SunlitZelkova

They already get the Sentinel ICBM program. Despite the controversy around whether ICBMs are even necessary anymore (from both a disarmament and nuclear modernization view), it’s most ardent supporters in Congress just happen to be in the states with ICBM builders and where ICBMs are stationed.

It's kinda cool that the two electronics suppliers in the Portland area are like 15 minutes away from me though Actually, checking a little further, one of them is literally in my neighborhood. I'll be very curious to see what their design is. SpaceX is an obvious choice for one of the landers, so the NT's main competitor will be the Dynetics led team. Pork aside, do y'all think they will actually come up with something reasonably useful and innovative this time (despite the pork and associated setbacks caused by it), or will we get a rehash of the original NT lander, with all of its glaring inefficiencies and anachronisms?

It is not just that idea alone, he is claiming that the idea that the X-37B is a nuclear weapons platform is more plausible than the explanation that the X-37B is being used for spacecraft materials/equipment tests for future intelligence gathering satellites, and that said known fact that the X-37B is used for spacecraft materials/equipment tests somehow does not make sense and is implausible.

I’m not sure if you are missing what he is alluding to or not, but to spell it out plainly he is stating that the X-37B is being used to test the longevity of nuclear weapons in space, with an eye towards evolving the X-37B into a full fledged orbital bombardment system.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20221208_04/ The name of Japan’s de facto air force, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (航空自衛隊, kōkūjieitai), will be changed to Japan Air and Space Self-Defense Force (航空宇宙自衛隊, kōkū-uchū-jieitai) in 2023. The JASDF formed its Space Operations Squadron in 2020. It has a space surveillance radar that is supposed to either be built or already exists in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and will conduct space domain awareness operations. It will work closely with the USSF and JAXA. Their own satellite (and thus Japan’s first military satellite) will be launched around 2026. Because Japan can’t legally have a military after World War II, it instead has the Self-Defense Forces, which in legal terms makes it like a glorified police force and thus ok under the constitution.

Such a system already exists actually! @DDE @K^2 https://www.leonardo.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/the-strales-76mm-system-with-dart-guided-ammunition The manufacturers of the DART guided 76mm rounds for the OTO Melara 76mm claim it is still cheaper than SAMs. Colombia has bought a bunch of them, to give you an idea of how fiscally easy it is to procure. It has a 40G maneuver limit, utilizes a combination of canards on the rotating forward half of the shell and fixed fins on the rear half to maneuver, uses command line-of-sight all the way to the target, utilizing the Ka-band for its radio guidance. I think land-based large caliber anti-aircraft artillery is a bad idea though. These don’t have a self-destruct system like a SAM, which would either result in bombs raining down on friendlies or the planting of mines on one’s own territory if it misses. Another reason I don’t think we will necessarily see widespread adoption of large caliber AA over small caliber is that it is not as great against aircraft compared to MANPADS. Why build guns and shells when we can just build a few more of the tube thingies we’re giving to our dudes in the bushes? I have to wonder though, if Italy had adopted the OTOMATIC SPAAG that utilized the 76mm, would we see them being sent off to *that place* today? Considering the speed of *those slow targets that are a hassle in that place*, the fire rate of the 76mm (120 rpm) should be more than enough to suffice.

I don’t know about the sources of that, but in any case, there are alternatives. CNN proposed the 1000km range indigenous cruise missile that was teased around October could have been used. They appear to have pulled that idea out of nowhere (on their own), but it is plausible.

This is epic.

The X-37B had its first flight literally in the same month and year New START was signed (April 2010). Having read much about the contrasting policies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in the 60s, I can tell you for sure that the US did not play some sort of 32D chess move to push nuclear arms control to the brink, over several administrations. Our government is not that smart.

I would, but it’s basically constantly cloudy in Oregon and Washington until March

Yes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3_Unit_2 They may not have the confidence in their shipbuilding industry to build the proper tracking and recovery ships.

I said physically possible, not “circumstantially” possible, or possible based on evidence. I.e. like how a crewed Mars landing last year is physically possible, yet based on evidence, it is impossible. Writing about all the lengths the US government would need to go to to implement a hypothetical fake Moon landing conspiracy can be done within the laws of physics, but there is no evidence that happened, and there is evidence that the Moon landings did happen, and so is pointless. EDIT- I will add that kerbiloid is making his argument based on physics alone, so what I am trying to point out with my fake Moon landing example is that just because something is within the laws of physics does not mean it is plausible or worth discussion. To put it simply- it’s silly. There is no evidence that the X-37B is being used as a test platform for nuclear weapons or will be turned into a strike system in the future. That’s the answer. Things are proven as fact when there is evidence to support them, not because no evidence against them exists. EDIT- I will add that it is fact that the X-37B is a long duration materials test platform. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104539/x-37b-orbital-test-vehicle/ “The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.“

It’s physically possible that the Moon landing was faked yet we don’t discuss that for obvious reasons.

