"Destabilising" Russian Space Threat

Grey Havoc said:
He who holds the high ground....

I'd say we are going to be seeing a lot of nuclear armed systems in orbit in the near future. Not only ASATs but things like MOBS (orbital MIRV platforms).
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I doubt it, because I think at some point such systems simply are engaged as hostile targets launched at the U.S.
 
Forest Green said:
Indeed, launching a nuclear warhead into space is basically an act of war, and it becomes fair game.
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No, all it would do would to signal the final and irrevocable dissolution of the Outer Space Treaty. Attacking a sovereign spacecraft, nuclear armed or otherwise, on the other hand would be an Act of War.
 
Grey Havoc said:
No, all it would do would to signal the final and irrevocable dissolution of the Outer Space Treaty. Attacking a sovereign spacecraft, nuclear armed or otherwise, on the other hand would be an Act of War.
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Call it whatever you want, I doubt the U.S. would simply live under a nuclear weapon passing over the country on a daily basis.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Would depend on the Party/Administration in power, I suspect.
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I actually rather doubt it. I cannot believe any president would allow that; even if they thought preemptive engagement was a bad idea the political pressure from voters would be massive and the opposing party would beat them over the head with it. I think if Russia gets to the point of having a completed system that an explicit policy to engage upon detection will be articulated ahead of time to discourage Russia.
 
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Grey Havoc said:
No, all it would do would to signal the final and irrevocable dissolution of the Outer Space Treaty. Attacking a sovereign spacecraft, nuclear armed or otherwise, on the other hand would be an Act of War.
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From the moment a nuclear warhead is launched into orbit it's already an act of war. It's also fundamentally unsafe as well as being an imminent threat. It could also be hacked by rogue parties, there's lots of ways it could go wrong.

Bottom line is that nobody's going to tolerate it being there, any more than MRBMs in Cuba. The enemy can choose to escalate if they wish but at least there'll be more time to see it coming.
 
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Josh_TN said:
Yeah, that is not encouraging. I am pretty convinced a Russian effort to orbit a nuclear warhead will lead to a direct confrontation.
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No resolution is required because there's already a treaty and it's the same treaty that prohibits nukes in space that provides for free navigation of space above otherwise hostile airspace IIRC. So being a nuke, it falls outside that treaty, hence right to freedom of navigation is voided and it can legally be shot down above any nation that deems it a threat.

At the end of the day, Russia downed a drone in international airspace, so they have no right to complaint anyway.
 
If this is the reason for the US concern, and you have to believe from the evidence so far that it is. This is a consequence of Russia's decline. They know they cannot compete with Starlink or Starshield so will act assymetrically. We can expect the Chinese to have a similar capability, though it has to be said the Chinese who are looking to develop their own LEO satellite constellations may balk because they could end up having as much to lose as the US.

If anything, in a sane world, this should harden US desire to support Ukraine as Putin's downfall following defeat would be the best way of stopping this...or at least hoping to.
 
Meanwhile, the X-37B is being prepared for its next secret mission. I can understand why the Russians are concerned. I can also see a direct counter to a nuclear warhead in space. A device is built to push it out of range, and toward the Sun.
 
Things like bombsats and MOBS are likely to have anti-tamper defences and the like though.
 
edwest4 said:
Meanwhile, the X-37B is being prepared for its next secret mission. I can understand why the Russians are concerned. I can also see a direct counter to a nuclear warhead in space. A device is built to push it out of range, and toward the Sun.
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Review how much delta-V is required to push something out of solar orbit.




edwest4 said:
I agree. That's why a few astronauts get sent on the next secret X-37B mission and do some work in outer space designed to disable anti-tamper systems.
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Yeah, no.

There's literally no space for an Astronaut in the X37B, this forum has been over that point ad nauseam.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Review how much delta-V is required to push something out of solar orbit.





Yeah, no.

There's literally no space for an Astronaut in the X37B, this forum has been over that point ad nauseam.
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Bottom line: the U.S. will not do nothing. The U.S. will not want to upset the Russians. Finally, Delta-V or no, a number of plans will be proposed and a few will be acted on.
 
