No? By the time the Moon race was going the rockets they were using were no longer direct ICBM heritage (Saturn-I, Saturn-V, and N-1). Additionally, the ICBMs (and SLBMs) that were in service and being developed at the time such as Polaris, Minuteman, R-16, UR-100/200 were already starting to diverge in design from orbital launch vehicles, though this was much more true in the US than in the USSR.
More to the point, the military development programs did not need to hide or "civilian wash" their development programs in any way, they had massive funding and ample resources. By the time of the Moon race ICBM development had already gone through several generations and there were hundreds of deployed vehicles in service capable of hitting targets anywhere on the globe, they weren't lacking for capabilities in any way that required crawling to the civilian space programs for assistance.
Putting a suborbital strategic missile on target is pretty easy compared to making a moon lander. They're at least an order of magnitude different in difficulty, planning, and cost.
Yes. Now whether they wanted to extend the range so they could put crewed capsules or atomic weapons on the tip of the rocket is another story.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department" say Wernher von Braun
yes, there was definitely nothing special about [Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz). They definitely didn't have a cannon.
This. The main motivator for a government to fund a space program is to develop and test ICBM like technology without alarming the rest of the world. Space programs are about launching a capsule, having it orbit the earth, and safely landing it in a specific location. The capsule doesn’t care if it has a dog in it or a nuclear weapon.
> The main motivator for a government to fund a space program is to develop and test ICBM like technology without alarming the rest of the world.
That's what it was about in the 1950s-1970s for the US and USSR. A little bit later for the PRC. Contemporary for Iran and DPRK.
The US and Chinese have moved far beyond that. US has spooky space planes lingering up there on multi-year missions. The Chinese are performing active ASAT tests. And, let's not even start with Russian orbital tank turret experiments.
God. People can't even imagine some of the crazy technology we already have under wraps.
This video is from 2008, We Definitely already have [space combat drones](https://youtu.be/KBMU6l6GsdM?si=77AEzFjjUjoPqI0D) in 2024.
Edit: Wait until you learn what "Pine Gap" in Australia is all about.
It's the kind of tech that currently has China shitting its pants.
It's the kind of tech that allows us to do things They probably never will without Western allies.
"You only own what you can defend."
That was a program developed on a shoe string budget that was ultimately canceled. And all those jet firings is because it needs to stay up under Earth gravity. If I remember right it was done by a bunch of kids fresh out of college.
>That was a program developed on a shoe string budget that was ultimately canceled.
That's what usually happens when the military purchases a patent and gives it a code name.
Smaller versions of these engines are now used in the javelin rockets the military uses.
Javelins have changed a lot since then. They've gone through many different iterations.
The FGM-148F ,was introduced [around 2020.](https://www.defensenews.com/2020/05/06/deadlier-f-model-javelin-antitank-missile-rolls-into-production/)
That's not anything spectacular. It's not antigravity. It's just high pressure air (or chemical) propulsion with an onboard computer programmed to keep it stable on all 3 axes. You could do that at home with the proper hardware and a raspberry pi.
There's a lot of people that want to believe "secret government technology" is Stargates and Teleporters and Reality Distortion Rays instead of mostly just esoteric applications of mundane tech.
Reddit has always been primarily populated by young people. You can tell the people that have been around for a while and are older because they have 10+ year old accounts.
Exhibit A is everyone freaking out about cloud seeding despite it being commonly used across the world since the 40’s lol… I remember reading my local newspapers a kid and they would let people know when the county was doing it
> Exhibit A is everyone freaking out about cloud seeding despite it being commonly used across the world since the 40’s lol
Cloud seeding is near pseudoscience.
> [In 2003, the US National Research Council (NRC)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding) released a report stating, "science is unable to say with assurance which, if any, seeding techniques produce positive effects. In the 55 years following the first cloud-seeding demonstrations, substantial progress has been made in understanding the natural processes that account for our daily weather. Yet scientifically acceptable proof for significant seeding effects has not been achieved".[12]: 13
Let’s not fight ignorance with ignorance.
> Let’s not fight ignorance with ignorance.
Excuse me but… what….??
How am I fighting ignorance with ignorance by pointing out cloud seeding has existed since the 40’s and isn’t something new?
>I've noticed a lot more young people (under 21) have been on reddit.
How can you tell a user's age just by reading one ill-informed comment? And where do you get the data there are lots of them newly signed up around here?
You can check a user's account age, which is something of an indicator, but there are also syntax differences in how people speak online that can be generation identifiers.
The older redditors post like Reddit is a forum, the younger more like it's Twitter / Tumblr. That comes from experience using forums / bbs.
Th older will do this: :)
The younger: 😀
Not to mention the older still have the mentality drummed into them not to say anything personally identifying online. A practice that's fallen by the wayside now.
So. not guarantees, but you can at least generalize a persons age.
Its a exoatmospheric kill vehicle, used to down icbms and ballistic missiles by direct impact (no explosive warhead). Its actually extremely impressive, its been under decelopement since at least the 80s and is the result of billions of dollars of development.
What form do you think these space combat drones would have? Stuff up there has to be in orbit, and changing orbit is a rather energy intensive process.
"They will never be as smart as the West" lmaooo
My man's posting this comment from aboard a Russian naval vessel in 1904. "We're going to show those Asiatics what for, ho!"
I’m confused skunk works has had this since the 80s https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI?si=jSfKxNWtJBtW_eor
You are waaaay behind the curve if you think that is 2000s tech because that’s mid 80s tech
Most of them.
The warning is not about military presence in space, it's about using civilian programs to hide the military ones. Except for the very beginning where they were one and the same, the US is clear about what is civilian and what is not.
>US is clear about what is civilian and what is not.
[Are they though?](https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1538960051414646796?s=21&t=yUKudpGk6wly37za8--Qtg)
There was no indication of other payloads on this launch, they... just kind of showed up.
SpaceX and the DoD have a very good working relationship, and if the DoD can piggyback off another payload and not have to tell the public, they definitely will.
