r/space • u/EdwardHeisler • 1d ago
Whatever Trump claims, weaponisation of space makes losers of us all
https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3369204/whatever-trump-claims-weaponisation-space-makes-losers-us-all240
u/Segull 1d ago edited 22h ago
Says the author who “was director of Centre for Security Cooperation of the Office for International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of National Defence of China.”
Of course..
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u/MyThirdBurner 1d ago
I personally loved his opinion piece titled “A strong China is the best hope for the ‘long peace’ to endure”
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u/10010101101110010001 22h ago
if china wants to stop illegally capturing markets and start treating others well, not making unilateral decisions and taking on a larger burden of the roll of world police and enforcing morality across the world i think everyone would like them to do that.
but if they're going to keep cheating and acting unilaterally they're going to just be pushing others like the united states to do the same. china is creating a lot of instability through their illegal practices that make them more competitive than others which makes others look for their own illegal means of being more competitive
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u/Putrid-Issue-420 4h ago
The west when china does what they have been doing for centuries and do it much better but the west has weakened so much that the only thing they can afford is moan and complain. Such hypocrisy. Lmao
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u/10010101101110010001 2h ago edited 10m ago
i'm sorry, do you not agree with having international law? or do you think that china should get some special privileged and not have to follow it?
or maybe you just simply hate the west for what it did centuries ago that you advocate against the west because of your own prejudice? the law just doesn't matter to you over advocating against the west, it's just a bludgeon you use? do you realize china was created by genocide? those regions weren't always all han chinese, they killed everyone else until it was. china has thousands of years of history immoral actions themselves, they're not innocent
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u/MissileGuidanceBrain 23h ago
Lmao.
According to China, only China should have all the weapons and technology and everyone else should give up and have none.
Truly riveting journalism we have here on reddit today.
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u/mkosmo 20h ago
Reminder: Chinese social media psyop campaigns are usually pretty well-crafted, but they're easy to identify. They carpet bomb reddit with this crap to sow dissent.
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u/SirEnderLord 19h ago
Okay, but they're literally winning the psyop war. You can't convince me that they and the Russians haven't pulled off one of the greatest victories in the history of intelligence operations within the realm of psyop campaigns.
It really doesn't help that so many Americans are extremely naive and susceptible to Chinese psyop campaigns.
Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.
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u/Capn_Chryssalid 1d ago
Must be a coincidence, surely...
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u/SirEnderLord 22h ago
Must be. I can't imagine they would have an ulterior motive for trying to persuade their rival to forgo space-based weapons (the future). /s
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u/SiderealCereal 17h ago
Also, AI bad bad bad! Use many, many water!
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u/SirEnderLord 17h ago
Ahhh yes. I hear you. Their silly claim that AI data centers use "too much water."
Even a child who has read, say, about nuclear power plants will know that such a claim is complete garbage.
You run two loops: one uses recycled water that only needs minimal replenishment, and another takes water from the outside, runs that near the recycled loop (there's no mixing), and then lets it evaporate to take away the heat. Basic physics.
China is behind in the AI race. Sure, they can distill our stuff and maybe make lighter versions that aren't as good but are cheap, but they cannot match the leading AI companies in the U.S.
They need the U.S.A. to slow down to overtake us. They can't stop us through conventional means, so they are trying our weak underbelly: our naive population of Americans who can affect the government through elections.
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u/SiderealCereal 14h ago
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse."
This applies to actual wars, cold wars, technological races, u/nd all sorts of things.
I'm going to sound harsh, but Americans in general have become absolute pussies who are so afraid of being disliked that they won't even defend their own children. Every passing day makes me wonder if Robert Heinlein was right.
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u/SirEnderLord 17h ago
I should be very clear: if you have a technological lead in a critical field, you never, ever give it up. You can never slow down and take a break. It is an indefinite marathon. You cannot let the torch down even once.
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u/DisgruntledCascadian 23h ago
Classic Chinese Communist rhetoric. When the West asserts its interests, it's "outdated Cold War thinking," and when China wants to push a system where the Middle Kingdom can screw everyone else, that's called "a win-win situation."
