California startup to demonstrate space weapon on its own dime

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨artifex@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/california-startup-to-demonstrate-space-weapon-on-its-own-dime/

I had to read this a few times to make sure I understood properly, but the Trump admin wants to spend a metric fuckton of money on a group of IoT systems that will keep space missiles pointed at basically every country on earth (including the US). Aside being the stuff of cartoon villains, once this is begun in earnest why on earth wouldn’t every other nation do the same? And what’s stop stop hackers from penetrating any one of the “system of systems” used to make this thing work and launch a missile or two?

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Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Golden Dome is a pipe dream . It simply not technologically feasible to protect the entire country from incoming missiles.

You probably have to shoot down missiles during the boost phase, when the warheads are still attached. For SDI, the U.S. was dealing with Soviet liquid-fueled missiles that would boost, or burn, for about four minutes. Well, modern ones burn for less than three—that’s a whole minute that you no longer have. This is actually much worse than it sounds because you’re probably unable to shoot for the first minute or so. Even with modern detectors [that are] much better than [those] we had in the 1980s, you may not see the missile until it rises above the clouds. And once it does, your sensors, your computers, still have to say, “Aha! That is a missile!” And then you have to ensure that you’re not shooting down some ordinary space launch—so the system says, “I see a missile. May I shoot at it, please?” And someone or something has to give the go-ahead. So let’s just say you’ll have a good minute to shoot it down; this means your space-based interceptor has to be right there, ready to go, right? But by the time you’re getting permission to shoot, the satellite that was overhead to do that is now too far away, and so the next satellite has to be coming there. This scales up really, really fast.

And that’s just one of many issues. I recommend reading the whole piece. It really shows what a joke this whole concept is.

I suspect that this is really just another way for Trump to hand billions of dollars to his buddies. Just watch. When some company is given a contract for this it’ll be a brand new company that just happens to be owned by former republican operatives or politicians. Needless to say, the company will never be required to produce anything either. They’ll just pay out all those billions to consultants and other newly created companies owned by other GOP operatives.

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huquad@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is gonna lead to bebop levels of space debris.

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- entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  As if Starlink wasn’t already
  
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JillyB@beehaw.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

The second key is, in order for it to be viable, you need enough of them in space to actually have the impact that you need.”

This is the part that makes Golden Dome non-viable IMO. Golden Dome is attempting the holy Grail of ballistic missile defense: boost phase intercept. The idea is that the missile is slowest, biggest, and easiest to detect and track immediately after launch. Golden Dome is attempting to place the launchers in orbit.

The problem is every satellite takes a predictable path, so the launching country could just wait until it’s not overhead and launch. This means you need a bunch of satellites in a spaced out orbit so there’s always one over the launcher. And you need that for every potential launch site. And most nuclear capable countries have road-mobile ICBMs, so you need enough to cover the whole country. The launching country could just knock out a satellite to punch a hole through your defenses and then launch in the brief window. So now you need redundancy. But every redundant satellite you place can be countered by one extra anti-satellite missile. Anti-satellite missiles will always be cheaper to build than satellite-based interceptors. China has 110 nuclear ICBM silos in one field in the desert. Are you going to be able to shoot down 110 missiles launched at the same time from the same area?

The author makes it sound like Reagan-era Star Wars was infeasible but now it’s fine because of technology. I really don’t think the fundamental economic issue has been resolved. It would take these satellites becoming much cheaper to deploy or some kind of counter to an anti-satellite missile.

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- t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  To be fair, you don’t need it to perfectly counter China and Russia to have value. There are other countries that have nuclear capabilities or ambitions, who don’t have thousands of ICBMs.
  
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  - JillyB@beehaw.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    North Korea is the only one that could fall under that category. It just seems like a ton of resources to throw behind a tiny fraction of the nuclear threat to the US. Couldn’t we station boost-phase interceptors in South Korea and/or Japan for a whole lot cheaper? An anti-satellite capability is much easier to get than a nuclear ICBM. If they can make a nuke, they can take out a satellite.
    
    Ultimately, Golden Dome is a wunderwaffe. The Trump administration is excited about it for the same reasons the Nazis were excited about their military vanity projects. It’s hard to discuss it purely in it’s own merits without also considering the reason it is being pursued. It isn’t being pushed by top people in the military or Pentagon. It’s pushed because some high up fascists saw the Israeli Iron Dome and were like “we gotta have one of those, but BIGGER, and make it GOLD”. It’s an aesthetic marketing halo project for MAGA fascism.
    
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sleepundertheleaves@infosec.pub ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Aside being the stuff of cartoon villains, once this is begun in earnest why on earth wouldn’t every other nation do the same?

Because whatever country gets a system like this online first can prevent any other country from launching their own.

And President Trump, for all I dislike him, is honest about American power and how America has always leveraged it. Biden or Obama, or any Democrat or more moderate Republican, would have spouted platitudes about not weaponizing space - while secretly building space weapons anyway and sabotaging other countries’ efforts to build their own. Trump openly builds weapons and dares the rest of the world to complain.

The real difference between Trump and Biden is Trump doesn’t try to hide what America is and does.

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- artifex@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Multiple countries have had the ability to put tons of weapons in space for a half century (and we know there are/were a few up there), so I don’t agree with you here - once we abandon our treaties, one country putting arms in space will inevitably lead to all countries putting arms in space “for defense”.
  
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- Quexotic@beehaw.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t think that it’s it’s just that they would spout platitudes I think they would probably recognize that there’s treaties that were part of that prevent us from weaponizing space…
  
  www.armscontrol.org/…/outer-space-treaty-glance
  
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Dogyote@slrpnk.net ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The missiles aren’t pointed at countries, they’re for shooting down other missiles. They’re also likely quite small with tiny warheads, so wouldn’t matter much to cities on the ground.

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