Analysis of the Cosmos 1408 Breakup | Hacker News Reader

Analysis of the Cosmos 1408 Breakup

leolabs-space.medium.com

74 pointsperihelions38 comments

Sequel post:

>Part II — New Observations on Cosmos 1408 Breakup

https://leolabs-space.medium.com/part-ii-new-observations-on...

Thanks for posting that. In some ways, it is actually more interesting than the original post.

It's alarming and irresponsible for any country to perform an anti-satellite missile test but there is a level of hypocrisy from the countries condemning - some of whom have also conducted such tests in the past; China as recently as 2007, the US has done so a number of times historically and as recently as 2008 and India most recently in 2019.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

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

The 2008 American and the Indian tests were done at a low altitude where they didn't affect any satellites and fragments deorbited quickly. Not comparable at all.

The American test in the 80s was comparable.

And that's the point, they are testing a missile against targets at much higher orbits. 14A042 is pretty enormous for a mobile missile.

They are aiming to take out US missile target discrimination system, the weakest link in the new US missile defence system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Tracking_and_Surveilla...

Without target discrimination, the missile defence will be completely exhausted by decoys.

I really want to understand what the reasoning behind this "test" was. From all I can research, it appears to be a cartoon-esque level of recklessness by the Russians. The test itself seems to prove very little beyond what Russia could already do. They also haven't bothered to find a lower orbit to contaminate. Can someone provide more sensible reasons of why this was necessary?

Maybe they just want to put attention somewhere where it doesn't bother them?

Constructing a excuse to back out of ISS while saving face.

Kinetic kill is exactly what "Russians" (the military, the country isn't a monolithic entity) couldn't do before. The Soviet Kontakt system never passed the final live test because the Union had crashed. Anyone who paid any attention knew that Nudol was in slow development for a decade, had been fired blank many times and had to be tested on a live target someday, for the contractor to complete the job. How can you trust a weapon that's never been properly tested?

Good candidates in lower orbits were all short-lived and reentered long ago, and possibly weren't sufficient to test the claimed performance, to start with. What even makes you think they "haven't bothered"? I have no idea why they didn't launch a dedicated target though - might have been budgetary reasons, bureaucratic failure, or because of a specific test envelope. Alternatively, the military rarely care when it involves strategic matters, you can complain but it just works this way. In particular US military who blew up the Solwind observatory at 550km to test the ASM-135, the only US ASAT weapon currently in operation. It was in 1985, the same time when USSR was developing its counterpart, so it's easy to posture as morally superior when you already did the damage and there's currently no need for another ASAT weapon.

Edit: here's a better analysis than most: https://spacenews.com/op-ed-lessons-to-learn-from-russias-nu...

(meta: threads like this usually have little substance and garbage quality for HN standards. People start assuming all kinds of things and post kneejerk reactions without even bothering to research what's publicly available. I typically avoid posting in these, but then they just become outrage bubbles)

> sensible reasons of why

The last few weeks have had some extreme rhetoric coming out of the US, claiming that Europe is about to be invaded by Russia, so extreme that even Euro allies find it a stretch.

Maybe this doesn't make the news for many Americans but in Europe it certainly doesnt go unnoticed when powerful governments talk about full scale war on your doorstep.

Now there's one country on Earth with a magnitude more spy sats than anyone else, let's call them X they are making these claims against country Y, in response Y demonstrates its ASAT capabilities for the world to see.

Is it really that hard to understand?

https://time.com/6116867/us-warns-russia-invade-ukraine/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/amid-tensions-with-russ...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/bill-burns-moscow-uk...

Country X isn't just crying wolf to smear Y here. Y invaded a neighbouring country years ago and is again concentrating troops at the border.

And it still doesn't answer why the Russians chose to destroy a huge sat (more fragments) built by the USSR (more material to fragment) at a relatively high orbit (more time for fragments to destroy other sats). They could have done the thing India did and ram a small-ish sat at a low orbit and the fragments would be gone within a couple of months.

Instead they chose to even endanger their own cosmonauts on the ISS.

Would it be far-fetched to imagine that Y is doing this to make a particular orbital trajectory useless for the future placement of a highly sophisticated spy satellite or spy plane from X?

