[AR] Re: India shoots down satellite, declares itself a space power .

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2019 15:57:05 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 28 Mar 2019, Ben Brockert wrote:

It was under 300 km and it was head-on kinetic. This is nearly the
most benign ASAT anyone has ever done.

While this is true, it's still not great. In particular, it's *not* impossible for a fragment from such a test to end up in a long-lived high orbit -- rather less likely than for a test higher up, yes, but not impossible.

After China and the US demonstrated ASAT recently, it's irresponsible for any spacefaring country to not demonstrate this ability.

Perhaps you could elaborate? I'm having difficulty understanding this sentence, unless perhaps that "not" was a typo. As written, it sounds like any responsible airfaring country should demonstrate its ability to explode an atmospheric nuclear test, because... well, because why?

Henry

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