Posted on 02/01/2007 10:09:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Criticizing China's test of an anti-satellite weapon, the U.S. State Department said Friday "modern life as we know it" depends on the security of space-based technology.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the administration raised concerns about the test with Chinese officials in Washington and in Beijing, making clear its opposition to "any militarization of space."
He said tests of the kind China carried out "produce extensive amounts of space debris, have the potential for disturbing or accidentally disrupting communication satellites or other kinds of space vehicles that are out there."
A report released Friday by a U.S. congressional advisory panel said there is a movement within the Chinese military for development of an anti-satellite weapons system that could be used against U.S. targets without warning. The report said even a small-scale attack could have "catastrophic" consequences for the United States.
At the White House on Friday, deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Chinese officials had not yet responded to U.S. inquiries.
"We do want co-operation on a civil space strategy, so until we hear back from them or have more information, I don't have any more to add," Perino said.
The test was reported to have knocked out an aging Chinese weather satellite with a vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile. The satellite was believed located about 800 kilometres above the Earth.
Casey acknowledged the United States carried out an anti-satellite device test in 1985 but said the international context was entirely different at the time, pointing to Cold war tensions of that period.
More important, he said is the impact of space technology on everyday life compared with the earlier period. As examples, satellite communications have revolutionized weather forecasting, as well as television viewing. Satellites are also important for military communications.
U.S. Representative Terry Everett, senior Republican on the House of Representatives armed services subcommittee on strategic forces, said China's test "raises serious concerns about the vulnerability of our space-based assets."
"We depend on satellites for a host of military and commercial uses, from navigation to ATM transactions."
Casey, asked whether the United States plans weapons tests in space, said: "My understanding is there are no plans or intentions on the part of the United States to engage in such activities."
The U.S. disclosure that China had carried out the test raised concern in Asia and prompted demands for explanations from Beijing.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki also suggested China's lack of transparency about its military development could trigger suspicions about its motives in the region.
In his annual threat address to Congress, the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt.-Gen. Michael Maples, said last week China and Russia are the "primary states of concern" regarding military space programs.
"Several countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten U.S. space assets and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite capabilities," he said.
His written testimony was presented Jan. 11, the same day as China's test.
The Chinese test prompted the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the congressional advisory panel, to release a lengthy study on the country's potential anti-satellite weapons capabilities. The study was prepared by China expert Michael Pillsbury and is based on open-source Chinese documents.
An executive summary of the report cited writings by three Chinese colonels who advocated covert deployment of a sophisticated anti-satellite weapons system to be used against the United States "in a surprise manner without warning."
It said even a small-scale anti-satellite attack in a crisis against 50 U.S. satellites "could have a catastrophic effect not only on U.S. military forces but on the U.S. civilian economy."
It is not clear from U.S. open sources how rapidly, if at all, the United States could launch "spare" satellites to replace a few dozen that had been incapacitated in orbit by Chinese attack, the report said.
Other concepts proposed by the Chinese military, the study said, called for jamming and attacking ground stations, rather than destruction of U.S. satellites.
In both the anti-satellite and ground station attacks, the United States could have difficulty knowing which country was responsible for the hostilities, the report said.
Somewhere I read that if a satelite in a particular orbit was blown up, the debris cloud would hit other satellites and the shrapnel effect would increase like a chain reaction.
The Chicoms already own the panama canal, and their soldiers along w/al queda terrorists are sneaking into the US within the mexican immigrant flood, getting ready to do the RED DAWN movie on us; and now we're letting them take over SPACE???
Empty ballistic missiles make good satellite launchers.
It said even a small-scale anti-satellite attack in a crisis against 50 U.S. satellites "could have a catastrophic effect not only on U.S. military forces but on the U.S. civilian economy." ==
The obvious and well-known. Utill recently only USA and Russia had the anti-sattelite weaonry. Now China get them. China just follows the pattern.
It is not clear from U.S. open sources how rapidly, if at all, the United States could launch "spare" satellites to replace a few dozen that had been incapacitated in orbit by Chinese attack, the report said. ==
Any modern ground war should start from wiping out the enemy sattelites over the theater. It is in order to lock teh theater so to quell any communication and positioning system of enemy weaponry. It is obvious strategy of any modern miltary in the world, the russian in this too.
As faras I red the russian space command should launch not only anti-sattelite hits but block thier orbits by despersing on them the clouds of small objects like strapnel fragments. Those flying with cosmic speeds fragments on orbits should destroy new launched devices and make new launches useless.
The only thing matching the audacity of the Chinese military buildup is the effete idiocy of the western nations to counter it.
Bush could have stopped the trade war cold. He could have built our military into a force so unstoppable that the Chinese would be afraid to even utter a peep about an attack on the US. Instead, we get this.
I've long held that Clinton's legacy will be a Third World War. Unfortunately, Bush seems unwilling to change our policies and postures towards the largest current and potential adversary we have. If things do not begin to change and change big, we stand a good chance of losing that war.
They are not taking over space as much as they are considering making it useless for them and everyone else. I think this hints that their manned space program is a publicity sham and their stated goal of sending men to the moon is an attempt to lead us down a false trail.
It said even a small-scale anti-satellite attack in a crisis against 50 U.S. satellites "could have a catastrophic effect not only on U.S. military forces but on the U.S. civilian economy."
