All those who would feel comfortable being on a trans-Pacific flight when they blast this thing into thousands of smaller pieces hurtling towards Earth please raise your hands.
Anyone.... anyone .....
China has more recent experience with this than we do; maybe we should ask them for help.
"Who thought this was a good idea?"
Actually, you did. By framing the earlier Chinese anti-satellite attack in terms of a rhetorical challenge to U.S. hegemony--instead of pointing out how ridiculously backward it was in a technological and operational sense--you and other commentators moved the discourse in a direction which almost requires the U.S. to respond in an escalating manner. This U.S. effort will be leaps-and-bounds beyond the Chinese ASAT attack in terms of technological and operational sophistication and should make clear to any observer who the hegemon is.
David Johnson
Chandler, Arizona
Ouch.
Peter, do you have a response to David, or are you hoisted on your own petard?
I think the "only in a lower orbit" caveat changes things a lot. The orbits that spy satellites usually inhabit are extremely low and thus require all that extra fuel to maintain stability. Space junk in such a low orbit will decay and burn up in the atmosphere reasonably quickly. Space junk in a higher orbit will persist much longer and present a long term hazard.
Ok, let me try to avoid being hoisted on my own petard.
David does reference a post I made earlier on my own blog about the implications of the Chinese A-SAT test for US hegemony. The cop-out answer would be to say that I was merely raising that as a discussion issue for my class (one of the original purposes of that blog). Not wanting to dodge so easily, though, lets see if I'm up to the challenge of reconciling these things.
I did frame China's space program as a challenge to US hegemony, because I think that, in part, that's what its for. Space programs have a long history as rhetorical devices as much as pure science or military application (after all, why bother with the moon other than to say that you've been there, done that?).
But, i think the key is the question with which I end the post: How likely is this and how much does it matter? I think that the operative answer here is not much. China does this one A-Sat test. There is official global outcry.
Consider the alternative scenario (not one the Bush Admin would advocate, but plausible nonetheless): The US rallies global support for a new treaty banning the weaponization of space, including A-Sat capabilities and maybe even the highest-level ABM stuff (but not, say a THAAD or the like). The US pulls some strings and gets everyone to sign on, maybe by promising greater "peaceful" access to space, like communications satellites for poor nations or whatever, with a newly subsidized US launch capability.
Who is the hegemon? Well, you're doing something we don't like, so we just banned it, undercut your international legitimacy as a challenger to the US, and took away your main business of launching other people's stuff (including many US companies). Plus, the US is now up a notch in the eyes of the rest of the world.
And, if you want, send quiet, a non-public military signal to China just to let them know we're watching them--a P-3 off the coast (D'Oh!!) or whatever.
Now, did the Bush Admin do this? No. Would they ever consider such an action? No, this is not how they operate. But, could another US president take this option? Certainly, and that could show China who the hegemon is just fine.
I think that a military response to this challenge is only necessary when you take a military-first notion of US global power (ie Posen). View US hegemony as economic or ideologically based (Kindelberger, Ikenberry, Gramsci, Lathan, Ruggie, etc), and an overt military response isn't as necessary.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
