Scientists Explain Why Trump’s $175 Billion Golden Dome Is a Fantasy | Shooting missiles out of the sky from space could require a constellation of 36,000 satellites.
https://www.404media.co/scientists-explain-why-trumps-175-billion-golden-dome-is-a-fantasy/
32 Comments
It’s another grift like everything else he proposes
Wonder if there’s some company that could help with a 36,000 satellite constellation? SpaceX is the obvious winner in this game. And how on earth do you protect a landmass the size of the United States? Does Alaska get coverage? Hawaii? Guam?
Every action our government takes should be to solve a problem. Exactly what problem does this solve?
I feel like we tried to do something similar, perhaps in the 80s.
Golden Dome is a good name. It’s needlessly expensive, soft and easily broken through, unwieldy, and chosen for appearance over defensive functionality.
Seems like Gilead had them so it goes with the motif.
In this case you don’t need to actually make a defence system, you just need to convince a clueless old man that you have.
Get him to watch a launch, have some people dressed in Golden Dome uniforms, make an app for his phone that says Golden Dome Online, make some nice CGI of the Golden Dome golden doming.
36k interceptors at the weight of 400kg each is no longer prohibitive in cost. Even the original paper cited SpaceX and significant cost reduction happened over last decade.
He’s just continuing the classic GOP grift that Reagan started with SDI.
It’s not meant to work, it’s a wealth transfer vehicle from citizens to the military industrial complex while Trump skims off the top.
They might steal trillions from this.
It’s also just fucking stupid. The whole reason we’ve spent the better part of a century building an expeditionary military, to include the most effective logistics program in the history of the world, is so that we DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT THEM HERE! If it’s gotten to the point that we need Golden Dome, we are so completely fucked that Golden Dome won’t matter for shit.
these morons will end up causing kessler syndrome if they keep filling the earths orbit with crap
Or maybe we could put SO much stuff in orbit that NONE of it can function properly due to constantly crashing into each other.
[https://youtu.be/RmG5tUCrrsA?t=69](https://youtu.be/RmG5tUCrrsA?t=69)
I doesn’t have to work. It just has to get tax money to people who will give kick backs to Trump.
He’s not complicated.
Kinda like starlink v2? Sounds like a plan and I know someone that would gladly help.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdfexo “Last usage”)|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)|
|[FAA-AST](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtd9fwg “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration [Administrator for Space Transportation](http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/)|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdstqc “Last usage”)|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mte1xym “Last usage”)|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdusbg “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdgymy “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[VLEO](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdrt9o “Last usage”)|V-band constellation in LEO|
| |Very Low Earth Orbit|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtdxtgl “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[ablative](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mte15ag “Last usage”)|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)|
|[tanking](/r/Space/comments/1krgjuw/stub/mtd93qq “Last usage”)|Filling the tanks of a rocket stage|
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It would absolutely not require 36,000 satellites.
You only need the ability to shoot the missiles as they launch, so you need satellites in high speed orbits that keep good coverage over Russia and China.
You can use a bunch of small cube style satellites for identification and tracking, and have literal missiles ready to go for intercepts in space. That’s the front line defense.
You then have layers, with more systems situated in the most likely trajectories for ICBM warheads. A 3:1 ratio will work, so a few thousand anti-ICBM missiles would eliminate most warheads that the first layer didn’t stop. These would be sea and ground based. And we already have quite a few…
So in the article title it says that it would require 36,000 satellites, but in the article itself it says that it would require 36,000 interceptors.
Public range of the AIM-174 is 150miles and that being fired from a jet at maybe 40,000 feet. If it was fired from the orbital altitude of the ISS presumably the only thing limiting it’s range would be its internal power supply. At any given time you would only need to keep the satellites over one or two countries. If you could launch the AIM-174 downhill at ICBMs in their boost phase it’s the highest likelihood of interception.
SLBMs would be their own issue but honestly who knows how well the US Navy does at tracking Russian and Chinese submarines.
Or hear me out…Sharks with laser beams on their heads.
Well see, that’s the secret. Fill LEO up with so much space junk that they can’t transit.
The best defense against ICBMs is the enemy knowing your leader has the willpower to retaliate and end all life in the attacking country with enough nukes left over to finish off the rest of the planet a dozen times over.
What if I told you the plan was never about shooting missiles out of the air?
Even if it was feasible, this is the type of thing that would be obsolete before it is ever finished. The earth is littered with with enormous, expensive structures and facilities that were built during the Cold War, became obsolete before they were finished, and then abandoned
Perhaps, the concept is flawed and the investment is likely not worth the effort. If it fails on day 1, game over lol
I heard the same thing about the Iron Dome. *”It’s impossible! It’s like hitting a bullet with another bullet!!”*
Isn’t this the thing Reagan made up that the Soviets bankrupted themselves into oblivion thinking was real?
Maybe a stupid question… but can some of this be solved by putting fewer satellites with much more powerful sensors at much farther orbits? Could we have a satellite that could view like 1/4 of the planet and be an alert for launches, and then have another set of satellites/space planes launched on demand to provide more detail of the area where the missile is predicted to pass through?
If I didn’t know any better I’d say he has watched stargate when daniel went all megalomaniac.
That’d require some level of taste, though.
I thought republicans were supposed to be all about fiscal responsibility. Didn’t they try to cut just about everything to save money because we are so broke or something? Why are we selling real estate for pennies when we can turn around and spend 200B on this?
If you don’t see the very obvious scam here, I feel sorry for how fucking oblivious you are.
How many does president musk have in orbit already?
*”He’s so stupid. I don’t even have to say his name and you all know who I’m talking about.”*
This is just another ruse to push tax dollars to Elon
Seems a bit flimsy. We don’t need to consider the entire area of the United States, as attacks aren’t launching from Kansas and striking Colorado, for example. Anything that strikes the center would cross a border.
The second flimsy bit is that we already have a ground based defense that attacks missiles in the easiest to defend phase. It exists, it works, so expanding it isn’t impossible.
Another weakness here is the idea that because technology develops, we can’t ever hope to defend. But that’s been true of every other bit of military technology. Radar, stealth, missiles, tanks, camo, night vision, and so on. It’s not like we looked at the idea of a tank, and gave up because the Germans would continue to advance their own tank technology. It’s an idiotic assertion.
Plus, defending against lower quality missiles isn’t itself a worthless proposition. That’s still stopping potential nuclear strikes on America.
Really disappointing read overall
tl;dr: Red caps bad, thinking caps off