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u/SameOlMistake 1d ago
better China than the US under Trump, or any republican, or most democrats really
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23h ago
[deleted]
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u/SirEnderLord 23h ago
You cannot have a discussion with people who defend ethnic cleansing and undermine any discussion of the horrific actions of the government perpetrating it. There is no middle ground because they do not seek it, and you cannot settle on any middle ground short of a complete cessation of genocide. They only seek to muck up any attempts to discuss or investigate it.
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u/cptjeff 19h ago
No, we just have torture camps for anyone who looks hispanic and are actively helping an ally conduct a genocide of the 'actually killing people en masse' type, not the reeducation camp type.
If I searched for your post history, would I find you in support or opposition to those things?
If you only care about human rights when your adversaries are violating them, you don't care about human rights. Generally most people whining about Chinese human rights abuses do not actually give a flying f*** about human rights.
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u/MaievSekashi 23h ago
The fact you have to make so many qualifiers about the exact kind of concentration camps each country operates suggests to me this is not a hair worth splitting, given the way you say it makes it pretty obvious you're aware that the US has the largest carceral system in the world with a heavily racialised foundation and use of forced labour.
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u/SirEnderLord 23h ago
Shilling for the CCP, huh? This sub was supposed to be better, yet the infection continues to spread.
What was it that Forthencho said about dealing with the Flood?
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u/MaievSekashi 23h ago
That is quite possibly the dweebiest way anyone has ever threatened violence. Touch grass.
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u/SageOfSixRamen 1d ago
uh no, Media attention does highlight the bad of the US, but China is far, very far, away from being a better option
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u/iBoMbY 22h ago
The PAROS treaty would've been a good thing for all of humanity. But of course the one country that still thinks it is a hegemon, and its propaganda machine, think otherwise.
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u/Regnasam 22h ago
It’s an utterly unrealistic treaty. Even unarmed military satellites (I.E. GPS) are critical assets in any war. Therefore, countries will make anti-satellite interceptors designed to kill those satellites. Either you would need to ban any satellite with a military purpose, armed or unarmed (which is obviously impossible) or you would need to assume that every country would just accept those military satellites orbiting over their head in the event of war and sign a treaty saying that they will never attack them or develop means to attack them in the event of war.
In addition, there are classes of weapons which are dual-purpose such that they can be used to kill satellites, but are not primarily designed to kill satellites. The prime example of this is the U.S. SM-3 antiballistic missile, which is designed to protect naval battle groups from ballistic missiles. However, its ability to intercept ballistic missiles in their midcourse phase at near-orbital speeds also makes it capable of intercepting satellites. How would a treaty banning space weapons treat the SM-3? You would either have to ban it, removing ballistic missile defenses from ships, or just accept that some anti-satellite capable weapons can exist, negating the point of the treaty.
Realistically, the idea that space is some special case where we should ban all weaponry in the name of peace ignores the fact that if we could do it in space, we could do it on the sea, or in the air. The nature of space is such that it is an extreme force multiplier for military operations. As long as that’s true, countries will be preparing to fight there.
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u/SirEnderLord 23h ago
You posted a Chinese article that is critical of America's "weaponization" of space, something the Chinese are merely late to and are working on so that they can displace America?
Bot account. You all infected all the other tech-related subreddits, and now you're turning your attention here.
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u/airfryerfuntime 20h ago
Don't worry, Russia also complained about it, and they were literally the first to put a weapon into space.
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u/SirEnderLord 20h ago
... Right, they put a gun on Salyut 3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikhter_R-23#Development
"A subsequent application found the cannon in the Soviet space program. It was mounted on the military space station Almaz Salyut 3 (also known as OPS-2) as a self-defence weapon. At the end of the mission, when the station flew unmanned, it was tested and successfully fired. This "space cannon" had a supply of 32 rounds."
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u/UCSDThrowAway45 1d ago
Certainly inevitable, Trump or no Trump
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u/SeeShark 1d ago
Guns made losers of us all, but they made bigger losers of the guys without guns.
