US Tests Ways To Sweep Space Clean of Radiation After Nuclear Attack (sciencemag.org) 78
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: The U.S. military thought it had cleared the decks when, on 9 July 1962, it heaved a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb some 400 kilometers into space: Orbiting satellites were safely out of range of the blast. But in the months that followed the test, called Starfish Prime, satellites began to wink out one by one, including the world's first communications satellite, Telstar. There was an unexpected aftereffect: High-energy electrons, shed by radioactive debris and trapped by Earth's magnetic field, were fritzing out the satellites' electronics and solar panels.
Starfish Prime and similar Soviet tests might be dismissed as Cold War misadventures, never to be repeated. After all, what nuclear power would want to pollute space with particles that could take out its own satellites, critical for communication, navigation, and surveillance? But military planners fear North Korea might be an exception: It has nuclear weapons but not a single functioning satellite among the thousands now in orbit. They quietly refer to a surprise orbital blast as a potential "Pearl Harbor of space." And so, without fanfare, defense scientists are trying to devise a cure. Three space experiments -- one now in orbit and two being readied for launch in 2021 -- aim to gather data on how to drain high-energy electrons out of the radiation belts. The process, called radiation belt remediation (RBR), already happens naturally, when radio waves from deep space or from Earth -- our own radio chatter, for example, or emissions from lightning -- knock electrons trapped in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts into the upper atmosphere, where they quickly shed energy, often triggering aurorae.
Starfish Prime and similar Soviet tests might be dismissed as Cold War misadventures, never to be repeated. After all, what nuclear power would want to pollute space with particles that could take out its own satellites, critical for communication, navigation, and surveillance? But military planners fear North Korea might be an exception: It has nuclear weapons but not a single functioning satellite among the thousands now in orbit. They quietly refer to a surprise orbital blast as a potential "Pearl Harbor of space." And so, without fanfare, defense scientists are trying to devise a cure. Three space experiments -- one now in orbit and two being readied for launch in 2021 -- aim to gather data on how to drain high-energy electrons out of the radiation belts. The process, called radiation belt remediation (RBR), already happens naturally, when radio waves from deep space or from Earth -- our own radio chatter, for example, or emissions from lightning -- knock electrons trapped in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts into the upper atmosphere, where they quickly shed energy, often triggering aurorae.
1962 (Score:1)
Re:1962 (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. military thought it had cleared the decks when, on 9 July 1962, it heaved a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb some 400 kilometers into space: Orbiting satellites were safely out of range of the blast Would that have been a hard thing to do? How many satellites were in orbit in 1962?.
This event destroyed 9 satellites, so at least that many.
If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. NK launches (dirty) space bomb ....
2. Satellites drop out from all nations wide.
3. Chinese satellites also drop out
4. China occupies NK, death penalty for NK regime.
Re:If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, China doesn't want to occupy NK. No nation would want to own that pile of rocks and poor people. China would simply wait to see how they could take advantage of the situation and let other countries deal with NK. It's the Mao way when he let Chiang Kai-Shek get beaten up by the Japanese and the Japanese get beaten up by the Americans before he swooped to feast on the carcass.
The CCP has never changed its stripes. They are now putting young Uyghurs into training camps to stomp the Islam out of them. They are slowing Hanifying Tibet and have the same program in place for the Uyghur's home province Xinjiang. Hong Kong will eventually be assimilated. Taiwan is next up for the CCP maw. The last thing the CCP has any stomach for is bravery in anything.
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Why would the USA invade Afghanistan, or battle North Koria 70 years ago? Small, aggressive nations can cause startling amounts of devastation.
What China does need is women, very badly, due to decades of the "one child" policy and the abortion or murder of girl children. Whether aborting a female fetus is murder is a different discussion, but the result is real lack of women among the current generation. It's described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .The military spectacle of China invading North Kore
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"What China does need is women, very badly,"
Lets hope they don't get them. Despite the single child policy their population size is already out of control. The enviroment in that country is screwed up enough as it is, any significantly more people living there and its completely done for.
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"What China does need is women, very badly,"
Lets hope they don't get them.
Be careful what you wish for. Countries with large numbers of unattached young men tend to become violent and often adopt belligerent foreign policies.
When there were riots at the Japanese and Korean embassies in Beijing, the crowds chanting for war were almost entirely young men. It is unlikely that many of them had wives or GFs.
