India Developing Vehicle To Knock Enemy Satellites

Frankie70 writes "Star Wars are back in fashion. With perennial (and nuclear armed) foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring regional superpower China taking greater strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric 'kill vehicle' that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit."

Re:Bad Idea

[Colonel Korn]

Why not? If you're allowed to weaponize earth, why not space? Is it some kind of holy shrine? As for the 'bad idea' part- Well they should have thought of that when they created weapons in the first place right? India is doing what it takes to protect itself from some sort of maniacal attack from the Amreicans and the ruskies who'll try to blame it on someone else.

It's a bad idea because blowing up a few satellites may make low Earth orbit a field of debris dense enough that it is impossible to keep the other satellites intact. Once we cross a certain orbital debris density threshold, the debris will impact with satellites and create new debris faster than existing debris falls to Earth due to drag. I think that's called the Kessler Effect (someone correct me here). Once that happens, we may be locking the whole world away from space exploration and exploitation (like commercial communication satellites) for a long time.

Re:Bad Idea

[Cjstone]

The US has had ASAT capability for a while now, and has "shot down" way more than a single satellite. Our earliest ASAT systems actually detonated nukes in or near space. The first US hit-to-kill interceptor was in 1985, and was launched from a fighter jet. I think that test still holds the record for the only fighter jet to have shot down a satellite. In my opinion, the recent test was there to show that our standard weapons are capable of intercepting ICBM warheads. That test was strange, in that it took place at a relatively low altitude as far as satellites are concerned. The SM-3 missile can't reach a high enough altitude to knock down orbiting satellites, but it's good enough to nail vehicles reentering the atmosphere, and the test demonstrated that it can handle orbital velocities. So, basically, it wasn't an effective test of an anti-satellite weapon, but it was an effective test of an anti-ICBM weapon.

Re:Buckshot orbital shooting gallery!

[Calinous]

And with a decreased chance to hit the intended target it the target manage to escape that 10 kilometer wide "kill area" at the first shot. Coming to think about it, if it escapes the target area in the first ball bearing pass, chances are that it won't be on the same path with the ball bearings for a looooong time. So no, I don't think this "space ship loaded with ball bearings" is a good space-based kill weapon.

For your information, 10 million ball bearing having about 5mm diameter would weigh more than 5 metric tons