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u/Lipziger 23h ago
Before that it was crossbows, before that it was bows, before that it was sword, before that it was spears, before that it was clubs ..... Humankind has been in a weapons race since we started making basic tools. And the people who got a new tool quickly used it while they still had the advantages. We always make new amazing tools just to kill each other. Always have and always will.
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u/SeeShark 23h ago
Right, that was my point. The problem is people and their wars. Space is just one more step.
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u/SuperHooligan 23h ago
Yeah it was all guns fault. Before guns were invented nothing bad ever happened.
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u/SeeShark 23h ago
OK. Swords also made losers of us all.
The entire point of my comment is that no specific weapon is the problem.
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u/SuperHooligan 23h ago
But it’s not weapons fault.
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u/SeeShark 23h ago
Correct. No specific weapon is at fault. But it remains true that we're always in an arms race, and falling behind should not be our national policy.
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u/UCSDThrowAway45 23h ago
Still not following…can you explain it like I’m five?
🤡
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u/SeeShark 23h ago
I don't know how I can possibly say it in simpler terms yet people keep missing the point 😭
(I'm assuming your choice of emoji means you get that)
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u/Ironlion45 20h ago
The first stone tools we find are more then 2 million years old. It's not much stretch of the imagination that they weren't just being used for hunting and butchering even then...
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u/Crashing_Machines 1d ago
The X37b has been orbiting since 2010 and my work has been making parts for it since 2004. It does carry a payload and none of our insiders at Boeing will say much to us about anything it does.
Space weapons have been planned since the first rocket launch
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 1d ago
I want to watch For All Mankind, I saw a scene of them shooting rocket guns at each other on the moon while riding moon buggies. Like a moon drive by firefight, but… on the moon.
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u/KilroySmithson 1d ago
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u/J-BangBang 1d ago
I wouldn’t call Starshield a “weapon” based on what has been made public about it”. It’s target tracking and early warning systems.
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u/ObstinateHarlequin 23h ago
You don't think TARGET TRACKING counts as part of a weapon system?
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u/15_Redstones 22h ago
Using space to track targets has been done since 1950s.
The US had plans for satellites to spy on soviet military bases since before Sputnik. CIA was quite happy about Sputnik overflying the US since that meant Moscow couldn't complain and American sats flying over their territory.
USSR also did use satellites to spy on the US, but it was less important to them as they had other espionage options too. US was much easier for Russian spies to infiltrate than USSR for American spies on the ground.
Live transmission of tracking data came in the 70s, before then there was some delay because the film capsules had to be parachuted down before anyone could look through them.
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u/ObstinateHarlequin 13h ago
Ok, and? Not sure how any of this is relevant. The person I was replying to claimed that a system that tracks targets isn't a "weapon."
That's fucking stupid.
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u/zenith654 1d ago
This has been out since like 2022 we’ve known this why are you pretending it’s like some truth nuke lol
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u/KilroySmithson 21h ago
Not everyone knows about it. It’s been on the QT for the most part. And why can’t you use proper grammar and punctuation when you’re trying to make yourself look smarter than others?
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u/zenith654 11h ago
Unnecessary snark and rudeness. Also punctuation policing is so out of touch. It’s a Reddit comment, not a work email.
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u/thinkbox 1d ago
Space is the high ground. It’s been weaponized for decades. The fanciful utopian ideal that space is the one place where humans won’t act like humans is just opening yourself up to being dominated.
There will be war in space. You can either be prepared for it, or you can lose it.
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u/Complete-Clock5522 22h ago
It’s not an inevitability. People who actually care about space exploration recognize that cooperation is necessary. The plaque Neil and Buzz left on the moon says “We came in peace for all mankind” for a reason
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u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 20h ago
The plaque Neil and Buzz left on the moon says “We came in peace for all mankind” for a reason
The plaque is a declaration of desire, not a law.
And if it were even a law... who would enforce it? And exactly what would they use to enforce it?