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There is that, but the risk to the enviroment is greater than some angry young men venting because they need to get laid especially in somewhere like china where the angry young men will be summarily shot if they go against the party line.
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the risk to the enviroment is greater than some angry young men venting because they need to get laid
War is bad for the environment.
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The advantage about nuclear war is that you aren't there to care about the environment anymore.
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Sure, if you're lucky.
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The main difference is between dying fast or slow. Estimated amount of deaths from a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India (fission nukes) is 1billion deaths I believe, mostly from the famines due to the nuclear winter. A larger amount quickly escalates to massive famines and the end of civilization and nature as we know it, though probably not our extinction. That last million can be hard to kill. The nuclear winter would also be followed up by a big increase in methane from rotting plants, causing
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It would be less trouble and headache for them to just find a cheap insemination technique that guaranteed female births and raise that ratio for awhile.
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It would be much simpler to shoot a member of staff at any IVF clinic from which a male child is born, to balance the population change. Pretty soon, the sex ratio of live births from all IVF clinics would move in the desired direction. No need for any coordinated policy or awkward documentation. No human rights abuses (well, none that any country which itself operates a death penalty could object against).
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Only if the Chinese government wants to have it's population go above 2 billion. It's already going to go over 1.5 billion. You might want to ask them if they want that, rather than assuming that they do.
The article you link to doesn't give a single figure for the "missing women", but it does mention that one component of the "missing women" "problem" might account for ten to fifteen million of the "missing". The female population of the DPRK is about twelve millio
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every Christmas the Chinese government imprisons Christians for putting up holiday decorations and beats priests for holding Mass.
Muslims get the worst of it because the West doesn't care about any Muslim. But the official policy of China is to stomp all religion into dust because it represents an authority that is not the Party itself. Mao was bad, the generations after him are worse. China is an evil totalitarian regime trying to erase individual liberty from the human race. Every Chinese citizen is an unwitting slave of their immoral nation and desperately needs to be set free, even if they are now conditioned not to want freedom.
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2, Insightful)
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I mean sure, beating your child for believing in the tooth fairy is one way to approach the problem. Arguably not the best way. Also, human rights?
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Also, human rights?
For centuries China has had no notion of a "right" as an entitlement. "Social advance" has also been an inexistent process. They do not "get" what you're trying to sell.
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There's a concept of natural rights in European canon law at least as far back as 1150 (the upper bound on the date of Gratian's compendium), so the idea would not have been a novelty when the Jesuits sent back translations of Confucius.
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They do not "get" what you're trying to sell.
That's because every time a Chinese scholar tries to explain it to the masses they are imprisoned or killed!
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
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Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:4, Informative)
Debunking something requires proving that it is false. Maybe you had a different word in mind, but couldn't quite put your finger on it? God's existence, being a matter of faith, is impossible to prove or disprove.
By "Descart", were you by chance referring to Rene Descartes? He was the 17th century scientist and philosopher who presented arguments he hoped would prove God's existence, in his "Meditations on First Philosophy".
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
And Darwin provided the answer to why religion is important -- the groups who have it have tended to outcompete others. Luckily for you, atheism is also a religion, with members who fervently believe that physical reasoning can provide insight into any possible metaphysical realm, such as one which hosts our "universe" as a simulation.
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"atheism is also a religion"
Where is mass held? Where are the teachings? Who are the leaders?
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Every Chinese citizen is an unwitting...
Bullshit; the smart ones see exactly what's going on; that doesn't mean they can fucking do anything about it.
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In a way yes. In an authoritarian state what you think is less important so there is less effort to manipulate it. In democratic states on the other hand it is important that you believe. But as any PR bureau will tell you, that can be arranged for the right price.
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Wrong, China doesn't want to occupy NK.
A better outcome would be a deal: China executes KIm and allows Korea to peacefully reunify, and the US withdraws all troops from the peninsula.
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... allows Korea to peacefully reunify
South Korea has very little interest in reunifying with the North.
It would be like America unifying with Mexico, with Mexico having double its current population and a quarter of its current GDP.
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Or West Germany unifying with East Germany. Look how terribly that worked out.
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Or West Germany unifying with East Germany. Look how terribly that worked out.
Compared to Korea, East and West Germany had far smaller differences in productivity, and East Germany had a far smaller population relative to West Germany.
The degree of cultural divergence was also much smaller. Prior to unification, people that were able to escape the East generally did well in the West.
