Yeah, that’s my feeling too. “Everything you could actually see worked fine, but right afterwards we, uh, like, lost it. Yes, thats right, it’s gone. No need to look for it.”
So, what are the chances we have more than N nukes in orbit, where N > 0? I've always wondered.
The time between launch and strike would be greatly reduced. Space is pretty close to land.
But beyond conspiracy theories, do we know of any confirmed secret satellites? They should be detectable, but on the other hand there are so many satellites that it'd be hard to index them all.
What could you do with a secret satellite? It seems like the signals would be detectable, but I'm not sure.
The Outer Space Treaty forbids, among other things, the placing of weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit. Conventional weapons are fair game though, which has led to plenty of speculation on kinetic bombardment approaches.
Nukes in orbit would be obvious unless you shielded the absolute crap out of them, and shielding is heavy. Besides, if you get caught with a nuke in orbit, you're in real trouble, and the benefit is...?
A secret satellite though? Oh the possibilities! The big problem with satellite surveillance is that people can figure out where your bird is, and simply you know... avoid it. Granted you can't hide large buildings, but you can predict when it will fly over and hide your troop numbers, mobile launch systems, etc.
How do you avoid a satellite you have no tracking data on? Of course, that would require some really impressive optical, radar, and thermal stealth tech, but that's quite plausible.
Of course if you were really paranoid, then maybe you'd think this isn't a satellite, but a satellite killer. I doubt it, and there are proven options to kill satellites from the ground, but it's possible.
I wouldn't say "many"; nuclear-powered vessels generally are ones that are going well beyond Earth's orbit. They also aren't "normal" nuclear reactors, since they use the heat from radioactive decay to power thermocouples, as opposed to sustaining an active fission reaction like most nuclear power plants here do.
I don't think unshielded nukes in orbit are easy to detect. Back on Earth you need to get up close (within a few meters) in order to distinguish the radiation signature from the background radiation, and in space the background level is much higher. Source: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R40154.pdf (see page 78 and onwards for a discussion about detecting nukes at a distance)
>So, what are the chances we have more than N nukes in orbit, where N > 0? I've always wondered.
Legally speaking, 0, since the Outer Space Treaty forbids placing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit, and all spacefaring nations so far have signed. Even if the military kept things under wraps, I'm not so sure that stationing nukes in orbit would provide a significant advantage, as you would only be able to strike a particular target when it rotates under your orbit, which means you can hit a target only twice a day at fairly specific times, while ICBMs can be launched at any time. In addition, modern ICBMs have flight times on the order of 30 minutes ([0], [1]), so satellites aren't going to be reaching a target much faster.
Edit: forgot to address another point
>They should be detectable, but on the other hand there are so many satellites that it'd be hard to index them all.
We already track more than half a million pieces of space debris, with 20,000 of those larger than a softball ([2]), so I'd imagine a "secret" satellite wouldn't stay secret for long.
> Legally speaking, 0, since the Outer Space Treaty forbids placing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit, and all spacefaring nations so far have signed.
Signing treaties didn't stop us from waterboarding torture.
> Even if the military kept things under wraps, I'm not so sure that stationing nukes in orbit would provide a significant advantage, as you would only be able to strike a particular target when it rotates under your orbit, which means you can hit a target only twice a day at fairly specific times, while ICBMs can be launched at any time.
The big benefit would be that a target can be wiped off the map without a giant "LOOK WE DID IT" flag immediately beforehand.
> We already track more than half a million pieces of space debris, with 20,000 of those larger than a softball ([2]), so I'd imagine a "secret" satellite wouldn't stay secret for long.
Space debris follows a predictable track once spotted and isn't deliberately constructed to be hard to find with visual/radar observation. This is a bit like saying stealth bombers are impossible because we can easily spot airliners.
>Signing treaties didn't stop us from waterboarding torture.
Isn't that because the US called waterboarding "enhanced interrogation" instead of torture, and therefore could claim that they were following the letter of the law?
In any case, the "legally speaking" was intended to mean "it can still happen, but there's probably going to be a lot of fallout if someone finds out".
>The big benefit would be that a target can be wiped off the map without a giant "LOOK WE DID IT" flag immediately beforehand.
That's an interesting point. Only way I can think of to figure out whose nuke it is is to extrapolate the reentry vehicles' trajectory backwards and see what satellites are in possible source orbits. That's not going to be very accurate, I think. Wonder if there is a better defense against that.
