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  • Hacker News
  • Nothing to worry about, General Turgidson said it was just made in order to prevent a space gap.
    by doe88
  • The part where China "begs" the US not to weaponize space, and then talks of how China wants to militarily dominate space... Such typical tactics to delay US progress.
    by hereme888
  • Typical tactics to shift the blame to China.
    by gggmaster
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield

    by tristanj
  • See also: the mass of starlink satellites over time.
    by bob1029
  • Only relevant part is this:

    > Cost estimates for the Golden Dome program range from $175 billion (White House), to $1.2 trillion (Congressional Budget Office), to $3.6 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) depending on the architectural details. The wide range largely hinges on the number of space-based missiles and the cost of replacing satellites whose low orbits decay quickly due to atmospheric drag. Some $24.4 billion in federal funding was directed to the Golden Dome in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, with another $13 billion allocated for the fiscal year 2026, totaling 2.2% of the federal discretionary budget during that year.

    It's just a ploy to transfer more public money to government contractors and friends, like Musk.

    by thrance
  • Rods from God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
    by thehumanmeat
  • I think most of the powerful countries in the world already have space weapons. Space exploration is just a facade for this.
    by misetech
  • I'd wager starlink is mostly military with the cover of civilian use case.
    by BiteCode_dev
  • Even space telescopes have been built on the skeletons made for spying, and rockets in almost any form were weapons before they were carrying peaceful missions. That we have Russian, American, and European components communicating together at the ISS is kind of a lovely, if temporary, closure of the circle.
    by bdamm
  • If they’re showing us this weapon, it probably means it’s already outdated...
    by MotoriX
  • Reagan and Gorbachev came within inches of abolishing nuclear weapons, but the sticking point was the US would not back away from building space weapons. As long as warmongers are in control we will continue to live in danger and fear.
    by sgustard
  • I mean in hindsight there's no way israel or china would have disarmed.
    by asdff
  • The capabilities of the "space weapons" didn't exist. Reagan used the threat of those weapons to perpetuate USSR's unsustainable military & defense investment, knowing the US could sustain it. Within 5 years, USSR was defunct.

    Reagan had the right strategy , for his time.

    by tonymet
  • > As long as warmongers are in control we will continue to live in danger and fear.

    Can you expand on your solution to world peace?

    by nomel
  • Gorbachev's dead now and look who sits in his place. I'm not so sure such a treaty would still be respected anyway. As as for who sits in Reagan's place...
    by cedws
  • C.J. Cherryh has a memorable quote on this in her _Downbelow Station_.

    >They were armed, the swift exploration ships, as they had always been, venturing as they did into the unknown; but now they were used in a new way, to visit stations and pull them into line. That was bitterest of all, that the crews of the probe ships, who had been the heroes of the Beyond, became the Company enforcers.

    by WillAdams
  • One of my favorite SF books.

    I feel that applies more to Russia's space program--some cosmonauts (not all, of course) support Putin's war.

    by GMoromisato
  • But then came evil communistic Cyteen, spoiling the plan, with cloned AZIs, evil space Nazis. Supporting the Alliance of Merchants at Downbelow. Damn & Woe!

    How exactly that came to be (from Earth-Company side) was expanded a little bit, as sort of a prequel in Heavy Time(1991) and Hellburner(1992), and later again in Alliance Rising(2019) and Alliance Unbound(2024) from the POV of the affected stations in the so called Hinder Stars(the first to be explored by slower than light ships from the Earth), made obsolete by FTL later on, because of more direct routes to Downbelow and further into Cyteen territory.

    by LargoLasskhyfv
  • Wasn't the shuttle originally planned to be a weapon as well, capable of intercepting and sabotaging satellites using its loading bay workshop? There are also the various "mini shuttles" the three letter agencies fly around the earth for several hundred day stints of doing who knows what exactly with who knows what capabilities (other than having a similar sabotage potential as the original shuttle perhaps).
    by asdff
  • I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The Shuttle requirements were absolutely modified by DoD's desire to ship military satellites and carry out operations. One of the many tug-o-wars that ended up with such a compromised design.

    And since you brought up the X-37B, I have to admit, I absolutely love its dynamic flight capabilities whereby it literally banks off the upper atmosphere like a silver surfer to rapidly change orbits at perigee. Quite an interesting bit of tech that did evolve from the shuttle and is still doing work this very day.

    by bdamm
  • As far as I know, a major issue with NASA space programs such as the shuttle was that each group held its own requirements. So, most likely the DoD had some additional demands.
    by baxtr
  • The SIR-C/X-SAR was launched in the Shuttle Bay and used to map the entire surface of The Earth. Some would call that a munition. This article, following that event IS the confirmation.
    by CodeWriter23
  • Relevant:

    - USAF Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 1999–2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/http://www.de.afr...

    - USAF Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 2009–2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/http://www.kirtla...

    - LASER Effects Test Facility fact sheet from 2002 showing a 50-kilowatt CO² LASER setting a test target on fire: https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://www.de.afr...

    by Lammy
  • Lame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer would 'Rock the Casbah' even more.
    by LargoLasskhyfv
  • Rather interesting timing after the US accused China of supplying Iran with high-res imagery used to support attacks on US bases, then a Chinese satellite mysteriously broke apart
    by nopassrecover
  • I thought the Russians were supplying them with HiRes imagery. I've not heard of any Russian optical or radar satellite breaking up.
    by hn_submit
  • Yaogan-50 for anyone asking.

    Interesting. A bit conspiratorial, but hey. It would be a major provocation if so

    by fnands
  • It's really not interesting at all. The US Destroyed that satellite to stop that information flow.
    by CodeWriter23
  • Wouldn't it be possible to confirm who may be supplying imagery by taking some IRGC supplied imagery such as [1] and figure out which satellite(s) were overhead at the time and capable of taking the image? It may not be particularly straightforward to do so--but seems theoretically possible with:

    - Consideration of time-of-day/azimuth of overhead satellite based on shadows and perspective.

    - Comparison to other imagery of the same location checking for portable objects (such as vehicles) and keeping track of when they appear and disappear, and whether they're present in the imagery being analysed.

    - Consideration of cloud coverage and weather conditions to rule out unwanted satellite passes.

    Then write up a report and publish it, making it a believable and concrete finding instead of a finding that otherwise may just be perceived to be speculation/vibes.

    [1] https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-jordan-strike-at-u-s-aircraf...

    by dhx