That is not true of North Koreans who escape and end up in South Korea. They have great difficulty fitting in. They have little initiative or ambition and often end up unemployed. Many of them drift i
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"That is not true of North Koreans who escape and end up in South Korea. "
Citation?
They certainly do differ in that the NK defectors frequently suffer from psych issues due to the brutality in the north
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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South Korea has very little interest in reunifying with the North.
I lived there for many years (80s-90s), and was married to one for seven. Reunification was favored by the vast majority of the population back then, but has since dwindled to a smaller majority position. This is primarily due to the younger generations seeing reunification as a potential threat to their economy. What many of them don't understand is that NK is sitting on trillions of dollars worth of natural resources that would easily cover those costs (see my earlier post on the economist article).
htt [wikipedia.org]
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South Korea has very little interest in reunifying with the North.
It would be like America unifying with Mexico, with Mexico having double its current population and a quarter of its current GDP.
Koreans have been one people since the beginning of Asian history. North Korea formed in exactly the same way that East Germany did, atthe same time, and so has no greater a right to long-term existence.
The day after Hiroshima was bombed, Stalin finally saw Japan as being militarily vulnerable and declared war. This was his excuse to grab Japan's two nearby colonies, Manchuria and Korea. By the time Japan surrendered, Soviet forces had made it down to the 38th parallel, which became the postwar border.
I exp
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The US will never withdraw troops from anywhere. We still have troops in Germany. The US needs to occupy the world to control it.
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Spain? France?
We've withdrawn huge numbers of troops from Germany (I was one of them), and Korea. If you think we control either of them, you need to go read a book.
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
32,000 US troops in Germany now.
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No shit. Tell me how many we had 20 or 30 years ago. I spent 6 years working at Hahn A.B. Which is closed now, along with many others after the "Peace Dividend" from the end of the Cold War. As part of NATO, we support all kinds of things in Europe, the "occupation" left decades ago before I arrived in '79. Even my German relatives would tell you that.
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
Why do we still have 32,000 troops in Germany?
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32k troops (many of whom are admin, medical, mechanics, etc., as opposed to real combat troops) is barely enough to fill a small town.
Germany has been a strategic ally with the US for decades. With places like Ramstein being a major transport hub, and Landstul having one of the best military hospitals were troops were flown back to from the middle east wars.
A couple of excerpts from...
https://www.dw.com/en/us-milit... [dw.com]
German government figures show that between 2006 and 2018, the number of US troops station
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
Germany can't defend itself?
Or... Do we consider Germany a hostile country that needs to be occupied?
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Now you're just trolling. Bye
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I just have one question which you have failed to answer (repeatedly).
Why do we have 32,000 troops in Germany?
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The US will never withdraw troops from anywhere. We still have troops in Germany...
A specific deal for Korean reunification would be an ideal opportunity for a troop withdrawal that benefits all sides.
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The US doesn't exactly have a history of withdrawing from military bases it has established (now with the exception of Syria). And without NK, there would be no buffer between American troops and China. Korean reunification is not at all in China's interest.
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For the government of China, North Korea is nothing more than a bargaining chip, no preference for or against. For assured good relations with a united Korea, the government of China would probably work to make it happen. There is now a wry assurance is getting the US government to waste as much money and capability as possible in trying to dominate every where at the same time, pretty much, much ado about nothing in many instances, like trading control over Bolivia for greater independence from the USA in
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And if NK tries to pull something like selling an H-bomb to the Uyghurs, this could happen fast.
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China's green light for a Western attack on DPRK is fortifying its northern border to choke off the flow of refugees. Not a difficult task considering most of it is the Yellow River with limited bridge crossings.
I would expect the Chinese to move in to DPRK once the US and ROK finish pounding on the southern portion of DPRK to gain more negotiation power over the future of the Korean peninsula and possibly establish a puppet state.
The Chinese don't want to occupy DPRK, but they want a Korean peninsula unit
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Not a difficult task considering most of it is the Yellow River
Yalu River [wikipedia.org]. The Yellow River is thousands of miles away.
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I can assure you there is one nation which would love to occupy North Korea. South Korea. Reunification has been a dream for every Korean for the last 70 years. So what would happen is:
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"Wrong"
Back at you. NK is rich in natural resources. As for food, South Korea would help them and gladly reunite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://www.economist.com/grap... [economist.com]
Re: If NK ever tries, this will happen: ... (Score:2)
Read the book (Score:2)
Yes, the other Lasher novel foresaw the formation of a Space Force to react to a provocation in outer space, and is worth the read. No spoilers here, sorry.
