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Moon Space The Military United States

The US Space Force Plans To Start Patrolling the Area Around the Moon (arstechnica.com) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the expanding-its-theater-of-operations dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn't get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant -- the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon. "Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth," a narrator says in the video. "That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space."

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a "request for prototype proposals" for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab's Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).

This effort will include the participation of several military organizations, and it can be a little confusing to keep track of. Essentially, though, the Air Force lab will oversee the development of the satellite. The US Space Force will then procure this capability for use by the US Space Command, which is responsible for military operations in outer space. Effectively, this satellite is the beginning of an extension of operations by US Space Command from geostationary space to beyond the Moon. [...] So why is US Space Command interested in expanding its theater of operations to include the Moon? The primary reason cited in the video is managing increasing space traffic in the lunar environment, including several NASA-sponsored commercial missions, the space agency's Artemis program, and those of other nations. Another strategic element includes the ability to detect space objects, such as those placed into cislunar space by other governments, that could swing around the Moon and potentially come back to attack a U.S. military satellite in geostationary space.

"I think that's far fetched, but it is feasible from a physics perspective and would definitely exploit a gap in their current space domain awareness," said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation. "I think they are far more concerned about that than any actual threats in cislunar space because the US doesn't have any military assets in cislunar space right now."
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The US Space Force Plans To Start Patrolling the Area Around the Moon More

The US Space Force Plans To Start Patrolling the Area Around the Moon

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  • Don't you think they're spreading themselves a bit thin? That's a lot of space to patrol.
    • Have to be seen to be doing something to protect us from those Nazi's on the moon otherwise how else are they going to get increased military pork barrel funding, they got new uniforms and branding last year.
      • Gotta be the next sequel, "Space Force vs Iron Sky"!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by umghhh ( 965931 )
          I think the more appropriate reference would be "Space Force" the series where among others John Malkovich plays. I hope it is as funny as the series.
          • If it doesn't involve Nazis hiding out on the dark side of the moon & the lizard people living in the subterranean hollow earth, I'm not interested.
    • I'm not sure where in the processing chain it got introduced; but 'patrolling' is about the worst vaguely-analogous description one could reasonably imagine. It's even weirder because there are plenty of terrestrial analogs to this situation where people manage to get the distinction right:

      If you build a big fancy radar installation you are certainly monitoring whatever section of airspace you are pointing it at; but you don't usually say that you are 'patrolling' it unless the occasional interceptor get

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nasch ( 598556 )

        Isn't the satellite being sent up to putter around? I don't know that I would call it patrolling, but it doesn't seem like an incorrect term.

      • >; but you don't usually say that you are 'patrolling' it unless the occasional interceptor gets sent up to...politely remind...recalcitrant aircraft to stick to their flight plans.

        That's a common *result* of patrolling, but has nothing to do with the patrol itself. A patrol is first and foremost an information gathering exercise. Many may be authorized to deal with sufficiently minor threats themselves (*after* calling it in, in case they misjudged the threat level and get eliminated). But a patrol i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        If you strip away all the political bullshit around the creation of the Space Force, it was an attempt to address the problems of inter-service rivalries in US military space programs ... by creating another service.

        The leaders of that service need to establish a new distinctive military identity and traditions. As essential as this process is, it is also inescapably silly. You have to figure out what to call your personnel. Spacemen? Too silly, so it's "guardians" which is also silly but less so. How ar

        • It's easy to poke fun at this stuff, but the service does have to get that kid sitting in a chair looking at a screen feeling like a warrior, not a gamer.

          I'm still seeing a young cadet bouncing across the room muttering "thunderbirds are go." Sorry, it just popped in there I couldn't help it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Life is literally a 0 sum game. You came with nothing, you leave with nothing. Strange signature.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nasch ( 598556 )

        That isn't what zero sum game means.

      • That's not what a zero-sum game is.

        From wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
        Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation which involves two sides, where the result is an advantage for one side and a loss for the other

        Basically, a zero sum game means that I can only increase my wealth/happiness/station/whatever by taking the same amount away from someone else. Essentially, the sum of changes (positive and negative) across the entire "game" is always zero.

        Life doesn't work that way. An act of kindness like helping a lost child or pulling a drowning animal out of a rain barrel can cost you very little to give, while greatly benefiting the recipient: the sum of your loss plus their gain

        • Hmm, just thinking - a good example of a real-life zero sum game would be a poker game - money changes hands over and over, but the total amount never increases of decreases. The winners are always perfectly balanced by the losers.

          • Hmm, just thinking - a good example of a real-life zero sum game would be a poker game - money changes hands over and over, but the total amount never increases of decreases. The winners are always perfectly balanced by the losers.

            That'd depend on your scope/level of analysis. Within the narrowly defined game, yes, but in life, unregulated poker games & other gambling are sometimes used by criminals to entrap & extort large sums of money, goods & services from their victims, eventually leaving them bankrupt. The harm vastly outweighs any benefit to society.

            • I guess I'm saying context matters.

            • Fair enough - though at that point you're back to talking about life again, not poker.