Demonstrating that your country is a mean badass meanie who doesn’t give a f*ck about rules?

Is it reasonable to believe that in the event of war, space would turn into a horrific mess of space debris as nation states shot down all of each other’s military satellites? I had never thought of this scenario until I read this article.

I believe that's the general consensus on what would happen, except it wouldn't just be military satellites if there were munitions to spare. There's only a small chance that all sides would refrain because they didn't want their own attacked and as soon as one side starts there's no reason for the others not to.

Wouldn’t it be a domino effect where debris from the first few military satellites would destroy pretty much everything in orbit?

You are right. This scenario is known as Kessler syndrome.

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

It's probably one part of their strategy. With that said, Russia has far more sinister and worrisome weapons capabilities than their ASAT program - in the event of an actual war.

If it comes to the point of shooting down satellites, do space debris even matter? Humanity will blow itself back into the stone age and no-one will be launching anything new into orbit for centuries anyway.

I can imagine hostilities that are severe enough to involve mutual satellite strikes but not so severe as to involve nuclear strikes. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan might escalate like that, for example.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones".

Albert Einstein

I would think that the standard procedure for these kind of ASAT tests would be to miss the target by some, on purpose. It's basically just a show of force. But sooner or later you need to find out whether your system works or not.

Yes, it's utterly destructive by nature, but there's only one way to know. And I think the Russians (and other countries) have done these exercises multiple times before, where they've missed the target. It is naturally not known if they've missed on purpose, or by mistake.

And FWIW, both USA, China, and India have working ASAT weapons. So it's def. not only the Russians being evil for the sake of being evil.

I'm going to suggest human error. There's no good reason for something which amounts to an international embarrassment, including putting cosmonaut's lives at risk.

Also note how quiet Russia is about it.

I don't think the Russians care at all. They keep doing harmful things because they know they can.

For a direct example have a look at Litvinienko poisoning or skripal attacks.

This behaviour from Russia will not stop.

The longer we procrastinate, the higher price we will pay.

Are you suggesting that war with Russia today is preferable to war with Russia in the future?

Please clarify.

RF is already at (semi-cold) war with West, so peace with Russia today is preferable to peace with Russia in the future.

We did nothing when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Many of the major powers have destroyed satellites in orbit - the USA as as early as 1985 and as recently as 2008, China in 2008, India in 2019. Russia's show of force is nothing special.

This is whataboutism. As others above have pointed out, the India events and US events post 1985 are not in fact comparable.

It's not whataboutism, it's pointing out there is nothing unique about this event. What they did is bad, but unfortunately common.

It isn't common. The last time the US did it was in 1985, almost 40 years ago.

Pointing out hypocrisy is not whataboutism.

If the US wanted to have the moral high ground on this issue they shouldn't have done it themselves. This goes for a lot of things where the US had a 'first', and which other countries then more or less out of necessity follow.

> If the US wanted to have the moral high ground on this issue they shouldn't have done it themselves.

In 1985. The US has tested antisat weapons since, yes, but not in this reckless fashion.

We’ve learned a lot more about the risks of these test since 1985, particularly with Kessler’s paper "Collisional cascading: The limits of population growth in low Earth orbit" in 1991. The implications are much better understood now. Plus alternative test regimes, such as the tests in lower orbits, have shown that tests at this altitude just aren’t necessary. It seems highly unlikely that there’s much about this system that couldn’t have been tested just fine against a safer target.

Lots of strong words and condemnation. But it’s almost as if Russia laughs at it.

The international community needs to set up a better list of consequences for specific acts by Russia, before they happen. Because we know they’ll all happen again. All of them.

E.g repeated ASAT test: Russian nationals’ assets seized abroad, Russian students thrown out from foreign universities.

Unmarked Russian vehicles proven used in places they shouldn’t be? Novichok poisonings? Arrests of opposition politicians? Nord stream gas line cancelled.

Annexation of territory? disconnect Russia from the international banking system and ban buying Russian gas.

Easily said. Recall that the Kremlin has its hand on the thermostat of most of Europe, and winter is now upon us.

Indeed. So any such agreement obviously involves massive investments in energy, buying US LNG, and countries that aren’t dependent on Russian gas agreeing to subsidize those that do short term.

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