Why US nuclear primed space lasers were _bad_ (Score:5, Interesting)
This is another reason the idea of using small nuclear weapons to prime orbiting X-ray lasers was a _bad_ idea. It was very popular and received a great deal of funding for Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" space defense program. The technology, referred to as "Project Excalibur" was actually successfully tested, though there has been no report of tests being done in orbit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Part of the concern about the "defensive weapons" was that they could not be aimed well enough to be used defensively, and were only potentially effective as offensive weapons, ideally against stable ground targets. Another issue was that the priming nuclear weapon could be de-orbited against a ground target without wasting it to inefficiently power a laser, dropping it against a ground target was a more effective use of its destructive power, though it left more of a chance of possibly shooting down the de-orbiting weapon with anti-missile-missile defenses. It was potent and in theory could be used to _attack_ other satellites effectively, but no tests ever included being aimed at a moving target.
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This is another reason the idea of using small nuclear weapons to prime orbiting X-ray lasers was a _bad_ idea. It was very popular and received a great deal of funding for Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" space defense program.
Yup, a bad idea then, and nothing has changed. Orbital mechanics and orbital velocity, and space junk are a formidable combination.
Set off that nuc and you're spraying debris all over, at many different velocities - therefore orbital heights. Set off hundreds, and create a microscopic asteroid belt.
There is a reason for the resurrection of LORAN, or radio navigation aids https://www.pressofatlanticcit... [pressofatlanticcity.com]
People that understand the issue are preparing for the end of GPS. People that don't are jonesing
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But destruction of other satellites by ordinary kinetic means is very dangerous in creating debris, and numerous disabled & uncontrolled satellites could do that.
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a nuclear weapon has sufficient energy to ionize all of itself, and most of its anti-satellite activity would be from prompt x-ray radiation or delayed radioactivity by injecting charged particles into orbit. There would be only gas left from the weapon side. But destruction of other satellites by ordinary kinetic means is very dangerous in creating debris, and numerous disabled & uncontrolled satellites could do that.
They do create debris. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/... [dtic.mil] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While if it was a completely efficient mass to energy conversion - yeah. But it isn't.
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Check out the XN-1 LaWS and other modern solid-state lasers. The technology has advanced leaps and bounds over Star Wars, and the cost to deliver equipment into orbit has decreased dramatically. I think the Star Wars program was right on point but the technology of the era was not there to make it a reality. I could imagine us launching a modern space-based reactor powering
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The XN-1 LaWS is an infrared laser, and has effectively zero chance of stopping a military warhead designed to survive re-entry. The x-ray lasers were supposed to be much more difficult to block. It's easy to imagine many acts that would be a direct violation of international teaties the US signed that have helped prevent the proliferaton of weapons in space. It's also observably true that most "defensive" space weapons are far more effective as offensive weapons against ground based targets with few effect
This is why we have Space Force (Score:2)
HAARP? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't this one of the things HAARP is supposed to be able to do? Drain that stuff, not into space, but to ground... by creating an ionized path?
what about the van allen belts? (Score:1)
Pacific Proving Grounds (Score:2)
It would be neighborly if the U.S would clean up the fragments of failed nuclear bombs during testing at the Pacific Proving Grounds [wikipedia.org].
The structures left there were hurriedly built during a wartime effort to secure the A bomb. Surely a nation with the industrial capacity of the US can rebuild or remove the fragments into a new structure. Please consider this.
Not just nukes (Score:3)
30 or so years ago, an interesting scenario was put forth.
As a bad actor/supervillian/nationstate having a tantrum, put together a "lunar program". Actual lunar launches were optional. As the punchline to the op, make a launch for lunar orbit and return. At some point in the return portion, change the destination to geosynchronous orbital altitude and let multiple kinetics fly into the comsats. Anything from guided projectiles to inert masses to a "friendly" option of coated polymer rods designed to breakdown via UV over a few weeks.
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It's been a very long time but If I recall correctly in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" the libertarian statelet populating the moon think up a defense strategy where they threaten to drop big stones on the earth.
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They already have nukes. It would take work to develop a system to properly spread out projectiles. It would take no additional work to detonate their nukes in such a way as to destroy satellites.
Just curious (Score:2)
https://www.woi.economist.com/... [economist.com]