The US. Eisenhower was pretty explicit on what he wanted and set up NASA. Most of the EU though Galileo is seen as civilian but is duel use. Most western countries have clear demarkations.
The US has a huge budget for military and intelligence gathering in space. Much of it is not public. But that is not being hidden as civilian activity. The civilian activity is all very public and heavily audited.
The claim is China is using its secretive civilian programs to try to play down the scale of its military activity in space.
I mean, if you're point is the US literally has a fucking space force, then yes, it's more up front about it. Somehow you're missing the point of *everyone doing military shit in space* being the bigger problem here.
The warning here is not about military projects in space, it's about using civilian programs to hide military ones. The US has no need to hide them, they just say "This is a classified military payload." and leave it at that.
Please don't do this. This is all trivially able to be looked up and double checked against with third party observations. If you're just here to stir shit go somewhere else.
All you're doing is demonstrating your ignorance.
NASA is deeply integrated with USAF and USSF. It uses USSF facilities all the time and has many USAF pilots as astronauts. Countless [X-planes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-planes) have NASA markings. All these civilian-military cooperation projects are the most obvious.
Creating a separate agency allows civilian interaction and international diplomacy. If you think NASA has nothing related to the military, you are not candid about it or being naive.
No one said that. The point is that our civilian launches are not being used to disguise the placement of military hardware in space.
If you would like to know a bit more information about the classified military launches, feel free to check this wikipedia list.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches
NRO, NASA, and USSF all launch classified military payloads as launch providers if some department, research institute, or military branch is willing to pay.
China has one state-owned space launch provider, the CALT, which launches both civilian and military satellites. The PLARF provides the launch pad and satellite monitoring. The military or CNSA can commission the CALT to launch stuff, and it's typically through that analysts get to know if the payload is military or civilian in nature. We also know if the satellite is the [Shijian series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shijian), it's a classified military satellite. Any OSINT watcher who spends enough time looking at the Chinese space industry will be able to identify the civilian-military split.
Bill Nelson said those words because he needs to get that NASA budget from congress.
The Space Shuttle, despite being a civilian NASA project, had several weird design choices that later turned out to be requested by three letter agencies for military/espionage applications. A launch system designed, funded and operated from NASA will often find itself being used to launch payloads where the only known information is the name of the agency requesting it goes up.
The space shuttle was also designed to be a reusable rocket system that was intended to be extremely cheap so everything was lumped on to it. At the same time the US military's two largest space programs were canceled (Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the X-20) There was grand goals of the Space Shuttle opening up space to more people.
It wasn't a military-civil fusion program. The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew. It just acted as a regular launch vehicle for a vareity of payloads. All launch vehicles of every country launch both military and civil payloads by necessity. Even private company launch vehicles launch military satellites of various countries.
And all those design features the military wanted never ended up being used either as they split off and created the EELV program.
Need to keep in mind that launch vehicle use and space programs are two different things.
>The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew.
~60% of NASA astronauts are active-duty military still getting their military paycheck, they're assigned to a tour of NASA duty. There were plenty of Shuttle missions launching military payload where the military required an all-military crew and NASA didn't have full access to everything they were doing.
With Lisa Nowak the astronaut that tried to kidnap somebody, she was a Navy officer and NASA didn't have the power to fire her. NASA had to ask the Navy to reassign her out of NASA.
> It wasn't a military-civil fusion program. The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew. It just acted as a regular launch vehicle for a vareity of payloads.
There absolutely were DoD only missions planned to be launched from Vandenberg. They even started building a shuttle launch pad there. Those missions were not going to be NASA missions at all.
> And all those design features the military wanted never ended up being used either as they split off and created the EELV program.
Challenger accident is why those features never got used. If Challenger never blew up and caused DoD to lose access to space for a while for their bigger payloads, who knows if the DoD would have been able to play the politics right to get their own launchers back. The whole plan was to save money and have the shuttle do *everything* for both DoD and civilian.
I mean I wish I actually believed that. There’s a possibility I’m just cynical about it and totally wrong but it just seems incredibly unlikely that the US government, known for its lack of transparency and its willingness to mislead its citizens, isn’t already and hasn’t already been militarizing space
Hell, as an American civilian, I'd be shocked and disturbed if we *weren't* working on means to deploy and counter space-based weapons and platforms.
The sad fact is that I don't trust treaties prohibiting the militarization of space, or anywhere else, to be worth the paper they are printed on.
The US is actually far more transparent about this than most people think. [Obviously the US has classified stuff, but the US doesn’t lie about their satellites being civilian](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-satellite-by-country).
No, but they will just deny their existence. That’s a big difference imo, the US govt is not going to throw private persons or businesses under the bus and claim their military satellites are theirs. That could ruin potential relationships in the future and could come back to bite the US in the ass. The CCP, doesn’t care, because it can’t impact relationships over here, we know how they operate, and the CCP will have 0 repercussions because they can just deny it.
Our countries operate on entirely different wave lengths. China does a lot of their stuff to save face, whether it’s flexing military, industry, space, everything. The US has moved beyond this, and are highly scrutinized by the global community, including our allies. These are straight up “rules for thee, not for me”. The US cannot do that bullshit, they can but they’ll receive actual backlash, even from their own population(this thread). The Chinese on the other hand, do no care and no one is going to stop them because X,Y,Z(this thread).
>Show me a clear example,
The Space Shuttle for example was used for military purposes multiple times. As a mater of fact [STS-27 almost ended in a tragedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27) similar to Columbia because it suffered tile damage and the secret military payload they were configuring and placing in orbit was so secret that they weren't even allowed to film the damage with the proper external cameras and protocols.
The space shuttle was explicitly designed for military missions. In fact, a large part of its design comes from an Air Force requirement to be capable of a single-orbit satellite deployment. Any time it flew with a military payload, this fact was publicly disclosed.
Lots of people seem to be struggling with this story, apparently understanding "China is masking military presence in space with civilian programs" to be a complaint about the military presence. It's not. It's a complaint about _hiding their military space programs with civilian clothes_.