>Space debris follows a predictable track once spotted and isn't deliberately constructed to be hard to find with visual/radar observation. This is a bit like saying stealth bombers are impossible because we can easily spot airliners.
Good point. I had considered the possibility of stealth tech, but I guess I didn't really think that hard about what it meant until I read that analogy.
> Even if the military kept things under wraps, I'm not so sure that stationing nukes in orbit would provide a significant advantage, as you would only be able to strike a particular target when it rotates under your orbit, which means you can hit a target only twice a day at fairly specific times, while ICBMs can be launched at any time.
What you're describing is closer to a spy camera in a geosynchronous orbit. A LEO nuke would not behave like this.
>What you're describing is closer to a spy camera in a geosynchronous orbit.
I was thinking of a polar orbit when I wrote that comment. You'll always be over the same longitude with a geosynchronous orbit, as opposed to passing over any longitude. You have more flexibility in targeting locations that are mostly below you, though.
>A LEO nuke would not behave like this.
Why not? The orbit stays the same, while the Earth rotates under it. A particular point on the Earth will rotate under the orbit 0-2 times a day, depending on inclination.
I doubt you can even hit a target directly under you from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, at least without a fairly significant amount of effort. You can't just fire a rocket "straight down" -- if you just point at the Earth and thrust, you end up in an elongated orbit that misses the earth entirely.
...and since you have to be moving faster to hit geosynchronous orbit, you have to have a lot more ΔV to get back to the earth than if you were in a lower orbit, which means more fuel, which means more weight, which means harder to get into that orbit to start with...
Oh, and since you're still moving when you're doing that ΔV maneuver, you'll end up in a lower (and not-geosynchronous) orbit before you get all the way to the planet, so the payload would probably end up doing a few orbits on its way down anyhow (at which point, why care if you're "over the target")
> I doubt you can even hit a target directly under you from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, at least without a fairly significant amount of effort.
> You can't just fire a rocket "straight down" -- if you just point at the Earth and thrust, you end up in an elongated orbit that misses the earth entirely.
The second sentence doesn't justify the first. You can thrust in various directions even if your intended trajectory is straight down. I surmise you would simply need to reduce orbit speed to maintain the same angular velocity the whole way down, which doesn't strike me as a computationally or physically difficult problem.
> I doubt you can even hit a target directly under you from a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, at least without a fairly significant amount of effort. You can't just fire a rocket "straight down" -- if you just point at the Earth and thrust, you end up in an elongated orbit that misses the earth entirely.
Yeah, I know pointing straight down is a horribly inefficient way to deorbit; if anything, it probably requires more delta-v than you expended getting up there in the first place. I was more thinking that with something in geosynchronous orbit, small-ish changes in whatever velocity you end up in after the deorbiting burn could result in very different targets on the ground, whereas in LEO you can't cover the same amount of ground under your orbit with the same delta-v (or at least I think; haven't actually done the numbers, if I even knew how). Still requires a heck of a lot more fuel if you just want to get from LEO to the ground, as you pointed out.
> Oh, and since you're still moving when you're doing that ΔV maneuver, you'll end up in a lower (and not-geosynchronous) orbit before you get all the way to the planet, so the payload would probably end up doing a few orbits on its way down anyhow (at which point, why care if you're "over the target")
If the deorbit burn provides enough delta-v, you can fall straight from geosynchronous altitude to Earth without being stuck doing a few orbits. And the not-geosynchronous orbit is actually what I expected. You want the Earth to rotate, since that might move the point under the geosynchronous satellite approximately under the point the nuke would reenter the atmosphere. I don't know whether an orbit with the right period exists though.
Seems much easier to smuggle nukes into a country and just have them on standby in safe houses of the enemy country's large cities. The political fallout of getting caught doing that might be huge, but back in the Cold War I could see the CIA or KGB wanting to give it a try. Even if the US or the USSR (or smaller powers like France) was caught smuggling a nuke, it would likely be kept under wraps. The political system of a country would not want people fearing possible hidden foreign nukes where they live.
This scenario might make an interesting book or movie plot, but I have never heard of one. Spy novel with nukes.
It's also the name of one of the most popular revolvers in American history. [1]
I don't know what it's called but I love when something is nicknamed for the antithesis of what it's meant to do: guns/nukes -- killing people. Peacemaker? You be the judge... [2]
Keeping nukes in orbit is not that beneficial. Its stuck on a single path orbit, and it takes only slightly less energy to de-orbit it than to put it there in the first place. ICBMs take what, half an hour, to hit a target around the world?
