NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/space/17983

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 5.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!gatech!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
From: [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: DoD launcher use
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 20 Dec 92 19:13:55 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <1992Dec17.1
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Lines: 84

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>
>>The ex-Soviets have a system. Getting into a fight with them would still
>>be dealing with a serious opponent in my book.
>
>Yes, but you imply there's more than the Russians who have ASAT. Could you
>illustrate who else has demonstrated said technology? And describe the CURRENT
>state of the SS-9s (?) which were used to pitch them up?
>
>They had that capability. Whether it still exists is open to question.

I think that any nation that can put an object in a precision orbit has
the capability to knock down satellites in LEO. Only the US and the former
USSR have demonstrated that capability, but in principle it's not an extremely
difficult job, and there's really no defense against a cloud of debris in
your spysat's path.

>Besides, the Russians are our friends. We're buying reactors and science data
>and a good portion of their research establishment with good old Yankee
>Dollars.

The Russians were our friends once before this century. They were also
our opponents for forty some odd years. The winds of politics change
swiftly and easily. At least two other space powers have been our deadly
enemies at least once this century. We can't count on international politics
for our security.

>>>If you can kill recon planes, it's damn sight harder to kill sats.
>>
>>In principle no, the sats are predictable, the planes aren't. Putting
>>some "buckshot" in their orbital path is sufficient to knock them down.
>>In practice planes probably are easier to down because few countries
>>have space launch capability while they do have AAA, but most planes
>>in combat zones aren't shot down, and planes are cheaper than spysats too.
>
>Depends on what type of plane. The RF-16s are, oh, how much these days?
>$16-20 million?

Still at least 10 to 100 times as cheap as a spysat, not counting launch
costs. We usually don't do tactical recon with first line aircraft anyway.
RF-4s are still flying recon missions, though we are phasing them out as
rapidly as possible.

>>>Furthermore, you assumed that the KH-11 is the benchmark (also known as
>>>the Szabo yardstick) without the resultant drop in costs which would occur if
>>>you could rapidly deliver sats to orbit.
>>
>>Launch costs don't dominate a spysat's cost, at least not one capable of
>>doing tactical damage assessment. The cost is dominated by the superior
>>optics required for a orbital spy versus the optics required for an aircraft,
>>and by the flight control systems required to point the thing at the right
>>place and compensate for orbital motion and downlink the data. An aircraft's
>>photorecon equipment is much cheaper because the optics don't have to be as
>>good because of the lower altitude, the pilot takes care of pointing chores,
>>and the data is physically returned at the end of the mission.
>
>Gary, depending on who you listen to, the KH-12 costs between $800 mil and $1
>billion dollars, but it's also a LOT of hardware and fuel to make sure it stays
>up there for a long long time.
>
>Now, SPOT gets 5-10 meter resolution and costs some number ($150-200 million?)
>below that. A follow-on to SPOT with 1-2 meter resolution will probably cost
>the same...
>
>You CAN build a cheap sat with the resolution needed to do tactical damage
>assessment. The ex-Sovs did it all the time; they used film rather than
>rad-spec hardened long-life electronics to transmit images back. You can go
>cheap on the electronics if you don't want your spysat to live for 5-7 years.

As is usual with things related to aerospace, it's not component cost that
kills you, it's labor cost. If you started churning out thousands of spysats
on an automated assembly line, or pay your workers $40 a month, you could
get the cost down way below that of an RF-16, but that's unlikely to happen.
Precision optics with the required diffraction limits can't be churned out
by Glasses-R-Us either. Nor would film canisters be acceptable for tactical
recon today, battlefields are too fluid in modern warfare. By the time you
recovered the cansister, likely several orbits until the satellite is over a
suitable pickup zone, and developed the film, the situation on the ground
would likely have changed. Satellites are wonderful cold war tools, and good
strategic recon assets, but their use for tactical battlefield assessments is
limited by costs driven by orbital mechanics and optical resolution.

Gary