Musk's Starlink satellites must be destroyed. The problem, however, does not appear so much to be the fear of collision, but rather that China believes that Starlink could be used for military purposes and thereby threaten what China calls its national security.
Five senior scientists in China's defense industry, led by Ren Yuanzhen, a researcher with the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications -- which is under the People Liberation Army's (PLA's) Strategic Support Force – recently wrote that "a combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation's operating system."
Soft kill methods target software and operating systems of the satellites, whereas hard kill methods physically destroy the satellites, such as using an ASAT weapon.
According to the scientists, China should "vigorously develop countermeasures" against Starlink, as such capabilities are necessary for China "to maintain and obtain space advantages in the fierce space game."
Unsurprisingly, China has eagerly copied Elon Musk's SpaceX to achieve its own space ambitions: China's Long March 2C rocket, for instance, which China launched in the summer of 2019, had parts that were "virtually identical" to those that are used to steer the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
China is not the only state actor to show an interest in interfering with Musk's Starlink satellites.
Russia too has sought to jam Starlink's internet service in Ukraine and failed. "Starlink has resisted Russian cyberwar jamming & hacking attempts so far, but they're ramping up their efforts," Musk tweeted in May.
Starlink is a problem for Russia because Musk's satellites have enabled Ukraine to stay connected to the internet – and the rest of the world – amid Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempts to cut the country off.
Musk began to send Starlink terminals to Ukraine in late February at the request of Ukrainian government officials, as a backup for when Russia would predictably try to cut off internet access. According to one US general, the use of Starlink in Ukraine ruined Putin's attempts to isolate the country.
"The strategic impact is, it totally destroyed Putin's information campaign," said Brig. Gen. Steve Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit.
"He never, to this day, has been able to silence Zelenskyy."
"We've got more than 11,000 Starlink stations and they help us in our everyday fight on all the fronts," Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister, told Politico.
"We're ready, even if there is no light, no fixed internet, through generators using Starlink, to renew any connection in Ukraine."
China's threats against Musk's Starlink is more proof that the country is not ready to let anyone stand in the way of its "fierce space game", as China put it. General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force's first vice chief of space operations, possibly trying to downplay the Chinese's Communist Party's threat to the West, described it as merely a "shadow war."
In this "space war", China – and Russia to a slightly lesser degree -- is conducting attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day. While the attacks are "reversible" for now, which means that the damage to the attacked satellites is not permanent, they demonstrate China's malign intentions.
"The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it's really an evolution of activity that's been happening for a long time," Thompson said in November 2021.
"We're really at a point now where there's a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened."
In addition to its "fierce space game", China is forging ahead with a number of projects that will significantly accelerate the country's space capabilities.
China has reportedly sped up its program to launch a solar power plant in space. The purpose of the plant is to transmit electricity to earth by converting solar energy to microwaves or lasers and directing the energy to Earth, according to the South China Morning Post. The first launch of the project is scheduled for 2028 and will be the world's first such project in space. It is probable that China got the idea from the US; NASA reportedly proposed a similar plan more than two decades ago but never went on to develop it.
China recently launched its third crewed mission to the Tiangong Space Station's Tianhe module, where three astronauts will work on completing the space station before returning to Earth in December. China only launched the first module of the Tiangong Space Station in April 2021, but expects to have the space station fully crewed and operational by the end of the year, when the space station will have an additional two science lab modules and a robotic cargo ship. The space station will also help China to deploy and operate its new space telescope, Xuntian, meant "to rival NASA's aging Hubble Space Telescope, with a field of view 300 times larger and a similar resolution. It will make observations in ultraviolet and visible light, running investigations related to dark matter and dark energy, cosmology, galactic evolution, and the detection of nearby objects." Xuntian is scheduled to launch in 2024.
China's explicit goal is to become the world's leading space power by 2045. It is important to keep in mind that China's space program – even what might look like harmless, civil aspects of space exploration – is heavily militarized. The organization in charge of China's manned space program, for instance, is the China Manned Space Engineering Office, which is under China's Central Military Commission Equipment Development Department. Similarly, the People's Liberation Army runs China's space launch sites, control centers and many of China's satellites.
