Russia Testing Highly Maneuverable Satellite

[Guest]

If you read my post on the previous page you'd know that the answer is "not a very big one".

[Duxwing]

What advantage would any nation gain from orbital nuclear weapons?

A nation would gain a psychological and military advantage from orbital nuclear weapons. The psychological advantage would be seeming omnipresence: all other nations would know the nation's weapons to be always overhead. The military advantage, should the nation keep other nations from building similar networks, would be the ability to obliterate anything on a whim with impunity. The nation could extort whatever it wanted--from land to slave labor--and indeed take over the world. In short, orbital nuclear weapons make one god-like.

-Duxwing

[andrew123]

I bet you guys haven't heard of the USSR's Polyus 'Satellite', which was a laser weapon with a black carbon paint coating to hide it from ground observers. It was originally to be deployed on the first launch of the Energia booster, but the Polyus has a navigational glitch and retroburned to its fiery death. XD

And don't forget the ASM-135 US Air Force ASAT test. it resulted in orbital debris which were carbonized and extremely difficult to track from the surface.

[Camacha]

I bet you guys haven't heard of the USSR's Polyus 'Satellite', which was a laser weapon with a black carbon paint coating to hide it from ground observers. It was originally to be deployed on the first launch of the Energia booster, but the Polyus has a navigational glitch and retroburned to its fiery death. XD

All those are perfectly legal too.

[andrew123]

All those are perfectly legal too.

Except for the part where the USSR claimed it was a dummy payload.

[Kryten]

A nation would gain a psychological and military advantage from orbital nuclear weapons. The psychological advantage would be seeming omnipresence: all other nations would know the nation's weapons to be always overhead. The military advantage, should the nation keep other nations from building similar networks, would be the ability to obliterate anything on a whim with impunity. The nation could extort whatever it wanted--from land to slave labor--and indeed take over the world. In short, orbital nuclear weapons make one god-like.

-Duxwing

Do you actually play KSP? You can't just drop things from orbit, detection times and chances of intercepting a deorbiting nuke won't be much different from one on an ICBM, and would have required a much larger rocket to put there in the first place. The only actual attempt to put weapons into orbit was so the soviets could exploit a hole in US missile early warning radar coverage, but that hole no longer exists.

Except for the part where the USSR claimed it was a dummy payload.

Large parts were dummy, including the laser.

[Camacha]

Except for the part where the USSR claimed it was a dummy payload.

What, there is a you shall not lie to your mum clause in there too?

[andrew123]

What, there is a you shall not lie to your mum clause in there too?

Na. It just makes good ammunition for politicians to incite paranoia.

'THE RUSKIES ARE COMMING!! MORE WARSHIPS!!'

[Technical Ben]

A nation would gain a psychological and military advantage from orbital nuclear weapons. The psychological advantage would be seeming omnipresence: all other nations would know the nation's weapons to be always overhead. The military advantage, should the nation keep other nations from building similar networks, would be the ability to obliterate anything on a whim with impunity. The nation could extort whatever it wanted--from land to slave labor--and indeed take over the world. In short, orbital nuclear weapons make one god-like.

-Duxwing

Current bombers and nuclear threats already suppose such things. This just notches it up a bit. :/

[magnemoe]

Current bombers and nuclear threats already suppose such things. This just notches it up a bit. :/

This, submarines with nuclear weapons work well, pretty much impossible to find, can hit target in 5-15 minutes if ready to fire.

Known technology and does not create fuss.

Weapon systems to take out the GPS and communication satellites make way more sense. GPS enables some pretty devastating weapon systems for one,

[andrew123]

This, submarines with nuclear weapons work well, pretty much impossible to find, can hit target in 5-15 minutes if ready to fire.

Known technology and does not create fuss.

Weapon systems to take out the GPS and communication satellites make way more sense. GPS enables some pretty devastating weapon systems for one,

MEMS intertial guidance isn't too far off in terms of accuracy.

http://www.sensorsmag.com/sensors/acceleration-vibration/an-overview-mems-inertial-sensing-technology-970

[Tommygun]

I thought the debris and sats tracking facility (where they had long, many wires used for radio 'scope) was retired already ?

But I have to agree that hiding in space is quite hard. Unless those reflective radiation umbrella patent is a truth, and is actually up there now...

It was retired, but a new one is replacing it in the Marshall Islands.

The military also use telescopes, passive receivers and several kinds of radar at sites all over the world.

[Camacha]

MEMS intertial guidance isn't too far off in terms of accuracy.

Plus radar mapping and a whole host of other technologies to deal with the demise of GPS. I think it might be more than an annoyance to soldiers in the field, but the big boys won't be less accurate because of it.

[Duxwing]

Do you actually play KSP?

Yes, I do.

You can't just drop things from orbit, detection times and chances of intercepting a deorbiting nuke won't be much different from one on an ICBM, and would have required a much larger rocket to put there in the first place.

I strongly disagree. Orbital nukes are not dropped but deorbited, intercepting a de-orbiting nuke is harder because it is already halfway-there, and the rockets needed exist. I hope this example will illustrate my opinion:

Consider an orbital nuclear system comprising many LEO nuclear installations, each with a payload of several warheads and many decoys. Suppose that each installation's payload, tankage, utilities, and engine together mass one ton and that the whole installation deorbits itself on command. With three tons of propellant, an ISP of 400, and one-G average acceleration, the installation could decelerate over four kilometers per second in less than seven minutes. Just one Delta-IV Heavy could lift six installations and enough fuel to comfortably maneuver them.

Deorbited installations would travel about four-and-a-half kilometers each second--Mach 13--until the lower atmosphere. Their trajectory would be severe and distance-to-target short, leaving interceptors little time to even identify the suddenly-appearing tracks and even less time to destroy them. Last, because the orbital stations would be always ready to fire, less than ten minutes could elapse from pushing the Big Red Button to hearing the Big Badda-Boom.

-Duxwing

[vger]

Putting nukes in orbit offers very few advantages. You've got a few options: LEO, which gives you a highly variable response time (from about 10 minutes to over an hour!) or GEO, which gives you consistent, but long response time (try deorbiting something in RSS if you don't believe. GEO is very, very high up). Also, nukes are heavy, and large space launches are rather hard to conceal. People find classified Delta IV payloads all the time, with Long March and Proton it's mostly the same. Don't believe Holywood, ICBMs are incapable of getting their payload anywhere near orbit (just look at how puny ICBM-derived LVs are). Space does offer plenty of advantages, but also quite a few disadvantages.

Who needs a Nuke? There are plenty of other kinds of "WMD's" that wouldn't give themselves away as easily as a nuclear weapon. And as a deterrent, it doesn't need to be capable of wiping everything out. It could be something as simple as, "You blow us up, we release this mega-virus into Earth's atmosphere, and EVERYONE dies." Practical? Not much more than space-based missiles. But if you can hide it well enough that nobody will know WHICH of your sats have the things, it would probably make everyone plenty nervous.

Edited November 3, 2014 by vger

[Camacha]

Who needs a Nuke? There are plenty of other kinds of "WMD's" that wouldn't give themselves away as easily as a nuclear weapon. And as a deterrent, it doesn't need to be capable of wiping everything out. It could be something as simple as, "You blow us up, we release this mega-virus into Earth's atmosphere, and EVERYONE dies." Practical? Not much more than space-based missiles. But if you can hide it well enough that nobody will know WHICH of your sats have the things, it would probably make everyone plenty nervous.

Downside it that if it explodes upon launch, everyone has a bad day.

[1greywind]

Russian radio amateur detected and recorded signal from Kosmos-2499:

He says it looks like science telemetry data.