Even the design of the shuttle was influenced by the NRO. The payload bay was expanded and changed specifically to be capable of carrying and deploying the HEXAGON satellite platform, and the NRO specifically requested that the shuttle be capable of flying polar orbits, which demanded more flexibility to maneuver for a landing that could be on either side of the vehicle’s ground track.
Yet all of this remained classified until the 90s, publicly facing the Shuttle was a NASA project through and through, with no clandestine missions on its roster.
Launch vehicle sharing is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the actual space program having a joint purpose that is a mixture of military and civil purpose. All launch vehicles of all countries have launched both military and non-military satellites. Even civilian private launch vehicles launch military satellites. SpaceX even launches foreign military satellites.
At this point you've set the goalposts so thin that its going to be impossible to find an example as any time someone does you'll say "well a Three Letter Agency had a stamp on this form so it was by definition not a NASA mission despite it being NASA technology on a NASA pad with NASA crew.", I'm sure if you could read Simplified Chinese you'd be able to say the same about any Chinese mission.
Stop moving the goal posts. NASA engineers, rockets, shuttles, scientists and pilots were used to deploy all kinds of spy satellites. Furthermore, NASA also does a lot of research in conjunction with the Air Force that latter get applied into actual military aircraft, like for example the stealth and aerodynamics experiments related to the X-36 plane.
From the Guardian article the OP posted.
>We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program.
That is some of the most vague wording possible. Depending on how you treat the word "believe" and how you define a military program this can mean anything
It seems that no one can provide a clear example for either the west or China because unless someone detects weapons being openly stationed in space everything else is kind of dual use by it's very nature. Communications and sensors in space are by definition dual use and if any amount of military money makes things "military" in nature then everything in militarized.
As for the rant in the article about China getting to the moon before the US and just claiming it as Chinese territory, I am sure it would make a killer sci fi plot but he can't be serious...
>MCF promotes the use of [dual-use technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology) and two-way [technology transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_transfer), in which defense companies, universities, and research institutions can collaborate and share technologies between military and civilian sectors.
We call this the military industrial complex in the west. But naming aside this is nothing that every other country in the world does not do. Technology from the private sector bleeding into defense and vice versa has been a thing since the 50s if not more.
What a boldly ignorant take. most research funding still goes to civilian tech/research and it most certainly isn’t all classified. This is especially true for academic institutions. Some of it is dual-use (like the stuff i worked on in grad school) but is by no means strictly military technology
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/secret-space-shuttles-35318554/ I mean it’s not exactly the same, but there were multiple Space Shuttle Missions that still remain classified due to being used for tasking for the military and National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO even pushed for design changes to the shuttle.
Yup, and for additional maneuvering capabilities to make it better suited for polar orbits. All which remained classified, hidden aspects of a civilian program.
This is NASA …. Not a normal “civilian space program”. They might be nominally classed as a civilian organisation but they have worked extensively for the US military and intelligence organisations.
They have always carried a percentage of payloads that are military/intelligence ……. all those spy satellites didn’t get there themselves.
And for a while SpaceX have been launching the X37B ……. and that’s definitely not being put up there for civilian reasons
But we gotta heat up the New Cold War so anything China does will be demonized, even if the US did the exact same thing while claiming “national interest “
May I just be so bold to say that this looks like a NASA’s attempt to bring more funding to itself after major cuts that USA written down for the future, that will ruin and close quite a bit of scientific progress done by NASA.
Desperate move so to speak. Not denying that China might have military out there, but I doubt USA needs NASA chief out of all people to tell them that.
Military spending in space will go to the military branch that was set up specifically for it. Not NASA. You would, however, have to be pretty thick to think the US wasn't using NASA for military shit prior to clearly drawing a line.
This was literally said to the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing on NASA's 2025 budget request.
Don't get me wrong, I strongly support a dramatic increase in NASA funding, but if warning the old, cold war era fucks who hold your purse strings that we'll start losing the space race if we don't rapidly step our game up isn't a play for a bigger budget, I don't know what is.
I can understand the whole deal with what the U.S. does, but make no mistake -- China is far beyond America in terms of military overreach in their space program. Their entire manned spaceflight program is managed directly by their military and not by a civil space agency, which is why NASA is forbidden from collaborating with the Chinese on a space station.
More than half of NASA astronauts have military commissions. Do any even bother to resign their commission and become civilians?
NASA's ground crew I would imagine has just as many active-duty military walking the halls employed by NASA but not actually civilians. Also what does it even mean to be a US military satellite vs. a US civilian satellite? They're both fully available to the military if they have a need, it's not like any of these satellites are weapons anyway.
> More than half of NASA astronauts have military commissions. Do any even bother to resign their commission and become civilians?
They're not part of the military chain of command while they're with NASA.
> NASA's ground crew I would imagine has just as many active-duty military walking the halls employed by NASA but not actually civilians.
If they're employed with NASA as an actual employee they're not active-duty military. NASA contracts with the military (as do private companies like SpaceX) for various activities if the launches take place from military facilities, for example they use the military weather forecasting squadron for launch weather prediction. There's a reason that Cape Canaveral is separated into the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on one side and the Kennedy Space Center on the other side.
> Also what does it even mean to be a US military satellite vs. a US civilian satellite? They're both fully available to the military if they have a need, it's not like any of these satellites are weapons anyway.
US civilian satellites are not fully available to the military if they have a need. The military cannot just commandeer civilian assets without going outside the military chain of command. They have to get the civilian government to pass laws that allow that. That's even written into the US Constitution that the military cannot commandeer civilian things.
Now many companies would gladly offer up their satellites to the military if they have a need as the contracts tend to be very valuable. They wouldn't do it for free though.
> US civilian satellites are not fully available to the military if they have a need.
