Welcome to the arms race for the 21st century -- space!

[thewayne]

The Chinese apparently have successfully destroyed one of their aging weather satellites with a kinetic kill at an altitude of 500 miles.

Let the space wars begin!

http://www.aviationweek.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/CHI01177.xml

Comments

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

Welll.....

On the one hand, good for them for having developed that kind of technology. That takes some doing.

On the other hand, oh SHIT.... That could end up making things really interesting, especially if we're going to be trying to get into an arms race with the Chinese while still trying to salvage the debacle that Iraq has become.

[silveradept]

Oy. Fighting land wars in Asia, and now people are going to want to revive some sort of space-based defence system. It's like China's trying to push us over the economic brink or something.

[fastlearner.livejournal.com]

Politically-savvy folks note that this is likely not any kind of actual push into militarizing space, but rather the Chinese trying to get the US to sign the non-militarization-of-space treaty that most of the world has signed but that the US has been balking on for years. China most likely doesn't want to spend the money on militarizing space, they just want the US to not screw with their satellites and to be bound by treaty to help enforce it.