It is not clear from U.S. open sources how rapidly, if at all, the United States could launch "spare" satellites to replace a few dozen that had been incapacitated in orbit by Chinese attack, the report said.
Want to get everyone's attention to this? Shut down all US satellites for three hours starting at 18:00 East Coast time. That will totally disrupt the Mainstream Media, and cripple Internet and Voice services. Until that hits Joe an Jane Sixpack you're just spitting in the wind.
The whole idea of the ROCKET being the only way to space is a scam, wanna know more?
What?
Factoid : one pound in Low Earth Orbit(LEO), moving at 5 miles per second and 100 miles up is energy-worth(mv^2/2 + mgh)all of 4 KWH. At 10 cents/KWH that's 40 cents. A one ounce letter requires a 39 cent stamp. Thus a letter that doesn't even make it to space costs 16 times as much, by pro-rated weight, than that pound in LEO.
That same pound on the shuttle costs some $20,000 to get it to LEO. Pretty good markup wouldn't you say? $20,000 to do 40 cents of actual WORK!
20+ years ago we already had the concept of the quenched superconducting ring-cannon on the drawing board. At 10% efficiency that meant $4/# to LEO by shooting projectiles(bullets)into space like a machine gun. At one 20kg projectile every 10 seconds day and night, that meant 19 shuttle loads(20,000#) gets to LEO each and every 24 hour period.
That factoid TERRIFIED nasa as a VESTED INTEREST. Demonstrate that getting a mass(at 150,000 gees)into LEO at $4/# with the QSRC means TAXPAYERS start asking : well then, why do we pay $20,000/# to do it with the shuttle?
So the QSRC was smothered in the cradle in the late 1980s. But now it's BACK as a RAILGUN, recently demonstrated for the NAVY. And the NEED for SDI/Star Wars is just as relavent now as then with NK/Iran/china/russia, and their ICBMs...
Anyway, that's EMSL/QSRC, there's also the sandpaper thruster, but that's another story....
That's a very high acceleration.
That was being done 20+ years ago with the EM mass driver : testing all the components that would make up an EMSL projectile. Only a delicate clock mechanism was damaged by the 150,000 g acceleration. Gerard O'Neil at MIT was getting up to 1,000,000 gees with a su-co ring; and finding out that magnetic attraction rather than repulsion works best at keeping the projectile centered in the bore.
Here's the EMSL concept as worked out by this loosely knit group of aerospace engineers during the SDI/Star Wars era of the late 1980s : The CANNON(of some kind)accelerates the projectile to 5 mps. After about 2-3 seconds it passes the tropopause(boundary between lower troposphere and stratosphere)and at it's peak it's in orbit. The velocity is actually 4.83 mps at 100mi height, .17 mps being lost to air friction/ablation heating on the way up.
It is shaped like a long needle with lithium beads or pores in the sharp nose. They looked at projectile masses from 10kg to 1000kg and cannon elevations from 90 deg all the way down to 15 deg. Nose cone angle(from a long theoretical study)of no less than 8 deg. Obviously the 90 deg angle(straight up)gets thru the tropopause quickest but you need a small on-board rocket for side thrust at apogee, otherwise it just comes back down to burn-up.
Crack your physics book : one pound at 100 miles up, and moving at 4.83 mps is (mgh + mv^2/2) energy-worth all of 4 KWH. That's what Arthur Clarke was referring to on the Apollo moon shot TV show when Jules Bergman cut him off like a MEAT CLEAVER. NASA doesn't WANT you to know that(40 cents/pound to LEO with EMSL, at 10 cents/KWH)when they charge you the taxpayer $20,000/pound to do the same thing. Even with a 10% EMSL cannon efficiency that's $4/#, about the same as a 39 cent stamp/oz on a mailed letter.
Anyway, they looked at rail guns, homopolar generators, ultracapacitors; all had problems, none was quite up to the task. But the quenched superconducting ring cannon looked like the best idea. Here you have the sabot(containing the projectile) with its su-co ring being pulled upward by a series of su-co rngs in the bore. You lasar-quench each one as the sabot passes it.
Since there HAS to be a vacuum in the bore, you have some 15 chambers beyond the cannon mouth, separated by movie films, 1 psi pressure differential between them. Thus as the sabot/projectile punches thru they advance one frame, basically retaining the vacuum in the bore.
The whole thing is some 500 feet long at a 45 deg angle to the east(from Jarvis Island). At 1kg/sec in continuous firing mode you get some 19 shuttle loads(20,000#)injected into LEO each and every day.
Thus you see how this "space train" would work : the EMSL cannon shoots the freight/baggage up at 150,000 gees at about $4/#, that "baggage" being mostly water; and the shuttle takes up the delicate human BODIES at the gentle 3 g rate.
We had this ALL worked out 20 years ago but two things happened : Reagan's SDI initiative worked, it bankrupted the USSR in trying to keep up, thus SDI funding was cut back to the bone; AND nasa saw it as a THREAT to their ROCKET MONIES. $20,000/# is a beautiful retail markup to do 40 cents/# worth of wholesale WORK, yes?
So EMSL was smothered in the cradle, GONE by 1990. And yet, now it's BACK with this railgun demo for the US Navy. Sad to consider : we could have been putting 19 shuttle loads of mass/day into LEO with just ONE QSCR cannon for the last 19 years, but nasa/vested interests KILLED it as a competitor. And no business ever funds its competitor...
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