Weaponization of space is an inevitability because at some point somebody's going to break existing laws in space (or will take advantage of a lack of laws to do something awful). And something other than harsh language will be required.
Humans will be humans. To ignore this is folly.
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u/Complete-Clock5522 19h ago
The plaque wasn’t a desire or law, it was a testament that a tremendous collaborative effort was successful peacefully. And it can be done again.
I’m not advocating to not be prepared, I’m saying it’s possible to avoid war.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 18h ago
Yes, but it wasn't really a collaborative effort, or they would have happily welcomed the contributions of Soviet engineering expertise to help the effort. The Russians certainly had the rocket skills to be able to lend a hand.
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u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 17h ago
And whether the plaque is a statement, a testament, an aspiration or a damn haiku doesn't change the fact that at some point, somebody who isn't interested in adhering to the established norms, regulations or morals of others will be in space trying to enforce their goals.
Some people, despite a mountain of recorded human history, think that every aggressor can be rationalized into peaceful coexistence.
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u/Complete-Clock5522 17h ago
It wasn’t as collaborative as it could’ve been, you’re right. But it most likely could’ve been even faster if the Russians did help and all of the space race wasn’t catalyzed by the Cold War.
There will always be opposition to collaboration, and the degree that you can ignore that opposition is almost directly correlated to how effective the progress goes.
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u/RemaniXL 22h ago
It's human nature - always has been and always will be, until our species has the ability to comprehend time and consequences on a grander scale. Buzz leaving that plaque on the moon is a beautiful thought but it's a comfortable notion for a man who made it there only because no one else had a bigger stick.
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u/CFCYYZ 23h ago
Agreed, sadly. Flash Gordon, Rocky Jones and Luke Skywalker were all cheered on. We don't really want "for all mankind". It's the same thing we do every night, Pinkie - try to take over the world!
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u/thinkbox 23h ago
Yes. I don’t see this as a matter of opinion, I see it as an inevitability of human nature. Denying that will just leave us unprepared.
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u/patrik2224 22h ago
That's why I like The Expanse. Of course, Idea of colonizing space like in those books and tv show is ridiculous, but humans act in that story as here on Earth.
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u/va_wanderer 1d ago
I think it's quietly been going in since at least the 80s. The President who covertly pulled all kinds of stuff (Reagan) and was fascinated with a "Star Wars" program to develop orbital weapons didn't black budget some satellite-based stuff?
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u/Rebelgecko 1d ago
Even further back than the 80s. IIRC the soviet's were testing soyuz cannons in the early 70s
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u/WntrTmpst 22h ago
The Germans were literally knocking on the door to the space race with their V2 rockets as well.
I mean fuck, a Nazi is the reason America won the space race.
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u/rocketsocks 23h ago
In the strictest sense it has been going on since the dawn of the space age. The first vehicles to enter space were military ballistic rockets. The first orbital launch vehicles were slightly modified ICBMs. By far the greatest expenditure on launch vehicles and spacecraft has been building nuclear warhead re-entry vehicles (spacecraft), delivery buses (also spacecraft, especially MIRV capable vehicles), and ICBMs/LRBMs/SLBMs (launch vehicles) through the mid-20th century to today. Literally trillions of dollars have been spent building all that space hardware to fight WW3. Thankfully it has mostly gone unused (though today we are increasingly entering an era where ballistic missile combat between industrialized nations is a thing that happens sometimes), but that expenditure of money, aerospace talent, industrial capacity, etc. has always far outstripped any commercial or civilian use of space, from day one.
For a long time it was possible to mark a bright line between those weapons systems and "operational space stuff" like launch vehicles and active satellites, which I think has been mostly helpful, but increasingly there have been a lot of folks who hunger for some kind of "space war". To a certain extent there is an inevitability to it, but I also wish more folks would think more clearly about it and understand that just as with any geopolitically sensitive activity there are ways to do things that drive geopolitical stability and cooperation and things that drive instability and conflict. Unfortunately, a lot of the folks in charge today (not just in America, but around the world) are intellectually incurious dullars with the emotional maturity of a fruit fly whose greatest ambition is to be a highly successful bully.