If I slap you, chances are you can figure out who did it pretty quickly. An ICBM launch followed by a vaporized city 30 minutes later points pretty conclusively to the culprit.
If a disembodied hand comes out of nowhere and slaps you, you may have difficulty proving it was me that did it, especially if the hand vaporizes in the process.
Only a few countries both have nukes and have orbital launch capability, so it's going to be an extremely short list of suspects to start with.
Then there are all the other disadvantages of orbital nukes. They can only strike on their orbital path, and only when they're in the right point of the orbit, otherwise they're very expensive to re-target because it means changing orbits. Because of all those points they're actually a lot slower to target than ICMBs. If they're in a low orbit then the orbit will decay and they will come down in a few years whether you want them to or not. If they're in a high orbit the costs are even higher and they're even slower to target. Finally, they're vulnerable to detection if they're up for any length of time. They really are a terrible idea.
Spy satellites have had to tackle those issues for decades already (staying in orbit, retargeting, etc.). It's mostly solved problems, and the use case for such a thing would be more the "I want that factory in Iran to go away but it's OK if it takes six months" than immediate needs you'd use an ICBM for.
Plausible deniability goes a long way, even if it's not very plausible. Plenty of cases in the Cold War where everyone knew a side did something they shouldn't have but couldn't prove it.
I'm curious how far it'd go with something as serious as a nuke, though. I don't want to imagine how high tensions would be after such an attack, if there isn't enough evidence to pin the blame on someone.
Not much deniability for orbiting objects. Everything bigger than a golfball, and the launches to park them there, can be easily observed and cataloged by state actors. They might not know what every chunk of junk is for, but everyone knows who put it there. Even amateurs with small telescopes can play along for the larger chunks.
Sure you can do the chaff thing, but the backyard telescope guys--and any big guys with radar--will still see a new object and log it. A little math will pair its orbit with the launch.
I'm not talking about chaff, I'm talking about low reflectivity paint (to reduce spotting via visual observation) and stealth to prevent radar detection (ala F-117 or B2). Maybe you even mosey on up to a known piece of debris and attach to it.
Chaff's handy for making it look like the launcher had an issue, but you need something else for ongoing evasion.
I'm sure even if there was a failure you'd still be able to visibly see the satellite... it's not like the fairing separation would have caused it to suddenly lose enough delta-v to deorbit.
The failure, apparently, is that they can't contact the payload, not that it disappeared.
We already find/track orbital debris in LEO, so I'd imagine finding a satellite should be doable by interested parties, unless there's some new tech on there that makes detection significantly harder.
Might that be just because it changed orbit and had to be reacquired? Might take a while since you have no clue what the parameters for the new orbit are or when the burn(s) took place. Some kind of new stealth tech would be pretty cool, though.
It's been speculated that advanced spy satellites carry thrusters and fuel to conduct frequent orbit changes. I think it's pretty telling that the DoD just did a SBIR competition for software to detect evasive behavior in space junk: https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1319195
> It's been speculated that advanced spy satellites carry thrusters and fuel to conduct frequent orbit changes.
That's not really surprising; I'd imagine most long-term satellites carry thrusters and at least some amount of fuel for stationkeeping, especially in geostationary orbit. It'd definitely make it much more difficult to track, unless you keep something pointed at it 24/7 so you notice the change in velocity.
And nice find with the SBIR competition! Does seem to point towards satellites being much more difficult to track than I thought if they're constantly moving.
And that interpretation is so obvious that you have to wonder if the satellite really is some classified new reentry vehicle, and the decision to publicly announce its loss is designed to make adversaries devote resources to looking for a super-stealth satellite that isn't there.
"Unfortunately, we decided to take our spy satellite on a hunting expedition, and it was permanently lost when our canoe tipped over. We looked for hours, but could not find it in that lake"
Northrop was in charge of the payload adapter mounting the satellite so as long as hand over took place I don't see how Space X has an issue other than being tied in search results to the loss
If true, this sounds like the best possible outcome: SpaceX succeeded and will continue getting closer to Mars, and the NSA or whoever essentially burned money without getting any more powerful.
True, but de-funding of the military-industrial complex was not a potential outcome of the launch. My point is that I consider this outcome preferable both to failed launch + failed payload and to successful launch + successful payload.
What if I tell you the alternative is that they'll just get funding to try again. They successfully made the case that building and launching this satellite was necessary. Presumably the same argument will apply.
>The Wall Street Journal and other sources, including our own, had suggested that Zuma failed to separate from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket following successful first stage separation, at which point it potentially fell back to Earth and was lost in the ocean.