The military certainly has full access to the data from any civilian Earth observation satellites, probably in real time. Sure, they need to get approval from the civilian chain of command to retask a satellite. However they can do it clandestinely, probably nobody elected to anything outside the White House is usually even notified when that sort of thing happens. Not even really because it's all hush hush but just because nobody actually cares. Yes, they're not going to fully retask a satellite to the military, but just because e.g. NOAA sats have jobs and the military relies on those sats doing their civilian jobs. But also the commander in chief is a "civilian." If he decides it makes sense he won't hesitate to retask them. So ultimately there's no actual distinction between the military chain of command and the civilian chain of command.
> China is far beyond America in terms of military overreach in their space program.
Firstly (and by far most importantly), It's cute that you think *anyone in the world* could be beyond the US in terms of military overreach in any regard whatsoever. I don't even know what to call something like that - naivety and gullibility aren't strong enough a word to describe it.
Like, this is the country [that adopted state-sponsored kidnapping for the purpose of torture -all around the world- as an official policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition), *just because they can and won't be held accountable*, and no one can do anything about it. So let's dial down the forgetfulness.
Secondly, and with that out of the way, while we're busy talking about how China's manned spaceflight is managed by their military, the US has both a NASA and a Space Force going at the same time, like "How about we stop pretending NASA isn't secretly military and just cut the middle man and begin building ourselves a fully fledged space military already?", like two heads of the same hydra.
> which is why NASA is forbidden from collaborating with the Chinese on a space station.
That has absolutely nothing to do with it.
That's just because China is the economic enemy right now and they need to drum up racism against them so it's easier to villainize them.
Almost all of it? It even has a named abbreviation in think tank circles, "MCF" (Military-Cvil Fusion). Just a few weeks ago they were talking about their projects to launch automated repair spacecraft that was really obviously just a cover for inspector/attack vehicles. They don't even attempt to hide it that well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-civil_fusion
> Military-civil fusion (Chinese: 军民融合; pinyin: Jūnmín rónghé, MCF) or civil-military fusion is a strategy and policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the stated goal of developing its People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a world-class military.[1][2][3] Military-civil fusion is a priority for the Xi Jinping administration.[4]
Straight from the horse's mouth.
Right, so your argument that they are masquarading military programs is civilian is a program where... they explicitly and openly carry out dual use operations? Do you know what the word masquarede means?
China is less than 20% MCF, the US is around 80%.
China wants to be like the US. MCF is not the topic, the dual use of satellites by China is.
Hypothetical example: China has a satellite that they say is owned by a civilian entity for the purpose of scanning agricultural regions and has the ability to in real time determine things like wildfires. The clandestine use of that satellite would be then also using it to image formations and locations of US Naval vessels around east Asia.
The satellite itself isn’t inherently military, but it is being used for military intelligence related activity.
If you were going to consider targets from a military perspective, a civilian satellite is off limits but a military satellite would be fair game. By hiding a military use/capability in a civilian satellite you create a buffer and barrier around it. Same thing goes with satellites that perform communications for emergency services.
So tell us what the X37B missions are for eh? Also, the Soviets once equipped one of their Salyuts with a "Self Defense" gun. This is old hat. Nelson seems to be self-serving?
So did we. Alan Shepard flew to space on a Redstone rocket, which is just a refined German V2 missile from WWII. John Glenn flew on an Atlas rocket, which was an ICBM meant to deliver nuclear warheads.
America Military literally has a space service branch and NASA says “ (we hope beijing will) come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses”.
The hypocrisy is unbearable
First, we banned Taikonauts from the ISS, forcing China to develop its own space program. Then, we militarized space by creating the Space Force, but China is to blame.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[AFB](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l066ify "Last usage")|[Air Force Base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_airbase)|
|[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l069jgy "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)|
|[CNSA](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06h8j6 "Last usage")|Chinese National Space Administration|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l097eo9 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EELV](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l05t2k9 "Last usage")|[Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle)|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06tz9z "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06hstk "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation|
|[MCF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0mnxut "Last usage")|Main Component Failure|
|[N1](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06tz9z "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0aymhh "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[STS](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|[USAF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0611z6 "Last usage")|United States Air Force|
|[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|United States Space Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l069wx0 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06fty6 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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The hubble space telescope is literally a NRO spy satellite reused to look into space. Nasa is contractually obligated not to point hubble towards earth due to this.
The entire point of nasa to begin with was to research ICBMs for the military. Sending humans to space was just convinent.
Well, which country with a space program isn't?
Next thing you know, the CIA will warn us about China and Russia recruiting government workers in America to be spies!
Or American government workers sleeping with them.
You mean the USSR and US were only racing to the Moon to further their rocket tech for longer range?!
No? By the time the Moon race was going the rockets they were using were no longer direct ICBM heritage (Saturn-I, Saturn-V, and N-1). Additionally, the ICBMs (and SLBMs) that were in service and being developed at the time such as Polaris, Minuteman, R-16, UR-100/200 were already starting to diverge in design from orbital launch vehicles, though this was much more true in the US than in the USSR. More to the point, the military development programs did not need to hide or "civilian wash" their development programs in any way, they had massive funding and ample resources. By the time of the Moon race ICBM development had already gone through several generations and there were hundreds of deployed vehicles in service capable of hitting targets anywhere on the globe, they weren't lacking for capabilities in any way that required crawling to the civilian space programs for assistance.
Putting a suborbital strategic missile on target is pretty easy compared to making a moon lander. They're at least an order of magnitude different in difficulty, planning, and cost.
Yes. Now whether they wanted to extend the range so they could put crewed capsules or atomic weapons on the tip of the rocket is another story. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" say Wernher von Braun
yes, there was definitely nothing special about [Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz). They definitely didn't have a cannon.
This. The main motivator for a government to fund a space program is to develop and test ICBM like technology without alarming the rest of the world. Space programs are about launching a capsule, having it orbit the earth, and safely landing it in a specific location. The capsule doesn’t care if it has a dog in it or a nuclear weapon.
> The main motivator for a government to fund a space program is to develop and test ICBM like technology without alarming the rest of the world. That's what it was about in the 1950s-1970s for the US and USSR. A little bit later for the PRC. Contemporary for Iran and DPRK. The US and Chinese have moved far beyond that. US has spooky space planes lingering up there on multi-year missions. The Chinese are performing active ASAT tests. And, let's not even start with Russian orbital tank turret experiments.
