US Starting Asia Space Race?
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PlurkThe launch of the X-37 marks a hike in the space stakes, says David Axe. Will Asian countries see it as a military threat?
By David Axe
It was a space launch to change the world. On January 11, 2007, a solid-fuelled rocket lifted off from Xichang Space Center in central China, a non-explosive ‘kill vehicle’ fitted to its tip. Five hundred miles above the earth, the now-separated kill vehicle struck an 8-year-old Chinese weather satellite, pulverizing it and leaving behind a cloud of some 1,000 large pieces of debris.
The unannounced Chinese launch was the first full-scale test of an anti-satellite system since the US Air Force's 1985 demonstration of a satellite-killing missile launched by an F-15 fighter. And the global response to China’s move was swift and vociferous, with Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States condemning the intercept.
‘China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area,’ said Gordon Johndroe from the US National Security Council at the time.
A year later, the launch reverberated in the most important US election in a generation, when presidential candidate Barack Obama made opposition to such weaponry part of his platform. ‘Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons,’ his campaign asserted. ‘He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.’
Yet just two years into the Obama presidency and it’s clear that these noble sentiments aren’t being matched by US deeds.
On April 22, the US Air Force launched into orbit the world's most sophisticated robotic spacecraft, one whose design counters China's anti-satellite capability—and goes a step further. The X-37B, built by Boeing, could also be used to spy on and even disable other nations’ satellites, all without them necessarily knowing that it’s even happening. With the X-37, the US raised the stakes in the phase of the space race that China began three years ago.
Space Inspector
The multi-billion-dollar X-37, in development since the mid-1990s, is a re-usable, unmanned spacecraft that enters orbit atop a standard Air Force heavy rocket and re-enters the atmosphere as a glider. The new craft is similar in layout to the manned Space Shuttle but only quarter the size—just 30 feet from tip to tail.
‘The primary objectives of the X-37 is [testing] a new batch of re-usable technologies for America’s future, plus learning and demonstrating the concept of operations for re-usable experimental payloads,’ Gary Payton, Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs, told the media in April. ‘Take a payload up, spend up to 270 days on orbit. They’ll run experiments to see if the new technology works, then bring it all back home and inspect it to see what was really going on in space. So this is a new way for the Air Force to conduct experiments and we’re really excited about that.’
Photo Credit: NASA
Nathan
The West has become the biggest threat to world peace in the name of freedom and democracy!
Greg_D
The cargo container actually is large enough to field a weapon. The military has already done the math and their equation says a low orbiting drop of a crowbar sized object would each have the force of a 500lbs bomb as they are hurled like meteors, except GPS guided. Although they wouldn’t explode like a bomb, they could put nasty holes in ships, destroy power grids, destroy oil containers, put holes in bridges, destroy aircraft on the ground (even when they are in hangers), take out radar dishes take out SAM sites and destroy SCUD sized rockets and missiles. This vehicle could also drop various sensors such as a listening device in a harbor or a robot that could hide on a hill and watch a military base or enemy camp below.
First Advisor
The USA in control of space is a very frightening threat. All other people in the world are helpless and defenseless against that threat. We can be sure that behind the scenes, the international community of nations is doing everything they can to contain US aggression and hostility.
Yet the world knows that all they need to do is wait. The USA is spending itself into oblivion in its irrational compulsion for military supremacy. Like the Soviet Union, the US is shooting itself in the groin, perpetuating an utterly corrupt financial heirarchy, that no one in the world can trust anymore on the one hand, while spending every last dollar on military toys for jocks, to defend against a list of unstoppable enemies, growing in strength and number by the week. The budget conflicts are self-destructive and unsustainable. With every week’s issue of T-bills, the situation gets worse, and more inexorable.
Once the USA economy collapses, the American military will be useless and worthless. Nothing truly dangerous can be done by the US military without the proper codes. When there are no more codes, there is no more danger from the US military. Some planes and ships could cause peripheral damage before they were destroyed, blow up a few buildings scattered around the planet perhaps, but when a military can’t pay for fuel, forces are on foot with hand weapons, easy targets. The only really violent result when the US finally falls off the financial cliff will be the inevitable 50-part civil war, generals turned into warlords overnight, with the one single ambition of grabbing the biggest piece of the pie they can hold.
The rest of the world will cope with the disturbance and inconvenience just fine.
moderateGuy
The sentiments of the sophomoric loser weren’t “noble”, they were stupid, ignorant and infantile. They were based, like the entire current American “foreign policy”, on a wall-full of ludicrous posters in a college sophomore dorm-room. “No more war!” “End the occupation” “make love not war” “no nukes!”…and other such blithering nonsense.
The grown-up world, looked at it, snickered and dismissed the whole 4 years of this bimbo “presidency” as a joke, and a time to move ahead of America in grown-up affairs.
President Sarah Palin will, unfortunately, have a lot of work to undo the damage done, starting in 2013. Hope she is up to the task.
Guy
Why would you ever share that sort of information, or allow access to such networks when it is a known fact that the Chinese are doing everything in their power to infiltrate and sniff around in our existing networks?
john
Yeah I’m sure the US is not spying on China as well or every other nation for that matter!!! Remember the spy plane scandal in 2001 or the recent naval military spying on China? The US has become the major threat to world peace. Their empire is collapsing and they will do everything in their power to maintain it whether logically or illogically. Too bad so sad, every empire collapses!!!
David Davenport
To prevent the X-37 from further escalating the space race, the US should share monitoring technology with the world—and China in particular, Weeden says.
Weed out Weeden. Let’s share him with the Chicoms. Wait, it seems like he’s sharing himself already.
Tony
Wonderfully written article. Very even-sighted and informed. However, the idea that the US should share space monitoring technology with the world—especially China—is naïve and sophomoric. Has the author not been paying attention to China’s sudden push for regional, and even international, hegemony? China has seen the investments of good faith and the past six months has equally shown itself unworthy of such investments and its general lack of character as an internationally responsible participant. Giving China such technology is tantamount to giving the USSR plans and materials to build an atomic bomb at the conclusion of World War II.
China would most certainly subvert the technology and pervert the display of good faith by capitalizing further on what would be seen as a grand example of declining US power. Keeping China in check (if that’s even possible) and preventing an Asian arms race or cold war and subverting a resurgence of Chinese militancy, means staying ahead of them and showing tough love; cooperating, but also speaking softly with a big stick in hand.
dmh
Wow, nice article. Would have been even better if there were a fact or two to back up your “weaponization of space” theory.
Andrei C.
@ dmh,
The US weaponizaton of space is ALREADY widley acknowleged — Such as President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, and today, the legacy remains:
.
#1) As per this article; “The Pentagon has studied techniques for dropping non-nuclear bombs from space, but has never admitted to formally developing such orbital weaponry”
.
#2) The US is known to be Ambiguous about it’s own intentions and capabilities while DEMANDING that other nations reveal all of their’s (this is US Hypocrisy)…
.
#3) The US has already (hypocritically) weaponized space with the ASM-135 Anti-Satellite missile, fired from the US F-15 Eagle.
Tony
#1) Studying the ability, though on the surface is hypocritical to the US’s expressed views, is not the same a ‘weaponizing space’
#2) A subjective claim with equally subjective interpretations
#3) Firing a missile from an atmosphere-bound aircraft is NOT the same as ‘weaponizing space’
To weaponize space would be to have platforms, in space, from which to attack either other objects in space or objects in the atmosphere or on the ground.