Chinese Foreign Ministry officials have told a visiting US diplomat that the recent test of an anti-satellite weapon should not be regarded by any country as a threat nor does it signal the beginning of a race to militarize space, the State Department said Monday.
Assistant Secretary of Christopher Hill raised the issue with Chinese officials over the weekend in Beijing. China has not made a public announcement of the January 11 test, but officials acknowledged it during their meeting with Hill, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Hill, who heads the State Department's East Asia bureau, told the Chinese they should be more transparent about their military activities and their defense budget. These issues have been a long-running concern of the United States, and McCormack said the Chinese have taken only "baby steps" thus far toward more openness.
Yeah, right. Those baby steps caused a bunch of space junk to float around the Earth.Update: From Reuters on the Space junk here:
Trash from China's satellite-killing missile test has spread widely in space, creating a debris cloud that could jeopardize spy satellites and commercial imagery satellites in low orbits around Earth, U.S. officials said on Monday.
Even the manned International Space Station is vulnerable to being hit by some of the thousands of pieces of trash created when China slammed a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile into an aging Chinese weather satellite about 537 miles above Earth on January 11, the officials said.
"The test created a lot of debris. It definitely raises the possibility that something is going to be hit, including the space station," Peter Hays, a senior adviser to the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, told Reuters.
From Mars Blog and the silence from the Anti-nuke in space crowd here.
There is a tendency among people in Bruce's camp to see "The Other" as both morally superior and absolved from moral considerations at the same time. Being oppressed and exploited by the greedy, corporatist, racist, militaristic, imperialist U.S. relieves the The Other of any moral responsibility for their actions, leaving them free do as they wish -- to commit violence against whomever they please, for whatever reasons they choos, employing the most morally questionable means at their disposal. Whatever the acts of The Other, they will invariably escape the notice of the utopian pacifists. Yet when the U.S. (or Israel) take any military or intelligence-gathering action, it just as invariably registers in the microscopes of such "peace warriors", signalling them to gather together the peace community for a protest vigil and organic vegan potluck, and triggering yet another round of melodramatic handwringing about the death of democracy under the jackboot heel of corporate fascism and the insatiable war-hunger of the Military-Industrial Complex™.
It's always America's fault. Even, I suppose, the selective outrage and moral blindness of peace-radical moonbats.
I agree with Mars Blog that the Other (Chinese doing what they wish and WE the US is responsible for the Military Build up in Space.) Well this test is a threat even if they destroyed their own satellite. The junk left behind is in jeopardy of destroying and or damaging our space space station. Real great China. Now clean up your mess!
From Strategy page here:
Most of the pieces are tiny, but about 800 are truly dangerous (at least four inches long, wide or in diameter). What China did was, in terms of technology, something the U.S. and Russia had demonstrated over three decades ago. No big deal, unless you actually use it. While China has now demonstrated its ability to destroy satellites (at the cost of a launcher and a maneuverable KillSat), it has also caused a major stink among the dozens of nations that own, or use (usually via leasing arrangements) the several hundred satellites in orbit. That's because this Chinese test increased the amount of dangerous space debris by about eight percent. That's a lot. By common agreement, nations that put up satellites, include the capability for the bird, once it has reached the end of its useful life, will slowly move closer to earth, until it burns up as it enters the thicker atmosphere. This approach leaves no debris, which can collide with other satellites, behind. Even a small piece of satellite debris can, when hitting another satellite at high speed, destroy, or fatally damage, it.
Glen Reynolds has written about Military use of space here:
The United States is the world's biggest user of satellite services, both civilian and military -- but especially military. This puts us in a unique position. We have the strongest incentive to protect this sort of thing, and to maintain our lead, but we're also the most vulnerable. Space assets serve as an enormously important force multiplier for the U.S. Knock out every satellite in orbit and the United States military will suffer a considerable degradation in effectiveness; the Chinese military, or even the French, will lose much less.
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