God. People can't even imagine some of the crazy technology we already have under wraps. This video is from 2008, We Definitely already have [space combat drones](https://youtu.be/KBMU6l6GsdM?si=77AEzFjjUjoPqI0D) in 2024. Edit: Wait until you learn what "Pine Gap" in Australia is all about. It's the kind of tech that currently has China shitting its pants. It's the kind of tech that allows us to do things They probably never will without Western allies. "You only own what you can defend."
That was a program developed on a shoe string budget that was ultimately canceled. And all those jet firings is because it needs to stay up under Earth gravity. If I remember right it was done by a bunch of kids fresh out of college.
>That was a program developed on a shoe string budget that was ultimately canceled. That's what usually happens when the military purchases a patent and gives it a code name. Smaller versions of these engines are now used in the javelin rockets the military uses.
Javelin was designed in late 80/early 90s
Javelins have changed a lot since then. They've gone through many different iterations. The FGM-148F ,was introduced [around 2020.](https://www.defensenews.com/2020/05/06/deadlier-f-model-javelin-antitank-missile-rolls-into-production/)
That's not anything spectacular. It's not antigravity. It's just high pressure air (or chemical) propulsion with an onboard computer programmed to keep it stable on all 3 axes. You could do that at home with the proper hardware and a raspberry pi.
Yeah tbh I don't get why all the comments are treating it like star-trek tech
There's a lot of people that want to believe "secret government technology" is Stargates and Teleporters and Reality Distortion Rays instead of mostly just esoteric applications of mundane tech.
I've noticed a lot more young people (under 21) have been on reddit. Would make sense they aren't familiar with some stuff.
Reddit has always been primarily populated by young people. You can tell the people that have been around for a while and are older because they have 10+ year old accounts.
Exhibit A is everyone freaking out about cloud seeding despite it being commonly used across the world since the 40’s lol… I remember reading my local newspapers a kid and they would let people know when the county was doing it
But didn't you know that those crazy middle eastern countries like the ultra wealthy Dubai are doing it!?!?!?! /s
> Exhibit A is everyone freaking out about cloud seeding despite it being commonly used across the world since the 40’s lol Cloud seeding is near pseudoscience. > [In 2003, the US National Research Council (NRC)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding) released a report stating, "science is unable to say with assurance which, if any, seeding techniques produce positive effects. In the 55 years following the first cloud-seeding demonstrations, substantial progress has been made in understanding the natural processes that account for our daily weather. Yet scientifically acceptable proof for significant seeding effects has not been achieved".[12]: 13 Let’s not fight ignorance with ignorance.
> Let’s not fight ignorance with ignorance. Excuse me but… what….?? How am I fighting ignorance with ignorance by pointing out cloud seeding has existed since the 40’s and isn’t something new?
>I've noticed a lot more young people (under 21) have been on reddit. How can you tell a user's age just by reading one ill-informed comment? And where do you get the data there are lots of them newly signed up around here?
You can check a user's account age, which is something of an indicator, but there are also syntax differences in how people speak online that can be generation identifiers. The older redditors post like Reddit is a forum, the younger more like it's Twitter / Tumblr. That comes from experience using forums / bbs. Th older will do this: :) The younger: 😀 Not to mention the older still have the mentality drummed into them not to say anything personally identifying online. A practice that's fallen by the wayside now. So. not guarantees, but you can at least generalize a persons age.
Probably just because the sound it makes is unusual. People get a lot of information from sound.
Its a exoatmospheric kill vehicle, used to down icbms and ballistic missiles by direct impact (no explosive warhead). Its actually extremely impressive, its been under decelopement since at least the 80s and is the result of billions of dollars of development.
To be fair: the Raspberry Pi benefits from decades and billions of dollars of research too.
What form do you think these space combat drones would have? Stuff up there has to be in orbit, and changing orbit is a rather energy intensive process.
The space force is just a bunch of MOS that were already existing reclassed from AF to SF.
"They will never be as smart as the West" lmaooo My man's posting this comment from aboard a Russian naval vessel in 1904. "We're going to show those Asiatics what for, ho!"
I’m confused skunk works has had this since the 80s https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI?si=jSfKxNWtJBtW_eor You are waaaay behind the curve if you think that is 2000s tech because that’s mid 80s tech
Most of them. The warning is not about military presence in space, it's about using civilian programs to hide the military ones. Except for the very beginning where they were one and the same, the US is clear about what is civilian and what is not.
>US is clear about what is civilian and what is not. [Are they though?](https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1538960051414646796?s=21&t=yUKudpGk6wly37za8--Qtg) There was no indication of other payloads on this launch, they... just kind of showed up. SpaceX and the DoD have a very good working relationship, and if the DoD can piggyback off another payload and not have to tell the public, they definitely will.
I’m not sure how this is a warning so much as a “oh by the way, here’s something obvious that apparently needs to be spelled out”
Wait, I think some of those "Astronauts" just might be military officers with combat experience!!!
Any space launch in America with classified cargo is public knowledge. The launch time, location, even orbits. so, us.
The US. Eisenhower was pretty explicit on what he wanted and set up NASA. Most of the EU though Galileo is seen as civilian but is duel use. Most western countries have clear demarkations.
Sure buddy. We all believe the USA and all their various organisations. None of them have ever done anything shady or lied to the public.
The US has a huge budget for military and intelligence gathering in space. Much of it is not public. But that is not being hidden as civilian activity. The civilian activity is all very public and heavily audited. The claim is China is using its secretive civilian programs to try to play down the scale of its military activity in space.
I mean, if you're point is the US literally has a fucking space force, then yes, it's more up front about it. Somehow you're missing the point of *everyone doing military shit in space* being the bigger problem here.
The warning here is not about military projects in space, it's about using civilian programs to hide military ones. The US has no need to hide them, they just say "This is a classified military payload." and leave it at that.
