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China fires first shots
Red223
Member Posts: 7,946
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
I knew they were doing it and now it's public knowledge. They admit China has been hitting our satellites in space.
Wonder if China hit the space shuttle and caused it's damage that destroyed in on re-entry?
I knew they were doing it and now it's public knowledge. They admit China has been hitting our satellites in space.
Wonder if China hit the space shuttle and caused it's damage that destroyed in on re-entry?
Comments
But hey, it's their right... no treaty on Earth says we have the right to spy on anyone and everyone unimpeded.
You can buy Chinese lasers right here in the USA that are more powerful than our govt. wants us to have....you really think they can only dazzle something with their big lasers?
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2125489&C=america
I doubt very seriously if China has any high energy lasers right now capable of damaging the space shuttle. Most of their laser weaponry are "dazzle" devices designed to blind or diable optics, not shear a hole through armor.
But hey, it's their right... no treaty on Earth says we have the right to spy on anyone and everyone unimpeded.
So if they perceived the Space Shuttle as a threat to them you are saying China has the right to shoot it down?
A good mirror on a spacecraft/satellite would reflect the laser back to the source...
Of course that mirror would have to cover the sensors and lenses on the sattelites, making them ineffective at spying on anybody whether the sattelites were over china or elsewhere.
Anti-sattellite technology has been one of the highest priorities for all nations for the last 30 years.
The Russians have anti-sattelite sattelites which carry explosives that can be detonated when the anti-sat sattellite comes in close proximity to the target sattellites. Almost all our intelligence sattellites are shadowed by satellite killers.
In case of a war with a major power like China, they'd take out most of our sattelites immediately, that';s why we have been working on new versions of spy sattelites that are not really sattelites and are not stuck in a continuous predictable orbit but can change altitue, direction etc. to make them harder to hit.
A good mirror on a spacecraft/satellite would reflect the laser back to the source...
Only if the beam hits perfectly perpendicular to the plain of the mirror. Otherwise it'll reflect at an angle equal to that of the incoming angle and hit somewhere else on the planet. Then we're just as guilty as the people who fired the laser in the first place.
If the government don't want me havin' it, I want at least ten![:p]
But seriously, I don't think they have any laser powerful enough to be considered a weapon in the classical sense. I could be wrong and for all I know China may be the first nation on Earth to fully deploy laser weapons...
That's just my opinion and I readily admit it's not a terribly well-informed one.
As for being justified in shooting down the space shuttle, no, they would not be. It's a civilian space craft.
Do they have the right to shoot it down? Space treaties being what they are, I don't think anyone has the right to shoot down anything in orbit unless a state of war exists between you and the target satellite's owner.
Do they have the right to jam it? You bet. That's hardly an act of war... it's not an act of peace, but not quite enough to qualify as a shot over the bow. Think of it as a high-tech version of closing your blinds when the cops drive by.
Transparent Aluminum Ceramics.....it's gotta offer protection from lasers. Dissipates energy (heat) but allows visible light thru it somehow.
The Space Shuttle has been flown by the military and has had military payloads. In 1982 Columbia became the first shuttle to carry a secret military payload. Ilan Ramon was the payload specialist on Columbia's last mission. He was an Israeli Air Force Colonel.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-107/html/fd0.html
Was her last payload military? Hmmmm....yeah.
In layman's terms, artificial ruby and sapphire.[:D]
If I were an agressor, the first thing I'd hit with a laser would be the GPS satellites. The military relies on GPS for weapons guidance, aircraft and ship navigation, and possibly communication. Take out GPS and were in trouble.
good luck. They orbit at 26,000 miles above the equator in a geosynchronous orbit, unlike observation satellites that are less than 100 miles into orbit.
quote:Originally posted by NeilTheBrit
If I were an agressor, the first thing I'd hit with a laser would be the GPS satellites. The military relies on GPS for weapons guidance, aircraft and ship navigation, and possibly communication. Take out GPS and were in trouble.
good luck. They orbit at 26,000 miles above the equator in a geosynchronous orbit, unlike observation satellites that are less than 100 miles into orbit.