They're really downplaying how bad their coverage was, it really feels like people love to watch Space X fail. For example:
WSJ Headline: "U.S. Spy Satellite Believed Lost After SpaceX Mission Fails"
TC Headline: "SpaceX apparently lost the classified Zuma payload from latest launch"
I dont know enough about the Falcon, but who is responsible for creating the separation process or mechanism from the second stage of the rocket? I assumed it would be SpaceX's?
Generally speaking it is SpaceX. However, due to the very sensitive nature of this payload, the satellite's manufacturer supplied the payload adapter (the bit that handles the detaching) and did the processing themselves (mating the two together, etc).
So, in this specific case, if it was a failure of the payload to deploy properly, that would almost certainly be Northrup Grumman's "fault".
> So, in this specific case, if it was a failure of the payload to deploy properly, that would almost certainly be Northrup Grumman's "fault".
Many scenarios would point that way, yeah. But there are still things the launch vehicle (LV) could have done wrong. At the end of the day, this is a mechanical and electrical interface. Interfaces must be specified and that always leaves room for misinterpretation or incorrect specifications. There had to have been an electrical harness that signaled when it was time to deploy. A failure there could absolutely be on the LV side.
It seems like the secrecy surrounding the payload and payload adapter can't help but increase the odds of failure through restricted information flow between the payload designers and rocket engineers.
It's not really "sensationalist click-bait nonsense" to link this story to SpaceX, considering it's their launch. Might not be their fault, but linking them to the story is hardly a stretch.
Blaming SpaceX for the failure is. Merely linking them to it isn't - from the sound of things, the failure is literally "it couldn't unlink from SpaceX's stage".
However, it was likely the satellite itself that was responsible for separating from the stage.
So, it seems odd to place the blame on SpaceX given that—according to the only public statements we have—it was a failure of the satellite itself, not a failure of the launch vehicle.
I'm curious where we draw the line on these kinds of things. SpaceX doesn't manufacture every single component, but if the launch had failed because a faulty screw, I don't think we'd be blaming Precision Attachments Corp., but it seems fair to blame NG here.
I don't understand... If you're accusing someone of "blame shifting", presumably you can identify where you think that is being done.
In this case we have a payload that apparently failed to cleanly separate from the payload adapter (according to a variety of sources). Both the payload and the payload adapter were made by Northrup Grumman, not SpaceX, and the two were mated together by Northrup Grumman, not SpaceX. Do you consider it "blame shifting" to point that out?
SpaceX says everything worked the way it should have.
I think the flaw is in the second-guessers assuming the mission was to make orbit, and not to test some kind of (laser?) anti-rocket/satellite technology.
TechCrunch specifically called it out as a Space X failure:
"SpaceX apparently lost the classified Zuma payload from latest launch"
And in the story under that headline:
"The satellite was likely worth billions, according to the WSJ, which makes this the second billion-dollar plus payload that SpaceX has lost in just over two years; the last was Facebook’s internet satellite, which was destroyed when the Falcon 9 it was supposed to launch on exploded during preflight preparations in September 2016.
This could be a significant setback for SpaceX, since these kinds of contracts can be especially lucrative, and it faces fierce competition from existing launch provider ULA, jointly operated by Boeing and Lockheed Martin."
This was an interesting launch. Launch was delayed a couple times IIRC, at least once due to them wanting to review data from fairing tests. Classified payload, so no video of fairing separation. On the webcast, the host went silent for over a minute when fairing separation should have occurred, before coming back with
> sigh alright so we'll address the fairing deployment here in a second once we have more information
Indicating something might be up. Later he just says
> Quick sidebar, we did get successful confirmation that the fairings did deploy.
So seems like they knew something was up with the payload at that point, but that their telemetry indicated their mission was successful.
As others have noted, it was Northrop Grumman who was responsible for the payload adaptor attaching it to second stage. So unless fairing deployment or the launch damaged the payload/adaptor somehow, SpaceX would have done their part.
Bingo. Everything even close to the payload would need to be approved before being mentioned by the host. And the penalty for screwing that up is pretty stiff (for the company and employee), so you sure as heck are going to error on the side of caution.
Oh no doubt he was waiting for info to be relayed to him, I just felt the combination of his sigh, his language (we'll address the situation), and the fact that there was such a long silence indicated that he didn't anticipate it taking so long to have confirmation of fairing deploy. In typical launches the confirmation comes a few seconds after deployment, not a couple minutes. And if you anticipate 1-2 minutes of nothing to report, usually you'd plan to be saying something in the meantime to avoid dead air.