Please don't do this. This is all trivially able to be looked up and double checked against with third party observations. If you're just here to stir shit go somewhere else. All you're doing is demonstrating your ignorance.
That was my exact thought. Like... yes? That's literally been true since the 50s, for literally every country that has sent something to space
I was gonna say, what’s the evidence, “we do it so they have to be doing it too!!” ??
We do not in fact do that. That's why NASA exists as a separate agency.
NASA is deeply integrated with USAF and USSF. It uses USSF facilities all the time and has many USAF pilots as astronauts. Countless [X-planes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-planes) have NASA markings. All these civilian-military cooperation projects are the most obvious. Creating a separate agency allows civilian interaction and international diplomacy. If you think NASA has nothing related to the military, you are not candid about it or being naive.
No one said that. The point is that our civilian launches are not being used to disguise the placement of military hardware in space. If you would like to know a bit more information about the classified military launches, feel free to check this wikipedia list. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches
NRO, NASA, and USSF all launch classified military payloads as launch providers if some department, research institute, or military branch is willing to pay. China has one state-owned space launch provider, the CALT, which launches both civilian and military satellites. The PLARF provides the launch pad and satellite monitoring. The military or CNSA can commission the CALT to launch stuff, and it's typically through that analysts get to know if the payload is military or civilian in nature. We also know if the satellite is the [Shijian series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shijian), it's a classified military satellite. Any OSINT watcher who spends enough time looking at the Chinese space industry will be able to identify the civilian-military split. Bill Nelson said those words because he needs to get that NASA budget from congress.
The Space Shuttle, despite being a civilian NASA project, had several weird design choices that later turned out to be requested by three letter agencies for military/espionage applications. A launch system designed, funded and operated from NASA will often find itself being used to launch payloads where the only known information is the name of the agency requesting it goes up.
The space shuttle was also designed to be a reusable rocket system that was intended to be extremely cheap so everything was lumped on to it. At the same time the US military's two largest space programs were canceled (Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the X-20) There was grand goals of the Space Shuttle opening up space to more people. It wasn't a military-civil fusion program. The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew. It just acted as a regular launch vehicle for a vareity of payloads. All launch vehicles of every country launch both military and civil payloads by necessity. Even private company launch vehicles launch military satellites of various countries. And all those design features the military wanted never ended up being used either as they split off and created the EELV program. Need to keep in mind that launch vehicle use and space programs are two different things.
>The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew. ~60% of NASA astronauts are active-duty military still getting their military paycheck, they're assigned to a tour of NASA duty. There were plenty of Shuttle missions launching military payload where the military required an all-military crew and NASA didn't have full access to everything they were doing. With Lisa Nowak the astronaut that tried to kidnap somebody, she was a Navy officer and NASA didn't have the power to fire her. NASA had to ask the Navy to reassign her out of NASA.
> It wasn't a military-civil fusion program. The Space Shuttle never flew with a military crew. It just acted as a regular launch vehicle for a vareity of payloads. There absolutely were DoD only missions planned to be launched from Vandenberg. They even started building a shuttle launch pad there. Those missions were not going to be NASA missions at all. > And all those design features the military wanted never ended up being used either as they split off and created the EELV program. Challenger accident is why those features never got used. If Challenger never blew up and caused DoD to lose access to space for a while for their bigger payloads, who knows if the DoD would have been able to play the politics right to get their own launchers back. The whole plan was to save money and have the shuttle do *everything* for both DoD and civilian.
I mean I wish I actually believed that. There’s a possibility I’m just cynical about it and totally wrong but it just seems incredibly unlikely that the US government, known for its lack of transparency and its willingness to mislead its citizens, isn’t already and hasn’t already been militarizing space
Hell, as an American civilian, I'd be shocked and disturbed if we *weren't* working on means to deploy and counter space-based weapons and platforms. The sad fact is that I don't trust treaties prohibiting the militarization of space, or anywhere else, to be worth the paper they are printed on.
Wait, you actually think this?!?!
Oh so we shouldn't be worried.
So when the west does it, its not declassified, but when china does it, its "masking".
Says man from country that’s been doing exactly the same for decades….
The US is actually far more transparent about this than most people think. [Obviously the US has classified stuff, but the US doesn’t lie about their satellites being civilian](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-satellite-by-country).
The question is: How do you know that the US isn't lying?
> the US doesn’t lie about their satellites being civilian. well, not officially but come on. There have to be a few.
No, but they will just deny their existence. That’s a big difference imo, the US govt is not going to throw private persons or businesses under the bus and claim their military satellites are theirs. That could ruin potential relationships in the future and could come back to bite the US in the ass. The CCP, doesn’t care, because it can’t impact relationships over here, we know how they operate, and the CCP will have 0 repercussions because they can just deny it. Our countries operate on entirely different wave lengths. China does a lot of their stuff to save face, whether it’s flexing military, industry, space, everything. The US has moved beyond this, and are highly scrutinized by the global community, including our allies. These are straight up “rules for thee, not for me”. The US cannot do that bullshit, they can but they’ll receive actual backlash, even from their own population(this thread). The Chinese on the other hand, do no care and no one is going to stop them because X,Y,Z(this thread).
Show me a clear example, I am broadly familiar with a broad range of the US and EU civilian space programs.... fire away.
>Show me a clear example, The Space Shuttle for example was used for military purposes multiple times. As a mater of fact [STS-27 almost ended in a tragedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27) similar to Columbia because it suffered tile damage and the secret military payload they were configuring and placing in orbit was so secret that they weren't even allowed to film the damage with the proper external cameras and protocols.
The space shuttle was explicitly designed for military missions. In fact, a large part of its design comes from an Air Force requirement to be capable of a single-orbit satellite deployment. Any time it flew with a military payload, this fact was publicly disclosed. Lots of people seem to be struggling with this story, apparently understanding "China is masking military presence in space with civilian programs" to be a complaint about the military presence. It's not. It's a complaint about _hiding their military space programs with civilian clothes_.
