[net.space] July 4th. speech

Physics:piner (06/26/82)

President Reagan is to make a speech when the space shuttle
lands on July 4th. There has been some speculation as to the
contents of that speech. I would like to add my own two bits
worth.
   Last week I happened to be home watching the congressional
television network, C-SPAN. A group was holding a meeting in
Washington and the theme of the meeting was how to stop world
communism. There were a number of speeches made and it sounded
a little like something out of the 1950's. But at the end, a
general (who's name I didn't catch) rose to speak and he said
something that caught my attention. To here him tell it, he had
advised the president that the best way to counter Russian
superiority was by a "technical end run". If you hear this 
phrase on July 4th., it is time to worry. To be specific,
the general had recommended that the US put up enough killer
satellites to destroy 90 percent of the Soviet land based
ICBMs in flight! The general seemed to believe that the 
President had accepted the idea. If that is indeed the case,
then the President may use the landing of Columbia (on it's
first military flight) as the place to announce such a plan.
    This would need to be a big space project. My own crude
calculation shows that something more than ten thousand 
satellites would be needed to do the job. The general said
that his recommendation was for satellites armed with 
conventional warheads. So a warhead would be needed for
each Russian ICBM. Since they have over 2000 such ICBMs
this means at least 10,000 warheads. The reason for this
number is simple. The time from launch to the time when the
ICBM releases it's MIRVs is about 20 minutes. But the time
of a LEO orbit is about 87 minutes. So in order to have a
killer satellite in the correct position to intercept,
you need about four satellites in equally spaced orbits.
This gives over 8000 as the number of satellites required.
This calculation does not take into account the fact that
the ICBM flight path is polar, and so the killer satellite's
orbit would have to be polar. This complicates things and
could multiply the 10,000 number by four or more! Granted
more than one interceptor could be launched from a single
platform in orbit. But each of those must have their own
engines, and guidance systems. If the administration has
adopted this plan, then it would mean a massive commitment.
We can only hope that something more constructive such as
a permanent manned station is the subject of the upcoming
speech, but we must be prepared that such a military plan
is what the President will announce.

                                      Richard Piner
                                      Physics Dept.
                                      Purdue

grunwald (06/27/82)

#R:pur-phy:-35000:uiucdcs:12700002:000:423
uiucdcs!grunwald    Jun 26 23:36:00 1982

  Not only that, but a recent article in Science magizine points out that
"killer satilites" can be destroyed in large numbers by a low orbit
nuclear explosion. Basically, the damage is caused by a large voltage
increase, frying the satilite. It only takes a small bomb to do this to a large
area, and it is difficult to protect against.

I'm not sure which issue of Science it was in, but it was within the last
6 months.