I could obviously be misinterpreting it, but this was my impression when watching it live, before we even knew there was an issue with the payload. When I watched it I thought they had lost it until he came back and said fairing deploy was successful.
If you go to 16:10 on the video you’ll hear a call to relinquish control of the cameras. Due to the classified mission only authorised personnel are allowed to see the data from the second stage, so the commentator would not see any of the usual information. I assume to get the fairing deployment conformation they would have to ask someone which would take a little longer than just looking at the data.
SpaceX is getting paid for a successful launch, meeting their contractual obligations. The booster landed perfectly. There's no damage to the launchpad delaying other rockets. There's no investigation into "what went wrong?" holding back further launches. No real customer is looking at this and going "Wait, maybe we'd better use ULA instead!" because they know SpaceX launched just fine.
This is an absolute win for SpaceX, despite however anyone wants to spin it. Dramatic headlines about the downfall of the successful sell newspapers, but they don't mean anything real.
> SpaceX is getting paid for a successful launch, meeting their contractual obligations.
I would assume most contracts for space launches involve putting the payload in question into the correct LEO/GEO, or at least an agreed upon point at which the payload maneuvers itself into the intended orbit.
> The booster landed perfectly.
That benefits SpaceX. The customer isn't likely to care what happens to the rocket after it launches their payload.
> There's no damage to the launchpad delaying other rockets.
Not the customer's problem even if it did explode on the pad. That would be between the launch company and the launch facility. In the case of a private customer, the payload is almost always insured (though insurance does little to help with schedule delays in manufacturing a new payload).
> There's no investigation into "what went wrong?" holding back further launches.
There might be for the US military, we don't know.
> No real customer is looking at this and going "Wait, maybe we'd better use ULA instead!" because they know SpaceX launched just fine.
According to SpaceX's account of the launch.
> This is an absolute win for SpaceX, despite however anyone wants to spin it.
Wouldn't an "absolute win" be launching the payload into the intended orbit with no anomalies?
For most launches, it would be SpaceX's job to demate the payload from their stage -- but not for this one. Unusually (per coverage from Ars and others), the hardware that mated the payload to the rocket was supplied by the customer of record, Northrup/Grumman, not SpaceX -- so if it failed, SpaceX can't really be blamed for that.
Don’t forget about failure modes driven by out of spec loads, vibration, shock, acoustics, and thermal environments. A launch vehicle can experience higher than expected environments and can transmit those to the satellite or adapter, causing a separation or satellite failure. I’m not saying this happened but its usually a complicated post flight analysis that takes some time.
We'll see how long this blame game continues. My guess is that it Spacex will continue launching rockets (as normal) and Northrop will keep getting Satellite contracts. The fuss will likely fade away if the satellite (or whatever it is) functioned as normal.
I tend to believe this is just misinformation until someone finds some hard evidence otherwise.
Or.
The Zuma payload is working exactly as intended and will be forgotten in a weeks time once this fades from daily news.
Might be a good time to reinforce your tinfoil hats.
There is space launch insurance. Private companies almost always have it since the risk of a failure and loss of a very expensive satellite is not negligible.
However, the government tends not to buy insurance. For an entity as big as the US government, insurance will surely be a net loss when you add up all of the times they would want to buy it. For instance federal employees don't buy any of the insurance offered with rental cars. Obviously with the number of federal rentals, there are lots of accidents that the government must pay for, but this figure is lower than total cost of all the insurance they would have to pay for to avoid it.
In general insurance is only advisable if the avoided costs would be too much for the insured to pay out of pocket. And the federal government can essentially pay for anything.
That's not even mentioning specific concerns with this highly classified payload. The insurance company would want some knowledge of what they are insuring to assess its value and that's just unnecessary risk to the secrecy.
There are no credible sources claiming that Zuma failed. All the news we have heard is rumour and conjecture, with no two reports getting anything like a consistent story.
F9 S2 deorbited as expected. S2 got to orbit. Thus the payload got to orbit too.
101 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadSeems like the sort of thing you'd HAVE to say about a secret satellite... :-)
The time between launch and strike would be greatly reduced. Space is pretty close to land.
But beyond conspiracy theories, do we know of any confirmed secret satellites? They should be detectable, but on the other hand there are so many satellites that it'd be hard to index them all.
