[rob666]

Originally Posted by nyazzip ↗

and BTW, there is no laser technology even close to being capable of destroying satellites from 500 miles away

That's debatable. Considering some satellites orbit at 3600 km, something 500 km up using 50 year old technology would be an easy target.

The Chinese have been developing this technology for 50 years. In 2006 they marked an American satellite with a laser, in 2007 they shot down one of their own satellites with a missile, and they've increased their military budget 100% since then.
A lot of their focus has been the militarization of space.

It's not like Russia isn't already pissed off too
I guarantee that they've been developing this technology for decades too.

[nyazzip]

That's debatable. Considering some satellites orbit at 3600 km, something 500 km up using 50 year old technology would be an easy target.

I chose the number 500 miles, because that is roughly the height of the satellite's orbit that exploded.....or so I read somewhere. by the way, some satellites orbit 10x higher than 3600km. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fea...OrbitsCatalog/

The Chinese have been developing this technology for 50 years.

the Chinese were pulling rickshaws 50 years ago, and 25 years ago. today, i'm sure they are researching lasers, yes. http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=42279

...missiles and lasers are not the same thing; the USA has also demonstrated destruction of satellites with missiles that (I believe) were launched by high altitude aircraft

[ralucagymnast]

Originally Posted by nyazzip ↗

I chose the number 500 miles, because that is roughly the height of the satellite's orbit that exploded.....or so I read somewhere. by the way, some satellites orbit 10x higher than 3600km. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fea...OrbitsCatalog/


the Chinese were pulling rickshaws 50 years ago, and 25 years ago. today, i'm sure they are researching lasers, yes. http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=42279

...missiles and lasers are not the same thing; the USA has also demonstrated destruction of satellites with missiles that (I believe) were launched by high altitude aircraft

Yep. Scramjetted. Chinese and Russians are all about the "hypersonic glide vehicle" which is the MIRVed part of an ICBM. They are designed to elude any present or future planned missile defence system, as they can change trajectory and velocity making them impossible to intercept. I think China have been more successful with this technology than Russia, Russia have had a quite a few failures:

This:


Flight test of a Project 4202 vehicle

Russia appears to have conducted a flight test of the Project 4202 vehicle on February 26, 2015 from one of the silos in Dombarovskiy. Project 4202 is believed to be some kind of a hypersonic vehicle that will be delivered by the UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missile. (See also the earlier post.)

Project 4202 launches have never been officially acknowledged, but bits of information appear here and there and there are enough dots to connect, so there is a fairly high degree of certainty that the launch indeed took place. (I must say that I can claim no credit for finding the dots - most of them have been discovered by others.)

First, TsENKI (Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure) in its 2014 acquisition plan listed two Project 4202-related contracts. In the document, the launch is scheduled to take place in January 2015, but it was later postponed. Industry sources were said to confirm that the test was moved to February.

And indeed, on February 26, 2015 a note on a Russian site, which is known to be well connected and generally reliable, said something to the effect that a test is upcoming. The post has been removed since, but only after it was updated to say that the test was unsuccessful.

Finally, a number of people have found a message posted by someone from Yasnyy (which is the name of the city at the Dombarovskiy missile base) later on February 26. The author said that in Yasnyy people felt a missile launch that took place around 13:00 local time (that would be 8:00 UTC).

The February 26, 2015 launch is not the first flight test of the Project 4202 system - at least one took place around September 26, 2013. It appears that another test took place some time in 2014, maybe in September. All we know about the 2014 test is that there is an unaccounted event in the official record of launches conduced that year (the 2013 4202 launch also was not included in the official account). None of the test appear to have been successful.

I guess we'll have to wait for a successful flight test to see an official report on Project 4202 and learn more about the system.

From this website;http://russianforces.org/blog/2015/0...ect_4202.shtml
Great site, by the way, I have the book.

[sunairco]

What makes many of you feel that this is the work of a foreign actor? I'd think it odd that the US hasn't made such a big deal about it no matter the circumstanctes whether this was a collision with space debris, malfunction, or outright destruction. What better way would the US have to tacitly suggest to other countries/militaries that it has developed satellite destruction capabilities then by taking out one of it's own near derilict and end of life crafts. This is usually countries subtle ways of letting each other know what capabilities they have or insinuate they have as a psyop.

Something to think about.

[rob666]

Originally Posted by sunairco ↗

What makes many of you feel that this is the work of a foreign actor? I'd think it odd that the US hasn't made such a big deal about it no matter the circumstanctes whether this was a collision with space debris, malfunction, or outright destruction. What better way would the US have to tacitly suggest to other countries/militaries that it has developed satellite destruction capabilities then by taking out one of it's own near derilict and end of life crafts. This is usually countries subtle ways of letting each other know what capabilities they have or insinuate they have as a psyop.

Something to think about.

Quite possible.

[Hunted]

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/...3/04/24384937/