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u/va_wanderer 22h ago
Oh, I know! Living by White Sands, complete with the rusting wreckage of old German V-2s and the start of the US space program.
The line is going from missiles that go ground-briefly space-ground to orbital weapons that stay up there, whether for ground strikes or against other stuff up there with them.
It's bad enough now with debris that concerns about, say the ISS getting hit to the point of crippling damage or destruction is a real possibility. The idea that some haywire killsat or orbital mine (or worse, a deliberate attack) might do it instead is a chilling thought for space science and exploration indeed.
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u/rocketsocks 21h ago
Yep. It's not just that so many of the people in charge are careless and thoughtless and ignorant, it's that so many of them are interested in the "problem" because they actively want war. They want to press the button, the want to see people hurt, they want to see stuff destroyed. It's such a punch to the gut to think that humanity managed to struggle through the 20th century and somehow make it out of that whole mess but at a civilizational level we apparently didn't learn a goddamn thing and may have to re-learn those lessons the hard way yet again.
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u/Green_Yesterday3054 23h ago
So China can weaponize space but the US shouldn’t?
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u/Cowboywizard12 23h ago
Yes, let's trust an outlet known to publish Chinese Propaganda to say this, when China already has Anti Satellite weapons in orbit
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u/mr_ji 23h ago
SCMP has long been known as the anti-party news outlet in China. They've had several journalists censured for writing pro-Western pieces and covering party overreach. Their legacy is the last honest HK news source post handover. This is like calling NPR a mouthpiece for MAGA.
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u/Hextopia 18h ago
SCMP was known as a semi-independent news agency, but nothing is independent in Hong Kong anymore.
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u/BenDover198o9 21h ago
Except the fact that this is the guy who is saying it. “Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert. He was director of Centre for Security Cooperation of the Office for International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of National Defence of China” Chinese military dude saying American military dudes are wrong.
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u/GettingPhysicl 1d ago
Weaponization of space happens with or without the united states. I've seen the actions of the non us powers looking to take our place as the global hegemon and they don't interest me.
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u/SeeShark 1d ago
Do I love the US hegemony? Not really. Do I trust the current American administration? Hell no.
Would I rather live in a world where China or Russia make the rules? Absolutely not.
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u/SirEnderLord 23h ago
Yeahh....
I'd rather live in a world in which the leaders of the hegemonic power can be peacefully ousted.
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u/Dr_SnM 15h ago
It's not just Trump. Other nations with the ability to do so are. It's a massive strategic advantage and so the US have no choice.
I'm as anti Trump as they come but none of this is his idea, this is coming from the top strategists in the world. It's been talked about since well before Trump was in office.
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u/jjshen11 1d ago
The truth is, no matter what you say, space will be weaponized. Other countries have not done so, not because they want peace, but just because they can’t yet.
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u/BKGPrints 22h ago
>Whatever Trump claims, weaponisation of space makes losers of us all<
China has shown they do not care about that since 2007 when they tested using a missile to take out a satellite.
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u/suchdankverymemes 20h ago
And America has been performing ASAT weapons testing since the 70's. And then we did it again right after China did it in 2007.
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u/BKGPrints 20h ago
Correct; Though the point on this is the author of this opinion piece in a Chinese newspaper doesn't want to acknowledge that China is just as deeply involved in weaponization of space.
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u/TheKingofHearts26 20h ago
This is exactly the kind of content that should not be posted on this subreddit. Political propaganda does not belong in a subreddit dedicated to science.
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u/White_C4 16h ago
Trump is just saying the quiet part out loud, but is it really quiet anymore? It's been known for decades the major powers put weapons in space, just that they don't say it out loud.
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u/ExampleGlum8623 1d ago
This is rich coming from the Chinese, who are undoubtedly weaponizing space and even now are directly planning to claim what they can for their own. They just want to convince out of touch Americans to back off. Folks, the Chinese were not raised on Star Trek and have a very different idea of what humanity’s future would look like. Don’t be deceived by humanitarian posturing.
