Anyone would say it’s the script of a James Bond movie, but no. If last week’s terrifying reports are true, Russia is reviving some of the most ominous ideas from the Cold War. And this is bad news for everyone.
Reports say Russia plans to put into orbit nuclear weapons designed to shoot down a large number of enemy satellites. Since the West relies entirely on satellites for communication, navigation, gathering information, and waging war, this is quite a terrifying threat. It is also utterly insane.
Reasons to never make this idea come true
Firstly, developing, deploying, and testing this type of weapons is illegal according to international law. Treaties may be the last thing on the mind of a state determined to launch nuclear weapons. Breaking those treaties means that others are not obligated to comply with them either, and if others have much more advanced space capabilities, that may not turn out very well.
Then there is the reason why those treaties exist: space nuclear weapons work, and they work too well. All kinds of conventional anti-satellite weapons can be built that can disable the hardware you don’t like.
Killer satellites that lurk until they are needed turn out to be a bad idea. Orbital mechanics make it difficult, slow, and expensive to maneuver one object in orbit towards another, especially if the latter is not willing to cooperate.
It is better to launch missiles from land or from an airplane, as both have the added advantage over assets in orbit that they are not floating in space in a known orbit for the enemy to see 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Satellites are not resilient: a small explosion is usually enough to make them lose their course.
We know it because the Americans tested it: Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite. Sent into space in 1962, it was a shiny beach ball that made the world’s first live transatlantic television transmissions. Well, it was accidentally disabled by an American space bomb called Starfish Prime that exploded thousands of kilometers away, on land.
However, sending nuclear bombs into space to threaten other countries is a really bad idea, and we hope that this situation never occurs. For the sake of the future of humanity.