What could you do with a secret satellite? It seems like the signals would be detectable, but I'm not sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
A secret satellite though? Oh the possibilities! The big problem with satellite surveillance is that people can figure out where your bird is, and simply you know... avoid it. Granted you can't hide large buildings, but you can predict when it will fly over and hide your troop numbers, mobile launch systems, etc.
How do you avoid a satellite you have no tracking data on? Of course, that would require some really impressive optical, radar, and thermal stealth tech, but that's quite plausible.
Of course if you were really paranoid, then maybe you'd think this isn't a satellite, but a satellite killer. I doubt it, and there are proven options to kill satellites from the ground, but it's possible.
my understanding is that many space vessels use micro-reactors for power.
Couldn't you just use plutonium warheads so that they look like one of those?
Legally speaking, 0, since the Outer Space Treaty forbids placing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit, and all spacefaring nations so far have signed. Even if the military kept things under wraps, I'm not so sure that stationing nukes in orbit would provide a significant advantage, as you would only be able to strike a particular target when it rotates under your orbit, which means you can hit a target only twice a day at fairly specific times, while ICBMs can be launched at any time. In addition, modern ICBMs have flight times on the order of 30 minutes ([0], [1]), so satellites aren't going to be reaching a target much faster.
Edit: forgot to address another point
>They should be detectable, but on the other hand there are so many satellites that it'd be hard to index them all.
We already track more than half a million pieces of space debris, with 20,000 of those larger than a softball ([2]), so I'd imagine a "secret" satellite wouldn't stay secret for long.
Signing treaties didn't stop us from waterboarding torture.
> Even if the military kept things under wraps, I'm not so sure that stationing nukes in orbit would provide a significant advantage, as you would only be able to strike a particular target when it rotates under your orbit, which means you can hit a target only twice a day at fairly specific times, while ICBMs can be launched at any time.
The big benefit would be that a target can be wiped off the map without a giant "LOOK WE DID IT" flag immediately beforehand.
> We already track more than half a million pieces of space debris, with 20,000 of those larger than a softball ([2]), so I'd imagine a "secret" satellite wouldn't stay secret for long.
Space debris follows a predictable track once spotted and isn't deliberately constructed to be hard to find with visual/radar observation. This is a bit like saying stealth bombers are impossible because we can easily spot airliners.
Isn't that because the US called waterboarding "enhanced interrogation" instead of torture, and therefore could claim that they were following the letter of the law?
In any case, the "legally speaking" was intended to mean "it can still happen, but there's probably going to be a lot of fallout if someone finds out".
>The big benefit would be that a target can be wiped off the map without a giant "LOOK WE DID IT" flag immediately beforehand.
That's an interesting point. Only way I can think of to figure out whose nuke it is is to extrapolate the reentry vehicles' trajectory backwards and see what satellites are in possible source orbits. That's not going to be very accurate, I think. Wonder if there is a better defense against that.
>Space debris follows a predictable track once spotted and isn't deliberately constructed to be hard to find with visual/radar observation. This is a bit like saying stealth bombers are impossible because we can easily spot airliners.
Good point. I had considered the possibility of stealth tech, but I guess I didn't really think that hard about what it meant until I read that analogy.
What you're describing is closer to a spy camera in a geosynchronous orbit. A LEO nuke would not behave like this.
I was thinking of a polar orbit when I wrote that comment. You'll always be over the same longitude with a geosynchronous orbit, as opposed to passing over any longitude. You have more flexibility in targeting locations that are mostly below you, though.
>A LEO nuke would not behave like this.
Why not? The orbit stays the same, while the Earth rotates under it. A particular point on the Earth will rotate under the orbit 0-2 times a day, depending on inclination.
...and since you have to be moving faster to hit geosynchronous orbit, you have to have a lot more ΔV to get back to the earth than if you were in a lower orbit, which means more fuel, which means more weight, which means harder to get into that orbit to start with...
Oh, and since you're still moving when you're doing that ΔV maneuver, you'll end up in a lower (and not-geosynchronous) orbit before you get all the way to the planet, so the payload would probably end up doing a few orbits on its way down anyhow (at which point, why care if you're "over the target")
> You can't just fire a rocket "straight down" -- if you just point at the Earth and thrust, you end up in an elongated orbit that misses the earth entirely.
The second sentence doesn't justify the first. You can thrust in various directions even if your intended trajectory is straight down. I surmise you would simply need to reduce orbit speed to maintain the same angular velocity the whole way down, which doesn't strike me as a computationally or physically difficult problem.