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edwest4 said:
Bottom line: the U.S. will not do nothing. The U.S. will not want to upset the Russians. Finally, Delta-V or no, a number of plans will be proposed and a few will be acted on.
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It's not a matter of whether they're upset or not (that's they're default state), it's national security. Nuclear weapons in space are not safe. Just because Russia is losing in space technology race it doesn't mean they get to introduce a pigeon to the chessboard ignoring existing treaties, while still expecting other people to follow them.

For objects permitted by the 1967 Treaty, national airspace ends at 100km, for objects not permitted by the 1967 Treaty airspace does not end at 100km. And the US had no problem shooting down China's balloon as regards upset or otherwise.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Oh, hell.

SDI Project Prometheus. ( https://www.projectrho.com/public_h...hp#id--Nukes_In_Space--Nuclear_Shaped_Charges and scroll down a ways till you see the bubble titled "THIRD-GENERATION-WEAPON INNOVATION - DIRECTED THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES")

10kiloton ASAT. Instead of heating the tungsten plate into a plasma like for an Orion propulsion charge, you insulate it from the heat of detonation as much as you can and let it "fractionate" into millions of small fragments that are all flying along at 100km/sec. A single one of those 8 milligram fragments carries roughly 40kJ of kinetic energy. With as much work as people have put into prefragmented projectiles over the last 15ish years, I assume that making the tungsten plate fragments would not be difficult, nor would making sure that the fragments spread evenly. The example from Atomic Rockets puts one fragment per square meter at 2000km from the boom.

And I know the Russians can do the math to make a nuclear shaped charge. (Hell, if I had any mathematical heavy lifting to do, I would reach out to one of the Russian Universities math departments to get it done.)
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Perfect to test against asteroids.

I understand there is a movement to sell off the Kourou R-7 pad. I think that is a mistake. If a nuclear asteroid intercept is to be had---I'd like an R-7 to carry it from there.
 
publiusr said:
Perfect to test against asteroids.

I understand there is a movement to sell off the Kourou R-7 pad. I think that is a mistake. If a nuclear asteroid intercept is to be had---I'd like an R-7 to carry it from there.
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Asteroids are actually best shoved around by very big nukes. 25+ megatons.
 
publiusr said:
Perfect to test against asteroids.

I understand there is a movement to sell off the Kourou R-7 pad. I think that is a mistake. If a nuclear asteroid intercept is to be had---I'd like an R-7 to carry it from there.
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Wrong vehicle for it.
It is the right move to sell off the pad. the Russians don't need it.
 
I would like to think—one day when all this unpleasantness is over, it can be used to launch cosmonauts.

I don’t think it has that massive turntable originally used, or does it?
 
Scott Kenny said:
Oh, hell.

SDI Project Prometheus. ( https://www.projectrho.com/public_h...hp#id--Nukes_In_Space--Nuclear_Shaped_Charges and scroll down a ways till you see the bubble titled "THIRD-GENERATION-WEAPON INNOVATION - DIRECTED THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES")

10kiloton ASAT. Instead of heating the tungsten plate into a plasma like for an Orion propulsion charge, you insulate it from the heat of detonation as much as you can and let it "fractionate" into millions of small fragments that are all flying along at 100km/sec. A single one of those 8 milligram fragments carries roughly 40kJ of kinetic energy. With as much work as people have put into prefragmented projectiles over the last 15ish years, I assume that making the tungsten plate fragments would not be difficult, nor would making sure that the fragments spread evenly. The example from Atomic Rockets puts one fragment per square meter at 2000km from the boom.

And I know the Russians can do the math to make a nuclear shaped charge. (Hell, if I had any mathematical heavy lifting to do, I would reach out to one of the Russian Universities math departments to get it done.)
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Best space-based nuclear weapon by far is the particle beam that fires Deuterium-Tritium pellets if the Russians want to play pigeon chess in space.

Beam Weapons - Atomic Rockets

projectrho.com projectrho.com

DT fuel contains about 330 TJ/kg of energy, meaning that there is an energy multiplication effect of 66,000 at 100 km/s (assuming 100% burnup) and the energy gain can be maintained at up to 25,690 km/s!
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A 1 MW accelerator would be firing off 2,500 of these projectiles per second. Up to 64 GW of fusion energy could then be released at the target.
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