The feedback they are interested in is related to the potential environmental effects. I myself am not concerned, not necessarily because I think the likelihood of Mars life negatively affecting Earth is low, but because based on the current schedule Tianwen-3 is going to arrive on Earth up to a year prior to the NASA-ESA mission so whatever they do for Earth protection is pointless. We are at the mercy of CNSA in that regard.

Just because one can’t see any other purpose for a thing besides what they believe makes sense to themself, does not mean that is the only justification the party actually using the thing sees. On both sides of the globe, each can’t see each other doing anything for peaceful or defensive purposes. X country’s stuff must be for offense according to Y, and Y country’s stuff must be for offensive according to X. IMO none of this is supposed to make sense. It’s two male cats fighting for dominance. Logic is a means to an end, and thus bent as needed, rather than making decisions based on logic. Either one day the documents will be declassified and this can become a cool tidbit in history, or the documents will be incinerated in 400 kiloton blasts, along with the rest of us. The former is the only way we will know. Operating based on conjecture and circumstance is very dangerous. I (and probably others) prefer to rely on facts, and there are none to be seen regarding the use of the X-37B to test nuclear weapons. It’s as absurd as the Chinese orbital bombardment stations from the USSF Bezos briefing, insofar as there is no evidence for it.

Yep. It was $27 million. *facepalm*

In Portland, Oregon, a new homeless shelter program is nearly on par with the NASA budget, shy by just $2 billion lol.

1. Russia (State Space Corporation «Roscosmos»)* 2. United States (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 3. France (National Center for Space Studies) 4. Japan (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) 5. China (China National Space Administration) 6. India (Indian Space Research Organization) 7. Israel (Israeli Space Agency) 8. Iran (Iranian Space Agency) 9. North Korea (National Aerospace Development Administration) 10. South Korea (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) *Only for launches from Plesetsk and Vostochny Source- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_launches_by_country ESA’s space center is in an overseas territory and thus would not count. France and Britain conducted their launches in Algeria and Australia, respectively, and thus these don’t count as “home” launches. Surprisingly, Russia’s launches from Baikonur don’t count because they are in Kazakhstan. Ukraine needed a sea launch platform, and thus this also would not count as “home”. New Zealand is questionable as to whether it has its own launch capability as Rocket Lab is an American company. “Launch capability” in this instance refers to orbital launch capability. EDIT- List updated. France would count but ESA would not, as its spacecraft technically encompass multiple nations yet launch from the Guiana Space Center alone.

https://scitechdaily.com/sofia-finds-no-phosphine-a-potential-sign-of-life-on-venus/amp/ Less phosphine than previously thought, or none at all, based on SOFIA observations.

First strike does not mean initiation of a war, it means the first use of nuclear weapons. If a conflict begins conventionally, first strike could be a viable option to silence the other side if things appear to be getting out of hand. Networking is getting better and better. If attack subs can get into proper position to target SSBNs, ASATs are ready in the predicted orbital paths to launch at their targets, and B-2s have penetrated and are near their command targets, a successful first strike could be viable in theory. That said, I would still be skeptical. If there really was such a program going on, it would have likely been detected by foreign intelligence agencies years ago, and the propaganda departments of those countries would be yelling about it non-stop. The fact that “X-37B is a weapons platform” remains an internet conspiracy theory makes it unlikely it is a reality.

Actually, I think it is safe to assume every country has a space agency nowadays. Having a space agency does not require building your own rockets or even satellites, just doing space science. Here’s the website of the Kenya Space Agency- https://ksa.go.ke/

For a suicide mission with no return it would work. The crews would either be captured or ditch in the Pacific for a submarine. These theories, put forward by American authors, assume Arctic bases were available though. I would assume airfields in places like Anadyr and Tiksi weren’t built until the mid 50s at least.

How hard was it to build a plutonium production reactor circa 1950? The Hanford Site is located in a curious location- it was/is just within range of a one way Tu-4 strike. I am wondering if it would be feasible to knock out American nuclear weapons production in a single blow for a story I am writing. Or would recovery be easy?

Scratch that, I confused ispace with Axelspace for the LEO stuff. ispace also is not involved in LEO debris removal either, I’ll need to go back to the show I was watching and find out who that was. Their website- https://ispace-inc.com/ Instead, ispace is like SpaceX but with the Moon. Their goal is 1000 people living on the Moon by 2040, not unlike Musk’s initial lofty goals of cargo Starship on Mars in 2022 and people on Mars in 2024. They don’t plan to build their own rocket and presumably will leverage SpaceX’s capabilities, as they are the only ones really working on a near term commercial human lunar lander (I would assume Starship HLS will eventually be available for order much in the same way Crew Dragon now is). ispace inc. is not to be confused with i-Space, a Chinese company building the Hyperbola series of small sat launchers. As a sign of how disconnected the Chinese and Japanese aerospace worlds are, ispace received its name in 2013 (it was founded in 2010 as White Label Space), which means i-Space chose their name upon their founding in 2016 with no knowledge of their Japanese companion. Perhaps some day an ispace lunar lander can be launched on an i-Space rocket! The founders of ispace got their start in the Google Lunar X Prize as part of the Europe-based White Label Space team. The company was renamed to ispace when the European portion of the team ceased participation in the project.