this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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US officials: A Russian rocket launch last week likely deployed a space weapon (arstechnica.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"my source is that I made it the fuck up"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, it's something else than "made the fuck up" when they do provide a line of reasoning.

"Logic insists" is imo too strong of a formulation for that level of speculative reasoning, but it's still not entirely made up, especially when they provide a reason why you'd have to be speculative about the subject.

I think for perfect fairness of discussion that last part would have to be challenged before attacking them speculating that harsh

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The last part being their misunderstanding of Occam's razor?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, the "if it were true we probs wouldn't have evidence"- part

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Right, lack of evidence is evidence that they exist because wavy hands circumstances.

If I was a country, I would factor it into my threat model. I'd be remiss not to. But it would be on the level of "a satellite malfunctioned" as opposed to "all of our satellites have been deleted".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh man this is kinda tiring... Of course it's not evidence. I'm trying to foster fair culture of discussion that's all

After all, we're trying to have a "better internet" in this niche community of lemmy, don't we?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ok. Occam's razor of this scenario:
Russia did a sneaky launch of weapons and there are news articles about Russia putting weapons into space.
Why do we think the US is better at secrecy?
Why aren't there articles about the US putting weapons in space?
The US hasn't put weapons into space.

Besides, I just don't see any benefit for the US to have weapons in space.
Any country with a space program that is a potential threat is going to have multiple layers of redundancy with their satellites, just due to the nature of satellites. So, to make a noticeable difference the US would need quite a few weapons in space.
I can understand Russia having weapons in space, because they are all about pushing the line, poking and provoking. If they destroy a satellite and deny it, that is in line with their playbook.
If the US does that, it would massively escalate both foreign and domestic issues.
The US can already hit anywhere on earth with massive firepower, they can already deploy special operations teams to take out ground stations, and they claim to have programs to "hard and soft kill" satellites. And it's sensible to think they have a space weapon system with a deployment program ready to go. It could probably be in orbit within a few hours.
I just don't see the reason for them to have deployed space weapons at this time, and risk provoking such an escalation for such miniscule (if any) benefits.

And if the US is caught putting weapons in space, everyone is going to want to do it and we will have to abandon human space travel.
At the moment, space is science and observation. The benefits of it remaining science and observation vastly outweighs the risks of trying to dominate it and turn it into a warzone.