Once the beam is outside the Earths atmosphere it dosn't matter how far away the target is. And being geosynchronous is a plus because your aiming at a static target.
how can anyone even state they know what china has or does not have, or what china is capable of?, they do kill people who are traitors there, unlike us who put them up, and let them write books, and make movies of how they screwed the country, china doesn't put their technology on the discovery channel for the world to see, but if you think they are really really stupid go ahead, and underestimate them as the rice eating idiots they are
They are not rice eating idiots. Chinese have equal capabilities to the US and Russia in science and advanced physics but are at least ten years behind us in the microelectronics and technology needed to put really complex systems into space.
The Chinese are catching up fast with illegal transfer of technology through commercial ventures. Silicon Valley will sell China the rope they need to hang us.
For example, it is illegal to sell Sun Microsystems workstations to China. Another company makes single board clones of the Sun workstations that are designed to make IBM systems compatible with code written for Sun workstations. These single board computers are not classified as workstations, they are considered upgrades for uncontrolled IBM technology.
Department of Commerce under Clinton gave China a huge leap forward inits microelectronnics.
WHAT?! They dont even mention me! What about me!? All that time I spent shooting my .22 at the sky trying to bring down commie red spy satellites! THERES NO MENTION OF ME!
Wheres my article?
"Pieceofpaper openly fires .22's into space to disable commie satellites"
Remember, the Chinese invented gunpowder.
And Pizza
China will become the ultimate ally before they become the ultimate enemy.
That means the better our relations with China become, the more we have to worry about.
Remember, the Chinese invented gunpowder.
...but have been unable to come up with a decent firearm design in the 1000 years since.
EMM,
You can buy Chinese lasers right here in the USA that are more powerful than our govt. wants us to have....you really think they can only dazzle something with their big lasers?
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2125489&C=america
Our government also limits the amount of water you can flush from your toilet so the same government setting limits on laser power hardly seem extreme by comparison.
Have y'all forgot we supported Taiwan being a free nation, free from China's control?
Do you know how mad that made them? And that in the last year or two we had 7 aircraft carrier battle groups off of China's coast?
They are mad. Taiwan will soon be their's again.
I guess the US did, by putting the spy satellites there in the first place.
"Military leaders?" Try one of them... who isn't on the Politburo or Central Military Commission. He is not the commander of a Military Region. Hell, Zhu Chenghu is a college professor... hardly the sort of authoritative figure whose word we can take to the bank.
And I haven't forgotten that we put seven aircraft carriers off of China's coast... we can thank Bush for that bit of chest-thumping and ultimately counterproductive bravado.
Mad? Hardly. Americans get mad and do stupid things like invade Iraq. China takes the long view and gets even.
So we can grow up and come to terms with China like adults or we can continue kicking and screaming like a bunch of children and get our behinds handed to us when they decide the time is right.
Our problem is that Western military thought says go to war and hope you'll win. Eastern military thought says go to war when you know you'll win.
China's leaders are playing ball with Russia, Iran, Venezuala, and North Korea.
They see America as it's only threat in it's thirst for oil. Do you honestly think a communist country is going to share the last half of the worlds oil supply with Americans?
Aint gonna happen.
So let me get this straight - because they won't let us have all the world's oil, they're enemies?
Why am I reminded of a fat kid hollering in a lunch room that someone across the table got a cupcake, too?
China plays ball with Russia because they're neighbors. I know we've been spoiled by having Canada around, but not everyone is as compliant as those Canucks. In that part of the world, you play ball or you fight.
China plays ball with North Korea much in the same way we play ball with Mexico. It's either prop 'em up or deal with a few million more North Korean immigrants. And since we're not keen to take them, I'm pretty sure neither is China.
China plays ball with Iran because Iran has oil and natural gas. Funny, but insert the words "United States" and "Saudi Arabia" instead and you have an identical relationship.
Ditto for Venezuela.
In short, you are saying that the reason China is an enemy is because they won't go to war with their neighbors and are securing energy sources for their economy. Last I heard, and you can call me on this if I'm wrong, most countries of means do that.
I don't know if... China fired the ...."first shot"...
I guess the US did, by putting the spy satellites there in the first place.
Happy,
calling them "spy" satellites is a very prejudicial way of looking at things. i prefer to think of them as "peace" satellites.