The Increasing Reality of War in Space

One day the Space Force will be the most important branch of the military you'll see, that day is far but it's not science fiction

25:45 I really wanted the line to be "the consequences are just astronomical"

Current USSF Guardian and Engineer here; one of the biggest reasons the USSF was established as its own branch was to consolidate space acquisitions and have a budget of its own to develop and sustain capabilities separate from the Air Force's budget - the reason being that the Air Force's primary goal is Air Power, and that always took a precedent over Space Power e.g. the F-35 got the funding over more GPS satellites. Another example was that the Army, Navy and Air Force had different SatCom networks that accomplished the same ultimate goal of communications with forces on the greound/surface (and why I feel for the operators and engineers in Del 8 who have a cluster of different programs and systems that are all managed under one roof). Great video overall to demonstrate the critical need for space for the 21st century warfighter and to demonstrate how real of a warfighting domain space has become. Via Vincimus and Semper Supra!

Correction: The ASM-135 test in 1985 was NOT a co-orbital ASAT. Co-orbital means the weapon achieves orbit prior to engaging it's target. The ASM135 was a direct-ascent ASAT, meaning it struck its target without ever entering orbit. These are two radically different classes of weapons.

Part of the reason the Outer Space Treaty is so vague on "conventional" weapons in space is because astronauts often keep knives and even loaded guns on them as part of their survival kits in the event they land back on Earth somewhere like a forest full of bears.

Glad to see something about Space conflict. A lot of people just don't know how important space is to day to day life and how vulnerable it is.

Most people think the idea of the space force is brand new, but it isn’t The first discussion of a U.S. Space Force occurred under President Dwight Eisenhower's administration in 1958 and it was nearly established in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative otherwise known as Star Wars. In essence, what’s old is New again old ideas constantly getting rehashed.

I transferred from the US Army into the US Space Force a few years ago. I appreciate seeing more outlets realize and communicate the importance of our mission to the United States' national defense.

To be fair to Steve Carell he initially dismissed Space Force as ridiculous but as his team did research for the movie he realized its real life importance

Space Force/Space Corps had been proposed previously to Trump signing those papers. Like nearly 2 decades previously. It was a very real and serious answer to a military need being recognized by the pentagon. The fact that it took so long tells you all that you need to know what politicians and the public think about the importance of space.

As a guy in the Space Force (pretty sure I was in this video too lol) thanks for taking it seriously and for making this video. Really well done.

I want to personally thank you, I have a presentation on space warfare tomorrow and i need a video and there were no good ones until now, you are my hero.

genuinely surprised the words "Kessler syndrome" did not make it into this video

Minor correction: GPS Block IIF reads as "Block two F"

Loved seeing Thessaloniki's very own "white tower" at 3:09

Additional note, when India conducted a similar test it did so with extreme caution. The Chinese ASAT test in 2007, which occurred at an altitude of 865 kilometers and produced a debris field of some 3,000 objects that will linger in space for decades, the Indian demonstration appears to have produced some 400 fragments (of which about 270 are being tracked) that will decay in weeks or perhaps a few months. Both US and China had some very unkind words despite conducting similar tests.

4:02 Physicist here. The differences in gravitational force caused by distance from the planet for objects in orbit is far weaker than implied here, and definitely not the reason for faster minimum velocities to stay in orbit. For example, at the altitude of the ISS, they still experience about 90% of surface gravity. The reason for faster minimum speeds is simple geometry. Orbiting is (put simply) moving fast enough “sideways” so that, while you fall towards the planet, you are also moving so far to the side that you miss, continuously. Different gravitational pulls will affect what those sideways speeds need to be, but for the same planet and orbiting object, the distance changes the necessary speed relatively very little compared to simply how large the orbit is. The easiest way to conceptualize it is probably this: imagine you are orbiting 1 foot off the surface. You would have to travel around a significant portion of the globe to account before falling that foot in order to remain in orbit. You would have to be traveling extremely fast for no other reason than having such little space to work with. Now imagine you’re orbiting at a thousand miles up. You now have much, much more time to “miss” the planet; instead of one foot, you have a thousand miles to use while covering that same distance to miss the planet. Edit: If you’d like to think about it geometrically, the further satellite can account for fall and “sideways” travel in a shape more closely approximating an equilateral triangle, which has a relatively small hypotenuse (which itself approximates the necessary velocity), while the near satellite has a very lopsided triangle, needing to travel far more to the side than the distance it falls, and thus making a hypotenuse far longer than the average of the other side lengths. Edit 2: This wasn’t meant to be a full, formal explanation of orbital mechanics, as some people seem to think I was trying to do. The entirety of my point is that the differences in felt gravitational pull via different orbital radii is not the primary reason for different minimum orbital speeds.

On space debris, it's worth noting an attack on geosynchronous or semi-synchronous orbit would be particularly bad, because while debris in low-earth-orbit will de-orbit on it's own given decades or centuries due to atmospheric drag, geosynchronous orbit would be basically screwed permanently (or at least until we manually clean it up). Relatedly, one factor is that there is a legitimate purpose behind developing anti-satellite technology - Active Debris Removal. Most technology that could be used to remove space debris could also be used to remove active satellites, so there is a bit element of hush hush around the technical specifics of the field. And also, this is a minor point, but the liability nightmare that would ensue in the event of Kessler Syndrome (the bit mentioned in the video where collisions trigger ever more collisions) would be insane . There is basically no regime to determine responsibility if one satellite, or the debris from a satellite, collides with another. And they are pretty damn expensive. t wasn't addressed in the Outer Space Treaty or any of the subsequent treaties, and there are now many, many more actors in space than just the US and USSR. Arguably, all satellites are legally the responsibility of the state from where the satellite launched from (no private ownership in space! Legally, Space Communism is a thing, kinda). I think Russia has some legal provision to make it responsible for stuff launched from Baikonur, but France is on the hook for all satellites launched from French Guyana. The liability uncertainty creates a big problem for insurers, which creates a big problem for commercial users of space - as the current situation in the Red Sea demonstrates, scaring off insurers can cause immense damage even if there aren't actually that many incidents, proportionately.

I really appreciate what you did with the music in this video. It conveys a much more serious tone than most of your others, fitting, given the subject matter.

To be fair using Colbert and Kimmel as a litmus test for intelligence is like taking financial advice from a crack addict