Re: A fight to protect ‘the most valuable real estate in space’

[Richard Romeo]

China's activities in Africa, eg would lead one to believe the opposite.



> On May 10, 2016, at 7:34 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've long been confused by the US (and Australian) media's obsession
> with painting China as aggressively expansionist - in thousands and
> thousands of years it just hasn't been anything like this. Disputes
> over Taiwan and other neighbours, yes, but it's not an empire the way
> Britain or the Dutch or anyone was. Fears of "invasion" by the Chinese
> are more likely cultural and go back to (non-military) migration fears
> of the last few centuries. That discourse has become so buried that
> we're seriously (!) talking about wars in space?
> 
> This 2012 article makes some of these points well:
> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2012-08-16/how-china-sees-america
> 
>> On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 6:14 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You may be correct.
>> 
>>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> "opening up the possibility that outer space would become a new front in
>>> modern warfare"... ?!?!?
>>> 
>>> That's been a possibility -- and from time to time an expensively (if
>>> unproductively) pursued capability -- for 50+ years. Over that span the US
>>> has very likely spent more on it than anyone, and I wouldn't be surprised if
>>> we're spending more on it right now than the "threatening" Russians and
>>> Chinese. NB deep in the article that we had done in ***1985*** what the
>>> Chinese did in 2007 --- i.e. sent up a missile to blow up one of our own
>>> dead satellites as a proof-of-principle test.
>>> 
>>> I think what we have here, in the fine old tradition of the "missile gap"
>>> in 1957-60 and of the early-1980s stories of Soviet anti-satellite or
>>> anti-missile super-lasers that helped pave the way for SDI ("Star Wars"), is
>>> the DoD saying "they're ahead of us!" (in pursuit of increased funding from
>>> Congress) when it's more likely that they're catching up.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 3:08 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-fight-to-protect-the-most-valuable-real-estate-in-space/2016/05/09/df590af2-1144-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_spacewars6p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The first salvo was a missile launch by the Chinese in 2007 that blew up
>>>> a dead satellite and littered space with thousands of pieces of debris. But
>>>> it was another Chinese launch three years ago that made the Pentagon really
>>>> snap to attention, opening up the possibility that outer space would become
>>>> a new front in modern warfare.
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