alt.hn

7/21/2026 at 8:59:35 AM

The Space Force is now seeking to buy up to $30B in rocket launches

 https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/the-space-force-is-now-seeking-to-buy-up-to-30-billion-in-rocket-launches/

by rbanffy

7/21/2026 at 3:39:05 PM

With this much money involved, can the US just build up NASA to do launches? The money of the people should be put towards things owned by the people. Using the rural internet money to make a starlink alternative would be great and I am sure the military would like in on that as well. That is hundreds of billions that could be spent.

by chung8123

7/21/2026 at 3:41:55 PM

extremely difficult for modern government to overcome the incentive problems when building in house

by whimsicalism

7/21/2026 at 11:26:12 AM

Seems premature when the increase in the Space Force budget hasn’t happened yet.

by generj

7/21/2026 at 2:58:11 PM

No problem, the apparatchik will rubber stamp it!

Gotta keep that trillion dollar Ponzi scheme floating!

by netsharc

7/21/2026 at 10:49:50 AM

once space is a battlefield, won't that largely salt the earth for economic uses? I watched the movie Gravity, so I know that it wouldn't take that much for however many trillion dollars of equipment is up there to be magically transmuted into an orbiting debris cloud

by conartist6

7/21/2026 at 11:13:17 AM

> I watched the movie Gravity

In case you're being serious, Gravity is a notoriously unrealistic illustration of orbital debris.

by JumpCrisscross

7/21/2026 at 11:21:01 AM

Is it unrealistic in depicting the idea that debris could cause a cascade which would create more debris?

by conartist6

7/21/2026 at 11:51:44 AM

> Is it unrealistic in depicting the idea that debris could cause a cascade which would create more debris?

Kessler cascades are real. Kessler cascades taking out wide ranges of orbits in a matter of hours is not.

The intuitive fix is to understand that the volume of space around Earth is enormous–LEO is about 200x more voluminous than commercial airspace. It's entirely possible to trash a single orbit. But that would take months to years to manifest. And in LEO, it would tend to only last years.

To my knowledge, there is no solution to efficiently denying orbits by purposely triggering Kessler cascades. If it's cheaper for a military to shoot down individual satellites rather than trigger self-replicating cascades, it's not going to happen accidentally.

(Exception: GEO. That's a single orbit. It's also high up, which means it clears very slowly. It would be entirely possible for us to screw up geostationary orbit for generations.)

by JumpCrisscross

7/21/2026 at 2:25:37 PM

AFAIK it is also possible for the Kessler syndrome to propagate into other intersecting orbits (Highly elliptical orbits) and from there into yet other intersecting orbits, but that seems unlikely

by preisschild

7/21/2026 at 11:35:05 AM

For one the timeframe was far too short - it takes time for stuff in orbit to go around so it can collide with stuff.

Not to mention having all those space stations in the same orbit about 200 meters apart.

by m4rtink