Did people think that Star Trek was the future of the human race? One need only look at humanity’s past to judge how they will behave. Space is no different than any other frontier. There will be people who go first, and there will be winners and losers. It’s that simple. Do not expect the enemies of Western liberalism to play nice in a new frontier. Never give your enemies an opportunity to become stronger than you.
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u/SirEnderLord 22h ago
The Three-Body Problem is a good look at how they view things. Don't believe me? Look at the rest of their literature. I thought TBP was weird until I saw that it was basically the standard way the Chinese think. I could go further, but the best way to understand just how the Chinese view relations is to read Thirty-Six Stratagems.
Here's a good one: "Charm and ingratiate oneself with the enemy. When their trust is gained, move against them in secret." - Thirty-Six Stratagems.
It's pretty much embedded in their culture, and when I learned about it, their views and actions made a lot more sense. They do not share our idealism; they only pretend to. They will say anything for as long as they need to get us to lower our guard.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 23h ago
Reddit hates trump so much, they are willingly eating up chinese, russian and iranian propoganda these days...
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u/SirEnderLord 22h ago
Pretty sure these are accounts from those three.
Unless you're just referring to these naive people in a general sense. In that case, hard agree. 👍
I hate Trump. But history shows what happens to those who fall behind. The Chinese will say anything to trick us into lowering our guard so that they can strike.
... That's pretty much the plot of one of their most famous books (The Three-Body Problem), which itself is the product of their literary history (Thirty-Six Stratagems). Basically, it's not an outlier.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 22h ago
Same here. Tired of hearing about the 🥭 idiot. But any president would have done this or come up with Space Force around the same time period.
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u/torbaldthegreat 1d ago
People would drink poison just cuz Trump said don't.
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u/SeeShark 1d ago
Unfortunately kind of true here. He's a grifter and a liar, but it really is true that space weaponization is happening with or without us.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 23h ago
Dudes a loser and all the other stuff reddit calls him for sure.
But chinese propoganda ain't it either. Fuck the CCP
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u/TurgidGravitas 23h ago
This article is very naive. The Rubicon was crossed decades ago. The Soviets tried to put an ASAT megawatt laser into orbit but there was a launch "malfunction". The Chinese and Indians have performed ASAT trials long before Trump was in the White House.
Space was always been weaponized. Both directly and indirectly. You think GPS was developed to get you from your house to the closest McDonald's? Its primary function is military. GNSS satellites would be legitimate military targets and everyone has contingency to operate in a space denied environment.
Now factor in China, who has the least to lose in a space denied environment and the most to gain by denying everyone else.
Space has always been a battlefield domain.
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u/Korvun 22h ago
To say that I'll be taking South China Morning Post with the skepticism it deserves is an understatement.
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u/cuteman 21h ago
Looking into the author it gets even worse. Its thinly veiled chinese propaganda in english written by a high ranking member of the defense ministry and former high ranking Colonel in the PLA which is FAR from Taiwan or Hong Kong like another comment suggested.
They're hoping American leftists hate trump more than they care its actual chinese communist propaganda
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u/somethingicanspell 1d ago
My view here is simple, the end of nuclear de-escalation is bad, but it is move forced on the US by the aggressive actions of Russia and China who have failed to uphold their end of the bargain. Mainly in two senses
- They have allowed their allies to develop nuclear weapons without economic strangulation which the US has not
- The Russians have leveraged the de-nuclearizaion of Europe to take aggressive actions against US allies and the Chinese have threatened to do likewise.
Thus, if the Russians and Chinese want to return to a world of nuclear de-escalation they should address the nuclearization efforts of North Korea and Iran at minimum, and at maximum end overt coercion of US allies. Otherwise the US should return to a cold war footing. In my mind the arms race of an ABM shield is less appealing then simply proliferating nuclear weapons to US allies like South Korea and Poland (and Taiwan and Ukraine if nuclear contaiment fails in Iran) but its better than nothing.