Yeah, I know pointing straight down is a horribly inefficient way to deorbit; if anything, it probably requires more delta-v than you expended getting up there in the first place. I was more thinking that with something in geosynchronous orbit, small-ish changes in whatever velocity you end up in after the deorbiting burn could result in very different targets on the ground, whereas in LEO you can't cover the same amount of ground under your orbit with the same delta-v (or at least I think; haven't actually done the numbers, if I even knew how). Still requires a heck of a lot more fuel if you just want to get from LEO to the ground, as you pointed out.
> Oh, and since you're still moving when you're doing that ΔV maneuver, you'll end up in a lower (and not-geosynchronous) orbit before you get all the way to the planet, so the payload would probably end up doing a few orbits on its way down anyhow (at which point, why care if you're "over the target")
If the deorbit burn provides enough delta-v, you can fall straight from geosynchronous altitude to Earth without being stuck doing a few orbits. And the not-geosynchronous orbit is actually what I expected. You want the Earth to rotate, since that might move the point under the geosynchronous satellite approximately under the point the nuke would reenter the atmosphere. I don't know whether an orbit with the right period exists though.
This scenario might make an interesting book or movie plot, but I have never heard of one. Spy novel with nukes.
I don't know what it's called but I love when something is nicknamed for the antithesis of what it's meant to do: guns/nukes -- killing people. Peacemaker? You be the judge... [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Single_Action_Army
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
So far nukes have kept the great nations out of war, but the possible Black Swan event of a large nuclear exchange is a doozy.
If a disembodied hand comes out of nowhere and slaps you, you may have difficulty proving it was me that did it, especially if the hand vaporizes in the process.
Then there are all the other disadvantages of orbital nukes. They can only strike on their orbital path, and only when they're in the right point of the orbit, otherwise they're very expensive to re-target because it means changing orbits. Because of all those points they're actually a lot slower to target than ICMBs. If they're in a low orbit then the orbit will decay and they will come down in a few years whether you want them to or not. If they're in a high orbit the costs are even higher and they're even slower to target. Finally, they're vulnerable to detection if they're up for any length of time. They really are a terrible idea.
Plausible deniability goes a long way, even if it's not very plausible. Plenty of cases in the Cold War where everyone knew a side did something they shouldn't have but couldn't prove it.
Eg: http://www.heavens-above.com/Satellites.aspx
Chaff's handy for making it look like the launcher had an issue, but you need something else for ongoing evasion.
And you can use it to make popcorn.
Your question is equivalent to "what are the chances we have more than 1 nuke in orbit." Is that what you meant?
The failure, apparently, is that they can't contact the payload, not that it disappeared.
That's not really surprising; I'd imagine most long-term satellites carry thrusters and at least some amount of fuel for stationkeeping, especially in geostationary orbit. It'd definitely make it much more difficult to track, unless you keep something pointed at it 24/7 so you notice the change in velocity.
And nice find with the SBIR competition! Does seem to point towards satellites being much more difficult to track than I thought if they're constantly moving.
If you are an American that was your money. It's not good to simply burn it up.
They're really downplaying how bad their coverage was, it really feels like people love to watch Space X fail. For example:
WSJ Headline: "U.S. Spy Satellite Believed Lost After SpaceX Mission Fails"
TC Headline: "SpaceX apparently lost the classified Zuma payload from latest launch"
So, in this specific case, if it was a failure of the payload to deploy properly, that would almost certainly be Northrup Grumman's "fault".
Many scenarios would point that way, yeah. But there are still things the launch vehicle (LV) could have done wrong. At the end of the day, this is a mechanical and electrical interface. Interfaces must be specified and that always leaves room for misinterpretation or incorrect specifications. There had to have been an electrical harness that signaled when it was time to deploy. A failure there could absolutely be on the LV side.
Elon Musk gives lots of clicks, ergo SpaceX (or Tesla) are also lot of clicks, ergo try to link the story to SpaceX.
(Wouldn't it be great if there was some movement to track and rate the quality of individual journalists and their output?)
So, it seems odd to place the blame on SpaceX given that—according to the only public statements we have—it was a failure of the satellite itself, not a failure of the launch vehicle.
You agree that blaming SpaceX is “sensationalist clickbait nonsense”. Would you also agree that a headline "SpaceX apparently lost the classified ..." is blaming SpaceX? https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/spacex-apparently-lost-the...?
I don't like to see SpaceX fail, but I don't like how Elon Musk sometimes appears to try to shift the blame using PR moves...