Its not that easy. Musk went for massive redundancy for several reasons, this being one of them (heard that directly, at Hawthorne). Each Starlink satellite is very cheap vs all possible weapons that can be used against them, and they can be replaced quickly if it comes down to it. SpaceX can increase its launch rate massively if the USG foots the bill. Musks system, from launch vehicle manufacture on up, is designed to be scalable.
Note that Musk has created what amounts to a US strategic system, that will be critical in time of war. It can, for instance, serve as a repeater/backup to GPS, implementing that is just software.
Not enough mass in Musks satellites. These are small, just 250kg. These arent going to double as hosts for “rods from God”. The Starlink Gen2 satellites will be 2.7 tons, so there is some more scope there.
I’ll say it again, ultimately there can be only one. One nation or treaty group which controls access to space for all Earth. Yes I’m predicting at least a limited version of global government. Because otherwise there will be incessant war a few hundred miles over our heads, war which doesn’t stay in space.
That global authority should be the US of course, but we will need to show massive technical dominance over Russia and China, and I hope we can. Otherwise it will be a long and costly war.
The repressive Chinese regime has an excellent reason to loathe Starlink. It’s a high bandwidth information platform for consumers which the regime cannot control nor realistically block.
This issue will be interesting because Tesla has a gigafactory in China. Nationalizing a gigafactory is probably not good for attracting international companies to build their factories in China. Yet Musk has virtually unlimited ability to configure Starlink so that the Chinese populace has broad access to unfiltered information, one way or another.
The whole setup including China and the larger issue of establishing a global authority over space, reads like the script of a miniseries. In the vein of The Expanse.
The US has already solicited bids on a man-portable Starlink terminal for SOCOM.
https://www.sbir.gov/node/2179845
The Air Force is also testing Starlink for aircraft.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/12/spacex-prepares-for-air-force-test-of-starlink-satellite-internet.html
Could they jam the signal, locally?
Its in China so that’s not much of a true threat.
Yes, but none of the US satellites provide unfettered www access to bypass the CCP’s controls.
Yep, Musk has launched as many as 53 satellites on a single Falcon9 rocket. Starship will launch 400 at a time. With several thousand already operational, eventually Musk plans over 40,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and even taking down a thousand of them would cause insignificant degradation.
I am waiting on the Starlink stock IPO.
Elon Musk has not said when that will happen as he says he has to make money with Starlink.
Maybe, but it would be extremely local...a few miles. Send in a Wild Weasel and the jammer would be toast.
Not YAWN. Serious problem.
We have weak, ineffective, unintelligent, unhinged leadership in the USA (add other derogatory adjectives for the Harris/Biden regime as needed) ... that encourages the world’s bad actors to act badly. Xi is feeling froggy because Biden is a demented dolt. Xi didn’t act that way when Trump was in the White House.
Yeah, but to do that he would need access to something like missiles. Oh wait...
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A reply to that threat should have been:
“That’s a pretty little dam you’ve got there.... Be a shame if anything happened to it.”
Perhaps the way that the Ukraine has been able to use Starlink for battlefield intelligence has something to do with it. You might be able to bribe Biden to look the other way on satellite intelligence, but Starlink is under Musk's control.
Of course, the counter-argument is that Musk has a huge Tesla factory in China that could be squeezed.
China’s explicit goal is to become the world’s leading space power by 2045. It is important to keep in mind that China’s space program - even what might look like harmless, civil aspects of space exploration - is heavily militarized.
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Which people can read as there are some civilian components. Which is profoundly not true.
All of China’s efforts are military. They have a goal in space, which the West does not, just vague plans, projects, randomly assembled and called a space program, then on Congressional whim defunded or added to - with no coherent overall goal.
As China is out spending out building the US Navy, so too is its space program is outspending the US and eventually outstripping all US efforts.
But people yawn and think no big deal because of this or that. And eventually, wake up in a world run by the Chinese while they were busy napping, yawning, deriding.
Was thinking more along the lines of ‘shotgun from God’...no precision targeting, more of an area-effect munition...😎
Yep, they fear that OUR leftist China loving media could change opinions and then China will be like America with the corrupt media tearing down society.
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