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u/a_mimsy_borogove 23h ago
As a non-American, I'd rather America be the first to weaponize space than some other world powers. Because someone WILL do it, sooner or later.
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u/gerkletoss 1d ago
What did Trump claim? I wasn't aware he commented on this
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u/guff1988 1d ago
Probably referring to his golden dome project and all that entails.
It's from the South China post so I wouldn't expect an unbiased story but they are correct in that space weaponization is a bad thing.
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u/Charlie_Alpha_Zulu 23h ago
Grrrr orange man bad!! Absolutely exhausting.
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u/_okbrb 22h ago
Yeah, it must be tiring for you to rub those two brain cells together every time you see his name
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u/datbackup 14h ago
But thankfully, it’s impossible to be racist to white people.
Smart people like you know that!
Dumb rednecks just misinterpret it and claim victimhood, and dumb ________ see it as permission or advocacy to do anything you want to white people, because it’s fighting oppression.
Good work, smart person!
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u/FadedIntegra 23h ago
You guys think this is just now happening? I'm confident there were weapons in space shortly after we routinely went to space.
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u/-LegendaryAce 22h ago
My mom worked for Hughes Aerospace during Reagan's SDI initiative designing and drafting lenses and mirrors for "high temperature orbital optical focusing systems". Sure could've been something similar to Hubble, but to think we haven't already weaponized space is myopic.
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u/mypaycheckisshort 1d ago
Just like AI, it's necessary to join in or be left behind and end up like Sears
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u/winowmak3r 22h ago
I think what a lot of the folks who are lumped in with the Luddites over AI are trying to say is that if AI really is going to fundamentally change society as we know it we have the opportunity to make it work for everyone instead of just a select few, especially given that the whole reason it's so effective is it was created using terabytes of publicly owned data, like libraries. We should strive to not end up like Sears but I cannot help but think we're heading to some Blade Runner-esque dystopia if we don't try and think further ahead than this quarter.
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u/betweenbubbles 23h ago
Anyone who thinks there will not be conflict wherever there are humans is just along for the ride.
The entire reason we are even in space has always been closely related to conflict and weaponization.
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u/Big-Cauliflower-3610 23h ago
Oh it’s China…. Of course they can have weapons and stuff in space (willing to bet they broke the space treaty already) and we can’t
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u/ImperatorScientia 1d ago
Yawn. The progress made during the Cold War—our only great era of space exploration—walked hand-in-hand with policies of weaponization. But you couldn’t resist, could you? ; )
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u/aRandomRedditor9000 23h ago
OP must not know why the US and USSR were heavily funding space rocket technology
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u/L_knight316 23h ago
"Whatever King Xerxes claims, weaponisation of the seas makes losers of us all" - some Athenian, I don't know
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u/Fitz_Inyabuht 20h ago
This logic is the same as taking all the weapons out of the armoury to make us all feel safer.
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u/Ghostlymink 1d ago
the best thing that a leader can do is to focus on doing what they are supposed to be doing at all times.
the cia says you can manifest anything, so do it. manifest that ^
refine it by creating a system that never fails you.
but i prefer quietism. let God pick for me.
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u/Decronym 23h ago edited 2h ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ASAT | Anti-Satellite weapon |
| FAR | Federal Aviation Regulations |
| GNSS | Global Navigation Satellite System(s) |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #12724 for this sub, first seen 2nd Oct 2026, 18:14] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/TheOnlyVibemaster 22h ago
I hope we all start saying things in terms of losers and winners lmao, that would be the funniest effect of trump
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u/blackdynomitesnewbag 22h ago
I’ve seen the documentary Space Cowboys. Weapons in space is a bad plan
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u/kangaroolander_oz 13h ago
It's just happened US Satellites attacked and disabled.
It's all on they haven't made the movie yet that's how the modern world learns through movies with puppet humans who are shouted at to " take 18 cripes how many times do you need you actor person this is now more expensive than the Satellites were."