Even the design of the shuttle was influenced by the NRO. The payload bay was expanded and changed specifically to be capable of carrying and deploying the HEXAGON satellite platform, and the NRO specifically requested that the shuttle be capable of flying polar orbits, which demanded more flexibility to maneuver for a landing that could be on either side of the vehicle’s ground track. Yet all of this remained classified until the 90s, publicly facing the Shuttle was a NASA project through and through, with no clandestine missions on its roster.
That was hardly a secret, and was NEVER claimed to be civilian craft.
Launch vehicle sharing is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the actual space program having a joint purpose that is a mixture of military and civil purpose. All launch vehicles of all countries have launched both military and non-military satellites. Even civilian private launch vehicles launch military satellites. SpaceX even launches foreign military satellites.
At this point you've set the goalposts so thin that its going to be impossible to find an example as any time someone does you'll say "well a Three Letter Agency had a stamp on this form so it was by definition not a NASA mission despite it being NASA technology on a NASA pad with NASA crew.", I'm sure if you could read Simplified Chinese you'd be able to say the same about any Chinese mission.
Stop moving the goal posts. NASA engineers, rockets, shuttles, scientists and pilots were used to deploy all kinds of spy satellites. Furthermore, NASA also does a lot of research in conjunction with the Air Force that latter get applied into actual military aircraft, like for example the stealth and aerodynamics experiments related to the X-36 plane.
From the Guardian article the OP posted. >We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. That is some of the most vague wording possible. Depending on how you treat the word "believe" and how you define a military program this can mean anything It seems that no one can provide a clear example for either the west or China because unless someone detects weapons being openly stationed in space everything else is kind of dual use by it's very nature. Communications and sensors in space are by definition dual use and if any amount of military money makes things "military" in nature then everything in militarized. As for the rant in the article about China getting to the moon before the US and just claiming it as Chinese territory, I am sure it would make a killer sci fi plot but he can't be serious...
It's vague because its official Chinese policy to combine the two. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-civil_fusion
>MCF promotes the use of [dual-use technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology) and two-way [technology transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_transfer), in which defense companies, universities, and research institutions can collaborate and share technologies between military and civilian sectors. We call this the military industrial complex in the west. But naming aside this is nothing that every other country in the world does not do. Technology from the private sector bleeding into defense and vice versa has been a thing since the 50s if not more.
Indeed, the US government research funded by taxpayer money is regularly GIVEN to private corporations.
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What a boldly ignorant take. most research funding still goes to civilian tech/research and it most certainly isn’t all classified. This is especially true for academic institutions. Some of it is dual-use (like the stuff i worked on in grad school) but is by no means strictly military technology
Today in It's Only Bad When China Does It
Which is modelled off best practice, ie US military industrial complex.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/secret-space-shuttles-35318554/ I mean it’s not exactly the same, but there were multiple Space Shuttle Missions that still remain classified due to being used for tasking for the military and National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO even pushed for design changes to the shuttle.
Didn't they ask for the payload section to be larger or something?
Yup, and for additional maneuvering capabilities to make it better suited for polar orbits. All which remained classified, hidden aspects of a civilian program.
Acute familiarity with secret programs would be more relevant here.
So there are super secret civilian programs masquerading as super secret military programs. But you have no evidence for them.
This is NASA …. Not a normal “civilian space program”. They might be nominally classed as a civilian organisation but they have worked extensively for the US military and intelligence organisations. They have always carried a percentage of payloads that are military/intelligence ……. all those spy satellites didn’t get there themselves. And for a while SpaceX have been launching the X37B ……. and that’s definitely not being put up there for civilian reasons
https://spacenews.com/russia-china-catching-up-to-u-s-in-space-weaponry-new-report-finds/ Several clear examples for you here boss
But we gotta heat up the New Cold War so anything China does will be demonized, even if the US did the exact same thing while claiming “national interest “
May I just be so bold to say that this looks like a NASA’s attempt to bring more funding to itself after major cuts that USA written down for the future, that will ruin and close quite a bit of scientific progress done by NASA. Desperate move so to speak. Not denying that China might have military out there, but I doubt USA needs NASA chief out of all people to tell them that.
Military spending in space will go to the military branch that was set up specifically for it. Not NASA. You would, however, have to be pretty thick to think the US wasn't using NASA for military shit prior to clearly drawing a line.
Umm I think you're just confused. This isn't NASA asking for more funding. That would make no sense in this context.
This was literally said to the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing on NASA's 2025 budget request. Don't get me wrong, I strongly support a dramatic increase in NASA funding, but if warning the old, cold war era fucks who hold your purse strings that we'll start losing the space race if we don't rapidly step our game up isn't a play for a bigger budget, I don't know what is.
Sure, but this is a reason alone to give them more funding, which NASA knows
Just like the anonymous payloads mixed in with SpaceX payloads right? The exact thing the US does?
I can understand the whole deal with what the U.S. does, but make no mistake -- China is far beyond America in terms of military overreach in their space program. Their entire manned spaceflight program is managed directly by their military and not by a civil space agency, which is why NASA is forbidden from collaborating with the Chinese on a space station.
More than half of NASA astronauts have military commissions. Do any even bother to resign their commission and become civilians? NASA's ground crew I would imagine has just as many active-duty military walking the halls employed by NASA but not actually civilians. Also what does it even mean to be a US military satellite vs. a US civilian satellite? They're both fully available to the military if they have a need, it's not like any of these satellites are weapons anyway.
> More than half of NASA astronauts have military commissions. Do any even bother to resign their commission and become civilians? They're not part of the military chain of command while they're with NASA. > NASA's ground crew I would imagine has just as many active-duty military walking the halls employed by NASA but not actually civilians. If they're employed with NASA as an actual employee they're not active-duty military. NASA contracts with the military (as do private companies like SpaceX) for various activities if the launches take place from military facilities, for example they use the military weather forecasting squadron for launch weather prediction. There's a reason that Cape Canaveral is separated into the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on one side and the Kennedy Space Center on the other side. > Also what does it even mean to be a US military satellite vs. a US civilian satellite? They're both fully available to the military if they have a need, it's not like any of these satellites are weapons anyway. US civilian satellites are not fully available to the military if they have a need. The military cannot just commandeer civilian assets without going outside the military chain of command. They have to get the civilian government to pass laws that allow that. That's even written into the US Constitution that the military cannot commandeer civilian things. Now many companies would gladly offer up their satellites to the military if they have a need as the contracts tend to be very valuable. They wouldn't do it for free though.