In this case we have a payload that apparently failed to cleanly separate from the payload adapter (according to a variety of sources). Both the payload and the payload adapter were made by Northrup Grumman, not SpaceX, and the two were mated together by Northrup Grumman, not SpaceX. Do you consider it "blame shifting" to point that out?
mirrors:
http://archive.is/chd3C
https://web.archive.org/save/https://sattrackcam.blogspot.co...
The fact that the second stage deorbited when and where it was supposed is just more evidence that the rocket performed as intended.
It’s weird that even your reply seems to assume it’s SpaceX’s fault. Why? (“I don’t like to see SpaceX fail...”)
> [...] it really feels like people love to watch Space X fail.
which is why I said that...
Media says Zuma didn't make orbit.
SpaceX says everything worked the way it should have.
I think the flaw is in the second-guessers assuming the mission was to make orbit, and not to test some kind of (laser?) anti-rocket/satellite technology.
TechCrunch specifically called it out as a Space X failure:
"SpaceX apparently lost the classified Zuma payload from latest launch"
And in the story under that headline:
"The satellite was likely worth billions, according to the WSJ, which makes this the second billion-dollar plus payload that SpaceX has lost in just over two years; the last was Facebook’s internet satellite, which was destroyed when the Falcon 9 it was supposed to launch on exploded during preflight preparations in September 2016.
This could be a significant setback for SpaceX, since these kinds of contracts can be especially lucrative, and it faces fierce competition from existing launch provider ULA, jointly operated by Boeing and Lockheed Martin."
> WSJ: U.S. Spy Satellite Believed Lost After SpaceX Mission Fails
The SpaceX mission didn't fail if it checked all the boxes it was responsible for.
> sigh alright so we'll address the fairing deployment here in a second once we have more information
Indicating something might be up. Later he just says
> Quick sidebar, we did get successful confirmation that the fairings did deploy.
So seems like they knew something was up with the payload at that point, but that their telemetry indicated their mission was successful.
As others have noted, it was Northrop Grumman who was responsible for the payload adaptor attaching it to second stage. So unless fairing deployment or the launch damaged the payload/adaptor somehow, SpaceX would have done their part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PWu3BRxn60
Or the host was not cleared to view the fairing separation/payload themselves and had to get their information from others.
I could obviously be misinterpreting it, but this was my impression when watching it live, before we even knew there was an issue with the payload. When I watched it I thought they had lost it until he came back and said fairing deploy was successful.
My explanation of choice as of today is that NG launched a refueling (dockable) sat to a previously launched spysat.
This is an absolute win for SpaceX, despite however anyone wants to spin it. Dramatic headlines about the downfall of the successful sell newspapers, but they don't mean anything real.
I would assume most contracts for space launches involve putting the payload in question into the correct LEO/GEO, or at least an agreed upon point at which the payload maneuvers itself into the intended orbit.
> The booster landed perfectly.
That benefits SpaceX. The customer isn't likely to care what happens to the rocket after it launches their payload.
> There's no damage to the launchpad delaying other rockets.
Not the customer's problem even if it did explode on the pad. That would be between the launch company and the launch facility. In the case of a private customer, the payload is almost always insured (though insurance does little to help with schedule delays in manufacturing a new payload).
> There's no investigation into "what went wrong?" holding back further launches.
There might be for the US military, we don't know.
> No real customer is looking at this and going "Wait, maybe we'd better use ULA instead!" because they know SpaceX launched just fine.
According to SpaceX's account of the launch.
> This is an absolute win for SpaceX, despite however anyone wants to spin it.
Wouldn't an "absolute win" be launching the payload into the intended orbit with no anomalies?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/what-we-know-and-wha...
I tend to believe this is just misinformation until someone finds some hard evidence otherwise.
SpaceX says their rocket did its job. Northrup Grumman hasn't said sanything.
However, the government tends not to buy insurance. For an entity as big as the US government, insurance will surely be a net loss when you add up all of the times they would want to buy it. For instance federal employees don't buy any of the insurance offered with rental cars. Obviously with the number of federal rentals, there are lots of accidents that the government must pay for, but this figure is lower than total cost of all the insurance they would have to pay for to avoid it.
In general insurance is only advisable if the avoided costs would be too much for the insured to pay out of pocket. And the federal government can essentially pay for anything.
That's not even mentioning specific concerns with this highly classified payload. The insurance company would want some knowledge of what they are insuring to assess its value and that's just unnecessary risk to the secrecy.
F9 S2 deorbited as expected. S2 got to orbit. Thus the payload got to orbit too.