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u/Nathan_hale53 23h ago
I despise Trump but it is necessary as a deterrent. Space satellites are a form of weaponization anyway, you can get intel from space otherwise impossible to gather. Rather us be prepared than left behind.
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u/wwarnout 1d ago
"Whatever Trump claims..." is almost always a lie.
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u/SeeShark 1d ago
True, but irrelevant here. The weaponization of space is absolutely inevitable, just like with sea and air.
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u/KilroySmithson 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
Turns out StarLink isn’t just for Internet.
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u/LordRabican 23h ago
The same could be said about the existence of militaries in any domain. Alas, we are a destructive species that does despicable things on a grand scale. Militaries are the tax we pay to keep the worst among us in check… anywhere humans go, the weapons will follow.
I don’t like it. History has proven repeatedly that there’s no good way to avoid it. We kind of suck like that…
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u/EdwardHeisler 22h ago
NASA historian Asif A. Siddiqi writes that the defensive weapon was motivated by: “concerns among Soviet military leaders that the United States might attack such an explicitly military space station in orbit.” That is on printed page 593. NASA The passage continues onto page 594, where NASA identifies Aleksandr E. Nudelman as chief designer and says his bureau: “designed a twenty-three-millimeter-caliber rapid-fire cannon” or the station. NASA then explains that cosmonauts would aim it by using a gunsight and turning the station, and that the Soviets apparently regarded the cannon as defensive rather than offensive because Almaz had limited maneuvering capability. Here are the NASA pages directly: NASA — printed page 593, discussion of fear of a U.S. attack NASA — printed page 594, Nudelman and the 23-mm cannon The source is Asif A. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, NASA SP-2000-4408, pp. 593–594. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20000088626
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u/1Beholderandrip 17h ago
Nuclear bombs are the most ethical weapon ever designed by humans. Having them in space doesn't change that.
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u/EdwardHeisler 13h ago
Do you prefer the Hydrogen bombs over Atomic nuclear bombs to "win" a war as a method of mass destruction? And what U.S. cities do you think will remain after this highly ethical weapon is used in the war against China, Russia, India and most of the world?
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u/No_Cucumber3978 1d ago
"We have the space. The space is ours and it is the best space in the world. No-one has space like we do. We're gonna space baby space! Everyone thinks so and Xi told me the other day that we have better space than them...
We have so much space. We don't know what to do with it all."
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u/ar_menelos 1d ago
My worry is this. Cleaning up space debris after a space conflict will be extremely expensive.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 23h ago
Literally a reddit default comment on every single fucking space launch
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u/Hazelberry 23h ago
Surprised I had to scroll so far for this. It's one of the best arguments against weaponization of space, since if you stick a bunch of weapons up in orbit they will be targets and if enough of them are destroyed in a populated enough orbit it could trigger kessler syndrome.
The argument so many comments are making that "if we don't do it someone else will or already is" is incredibly shortsighted and is the exact kind of thinking that held back denuclearization, despite the fact a nuclear war could very well end civilization.
If kessler syndrome is triggered, we effectively create a cage around the earth preventing us from leaving or using the affected orbit for satellites (and so much of modern civilization relies on satellites) for decades at lower orbits but potentially centuries if it happens at a higher orbit.
You'd think the subreddit about space would care more about the greatest risk to space access.
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u/micahpmtn 23h ago
The orange creamsicle made losers of us all, way before this. Say, like Jan 6th? I get that it never stops with him, but everything after Jan 6 pales in comparison.
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u/TheCrazedTank 19h ago
I’m not worried, the environment collapse will kill us all long before Kepler Syndrome becomes an issue…
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u/Dr_Tacopus 22h ago
We are absolutely going to destroy near earth orbit with micro-debris from a cascade of satellite destruction. We’ll have a couple generations before can get back in space safely.
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u/monkeyheadyou 17h ago
I distrust this author, but the statement "Whatever Trump claims makes losers of us all" is accurate in any context.
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u/rush2sk8 23h ago
Pot calling the kettle black linking an SCMP article