              Basically, poker was the clearest example I could thing of to demonstrate the principle of an actual zero-sum game, with every win perfectly balanced by equal-and-opposite losses. But yeah, as soon as you leave the table you're no longer playing poker. There's actually very few examples of zero-sum games in the world aside from gambling - it requires that no wealth (or whatever metric you're counting "score" in) can be c

              • My reply is that poker games don't play themselves. People play poker. Even if we're talking some kind of AI bot, the game is set up, the rules determined, the AI programmed & trained, & the game itself is set in motion by people. There's no intent on the part of the AI, it's the people's intentions.

                • Fine - call it penny-ante poker. Or play for toothpicks. Poker doesn't have to involve high stakes, and I'm just offering an example to waspleg of a concept that has very few commonplace real-world examples, and which they obviously did not understand correctly. If you can think of a better one, please elaborate.

                  The point is that the "money" that comes to the table, leaves the table. The game does not allow for wealth to be created or destroyed within the context of the game - that's the *only* defining

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by BranMan ( 29917 )

            No, only some home games are really zero sum - in every other case ( cash games and tournaments at casinos, most home games, games at Texas poker clubs, and all charity poker games ) there is a rake of some kind - so money is being taken off the table and it isn't zero sum.

            In order to be a winning player, you need to not just win money over time, but beat out the rake as well.

      • Life is literally a 0 sum game. You came with nothing, you leave with nothing. Strange signature.

        My sig is for the well-informed. It's a reference to game theory.

    • WTF space patrol
      And they will do what exactly ? Pull you over if your spacecraft goes too fast ?

    • US space force are a bunch of tax suckers bringing no return whatsoever.

  • We can finally bring the fight to the Nazi's https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1... [imdb.com]

  • Yummy. So how many times can you re-filter your own pee before you get sick?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      The next segment of Slashdot O'clock News will answer that question m we go now to our man on the scene, Bear Grylls!

    • Not sure if a joke or a legitimate question, so the answer is indefinitely as long as the laws of physics will not change the water will remain water, however people cannot drink pure H2O - we need minerals, which are either supplied in cargo or are extracted from a different source.

    • 2 or 3 times.
      It is extremely discouraged in surviving hand books to drink pee.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Itâ(TM)s ok. Marco will eat poo. But someone has to tell Space Stormy he is not getting the ASHDTV

  • I swear it wasn't my fault! That rocket pulled out right in front of me, and I had no time to stop!

  • Thunderbirds Are Go!

  • extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times

    If they were extending an area, it would only be 100 times bigger. A 1000 times increase suggests they aren't an Area Force, but rather, they're some kind of Space Force!

  • Are they going to stop buying rocket engines from Russia first?
  • So presumably the USA cannot object if any other country opts to do the same?
    Though it will be interesting to see what happens if two of these "management" satellites from different countries move out of (earth) sight behind the Moon and only one reappears.

  • They're late to the party. I could send my drones to monitor the Moon over 20 years ago in this great game:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I'm the most thoroughly pro-space-activity person I know, but I lol'd at this.

    A "force" of...(it's a little hard to pin down) maybe 7000 (?) people of whom 43% (!) are officers (2021) which has a grand total of TWO vehicles (X-37Bs) which is more or less an orbital-operation platform (500 miles up) is now talking about confidently expanding their 'patrol area' to cislunar distances?

    Napkin math shows this expanding their responsible volume what, about 8 millionfold?

    The link says that they're soliciting bids

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      I didn't see anything about offensive or defensive capabilities, just surveillance. Our current spy satellites also can't do anything about the actions of a hostile force on the surface of Earth, but it lets us find out about it. Same thing here. And your analogy about cops and land mass is off base since in this case there is nothing in the way of the satellite's view, other than the moon. It just has to spot objects that aren't expected to be there, which doesn't sound that hard.

    • Patrolling doesn't necessarily mean extending influence, first and foremost it means gathering information.

      Besides which, in space there's nowhere to hide, so volume is largely irrelevant to observation. What *is* relevant is perspective. Obviously to see things like the far side of the moon you need a perspective further away than the moon. But less obviously, satellite stealth technology is highly directional. Nice omnidirectional black camouflage just doesn't work this close to the sun - the absorbed

    • You seem to have jumped from "patrol" to "secure". Different environments, different resources.

  • And keep an eye out for posted speed limits or they could get ticketed and pay a fine
  • Here's a shot of the patrol [youtube.com]

    Also, this is how we do things now. The Republican party will block anything that isn't military spending for political reasons, so if you want to do anything in space it has to be tied to the army (well I guess technically the airforce). It started in the 80s when we began slashing all programs designed to help people who earned under $1 million/yr.

    • Proposition: Nobody earns more than $1 million per year. Rather they benefit from an exploitative system designed to funnel wealth away from a lot of non-rich people who *did* earn it.

      • Proposition: Nobody earns more than $1 million per year. Rather they benefit from an exploitative system designed to funnel wealth away from a lot of non-rich people who *did* earn it.

        Heh.

        "...money trickle[s] up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.” - Will Rogers.

  • ... is a Harsh Mistress

  • They're launching a satellite. Let's chill on the language, Ars.
  • Coming soon Team America: Galaxy Police

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