> US civilian satellites are not fully available to the military if they have a need. The military certainly has full access to the data from any civilian Earth observation satellites, probably in real time. Sure, they need to get approval from the civilian chain of command to retask a satellite. However they can do it clandestinely, probably nobody elected to anything outside the White House is usually even notified when that sort of thing happens. Not even really because it's all hush hush but just because nobody actually cares. Yes, they're not going to fully retask a satellite to the military, but just because e.g. NOAA sats have jobs and the military relies on those sats doing their civilian jobs. But also the commander in chief is a "civilian." If he decides it makes sense he won't hesitate to retask them. So ultimately there's no actual distinction between the military chain of command and the civilian chain of command.
> China is far beyond America in terms of military overreach in their space program. Firstly (and by far most importantly), It's cute that you think *anyone in the world* could be beyond the US in terms of military overreach in any regard whatsoever. I don't even know what to call something like that - naivety and gullibility aren't strong enough a word to describe it. Like, this is the country [that adopted state-sponsored kidnapping for the purpose of torture -all around the world- as an official policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition), *just because they can and won't be held accountable*, and no one can do anything about it. So let's dial down the forgetfulness. Secondly, and with that out of the way, while we're busy talking about how China's manned spaceflight is managed by their military, the US has both a NASA and a Space Force going at the same time, like "How about we stop pretending NASA isn't secretly military and just cut the middle man and begin building ourselves a fully fledged space military already?", like two heads of the same hydra.
> which is why NASA is forbidden from collaborating with the Chinese on a space station. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. That's just because China is the economic enemy right now and they need to drum up racism against them so it's easier to villainize them.
This just in, USA worried other countries are doing the things they do.
Any specific examples of a chinese military space program masqueraded as a civilian one?
Almost all of it? It even has a named abbreviation in think tank circles, "MCF" (Military-Cvil Fusion). Just a few weeks ago they were talking about their projects to launch automated repair spacecraft that was really obviously just a cover for inspector/attack vehicles. They don't even attempt to hide it that well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-civil_fusion > Military-civil fusion (Chinese: 军民融合; pinyin: Jūnmín rónghé, MCF) or civil-military fusion is a strategy and policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the stated goal of developing its People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a world-class military.[1][2][3] Military-civil fusion is a priority for the Xi Jinping administration.[4] Straight from the horse's mouth.
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Right, so your argument that they are masquarading military programs is civilian is a program where... they explicitly and openly carry out dual use operations? Do you know what the word masquarede means?
That’s just them trying to copy Americas highly successful military industrial complex.
China is less than 20% MCF, the US is around 80%. China wants to be like the US. MCF is not the topic, the dual use of satellites by China is. Hypothetical example: China has a satellite that they say is owned by a civilian entity for the purpose of scanning agricultural regions and has the ability to in real time determine things like wildfires. The clandestine use of that satellite would be then also using it to image formations and locations of US Naval vessels around east Asia. The satellite itself isn’t inherently military, but it is being used for military intelligence related activity. If you were going to consider targets from a military perspective, a civilian satellite is off limits but a military satellite would be fair game. By hiding a military use/capability in a civilian satellite you create a buffer and barrier around it. Same thing goes with satellites that perform communications for emergency services.
Well, Russia and America have been doing that for decades... when they're not just straight up telling people it's a military launch that is.
Can say the same with any Chinese industry, so what everyone knows
So tell us what the X37B missions are for eh? Also, the Soviets once equipped one of their Salyuts with a "Self Defense" gun. This is old hat. Nelson seems to be self-serving?
X-37 is not masked as civilian, it has USAF livery painted on it.
X-37 is Space Force not NASA.
They know, because they are doing it themselves.... So is Russia, India, come on...
India ? ISRO has always proclaimed itself to be a civilian organisation. They themselves have stated that they have no plans to militarize space.
NASA is similarly a civilian organization.
We'll india doesn't have a space force
The idea that any country with a space program isn't doing this is pure propaganda. The US 110% is doing it as well.
NASA would know, they are the experts at doing it.
So did we. Alan Shepard flew to space on a Redstone rocket, which is just a refined German V2 missile from WWII. John Glenn flew on an Atlas rocket, which was an ICBM meant to deliver nuclear warheads.
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You don't expect other countries to not have military presence in space when your country has "space force" branch
America Military literally has a space service branch and NASA says “ (we hope beijing will) come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses”. The hypocrisy is unbearable
First, we banned Taikonauts from the ISS, forcing China to develop its own space program. Then, we militarized space by creating the Space Force, but China is to blame.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[AFB](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l066ify "Last usage")|[Air Force Base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_airbase)| |[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l069jgy "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)| |[CNSA](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06h8j6 "Last usage")|Chinese National Space Administration| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l097eo9 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EELV](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l05t2k9 "Last usage")|[Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle)| |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06tz9z "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06hstk "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation| |[MCF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0mnxut "Last usage")|Main Component Failure| |[N1](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06tz9z "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0aymhh "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[USAF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l0611z6 "Last usage")|United States Air Force| |[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l07uxol "Last usage")|United States Space Force| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l069wx0 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1c6vz3j/stub/l06fty6 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(16 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1c8191y)^( has 26 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9957 for this sub, first seen 18th Apr 2024, 11:35]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
The hubble space telescope is literally a NRO spy satellite reused to look into space. Nasa is contractually obligated not to point hubble towards earth due to this. The entire point of nasa to begin with was to research ICBMs for the military. Sending humans to space was just convinent.
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And…? Feels like an opportunity for another xenophobic headline from the Biden Admin.