Space as a provocation

What is behind Americans’ escalation of ‘stellar’ hysteria

The White House began to scare the world with threats lurking in orbit. However, no details have been officially reported so far. Why is Washington bluffing?

Shaking hands with von Braun

John F. Kennedy was the first to use space as a means of blackmail. A smiling young president, a playboy with
a nuclear baton — this image helped him defeat such a ‘hawk’ as Richard Nixon, and it was necessary for him to keep
it up. At least because the military–industrial complex was scared. The man who allowed sellers of the most technologically advanced and, therefore, the most expensive weapons to earn, and who directed 80 percent of the military budget to the construction of strategic bombers, military leader and president Dwight Eisenhower could not stand that situation and slammed the door at parting. In his farewell televised address to the nation, he declared that the United States was ruled by… the military–industrial complex, and cautioned the American public to ‘be on guard against its unwarranted influence’. What a secret to give away!
What would be John F. Kennedy’s response?
This question could turn out to be fatal for the aspiring president, who was reputed to be an unpredictable attention 
seeker from a rich family. That is why John thought it best to ‘join the ranks’. He immediately threw a juicy bone to the military–industrial complex and the army personnel — even bigger than they had from airplanes.
John lied that the United States was ‘hopelessly lagging behind the USSR’ in space, and promised to multiply rocket production. And he personally went on to shake hands with the war criminal, Hitler’s henchman Wernher von Braun, who headed the American rocket and space industry. 
All this happened before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the military personnel put Kennedy in a tough spot, or rather, put him on the brink of an atomic war. It came back to bite much later, after Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. By 1970, the number of launch vehicles exceeded 1,000 units on each side. Thus, the fates of the superpowers 
and the whole world were indeed decided in space and on the scales with the megatonne measurement unit. Kennedy’s blackmail became a reality.

The renewal of Star Wars

However, space also provided deescalation. The reality, where both countries could destroy each other 105 times — that is how many according to Americans’ calculations! — pushed Richard Nixon to respond to Brezhnev’s proposal. 
This is how SALT 1, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaty, was born and brought deescalation of global politics along with that.
Fear can sometimes be a good adviser, especially if it is equal on both sides. Ronald Reagan, or rather those who stood behind him, decided to disturb that saving equality. The ‘Teflon President’ launched space blackmail again, announcing the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) on March 23rd, 1983. The programme against the USSR was called ‘Star Wars’ — Reagan just stole the name of the popular 1977 film by director George Lucas. Lucas took the case to the court, 
although the SDI demonstrated pretty much the same cartoon, only much less professional or colourful than the Hollywood blockbuster. It did not go any further than that, and it cannot go even now. Nevertheless, Gorbachev used those popular prints as a formal pretext to begin perestroika and to surrender all positions of the Soviet Union claiming that the Soviet economy would not withstand such a large-scale space race. The Politburo [the executive committee and highest body for the Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party] urged to consult with scientists on the matter, especially since the Buran space shuttle programme was well under way.
It must be pointed out that by that time, the USSR was seriously ahead of Americans in terms of killer satellite technology, so only Gorbachev could get scared by the SDI. For he wanted to be scared.
At a meeting in the Kremlin, scientists proposed a completely elegant, tremendous and free of charge solution — the one that Gorbachev would have nothing to counterpose, and that would keep the economy safe.
All ingenious is simple, and Soviet scientists were geniuses. They offered to take out… several tonnes of broken bottle glass into space on an ordinary transport plane, and diffuse it around the orbit. By doing so, it would be possible to blind all the optics used for the construction of the alleged laser weapons of the American ‘space wars’. Eat the dust, Mr. Reagan!
Gorbachev had nothing to counterpose, indeed, but this did not save the Buran space shuttle programme, the Energia rocket launcher, or the Soviet Union. The Secretary General sulked, left the hall in silence, and yet continued his work. However, the SDI did not last long, either. The bluff was abandoned immediately after the collapse of the USSR, officially — in 1993. And now, for at least the third time and 30 years later, the space provocation has been brought back to life by the White House.

The reactor on board the satellite

There is a curious figure — the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Republican Mike Turner. This guy unconditionally supports all initiatives of the Democratic Party in Ukraine and laments that Zelenskyy’s money is now stuck in Congress. So Turner has suddenly kicked up a fuss. He has started to fidget, wink and drop hints to the press — just like Biden the mystery man! — that Russians have allegedly created ‘some kind of threat’ in space, perhaps a nuclear one and perhaps intended to harm simple-minded Americans. Earlier, ABC News with reference to ‘sources’ reported that US lawmakers may have been told at a secret briefing about Russia’s alleged plans to ‘place nuclear weapons in space for use against satellites’. Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that by announcing a closed briefing on a ‘serious threat to national security’, the White House was trying, by hook or by crook, to encourage Congress to vote in favour of a bill to allocate funds to Ukraine. Everything is clear! Another space provocation has been concocted in the bowels of the White House, and it seems to be obvious what for. 
But what if it is not only for that? What if the current provocation has a second... and a third bottom? How many of them can there be in space? In order to figure it out, you will have to recall history. Not a very distant one. I have already mentioned that we were significantly ahead of Americans in space technology, for which Belarusian scientists should also get credit. On February 2nd, 1987, the USSR did something that Americans are still unable to do — we put into orbit a compact nuclear reactor with a capacity of 6.6 kW on board the Kosmos 1818 reconnaissance satellite. That one was a pioneer, and the second flew to an orbit of 813/797 km on July 10th, 1987 and worked there for 11 months 
in a row. The secret reactor was called ‘Topaz’, and it was used to search for American submarines, which required 
special energy costs. Yet, that’s not the point now.

The thing is that Gorbachev handed over to Americans the diagram, with all the specifications, of the reactor they were so much afraid of. Despite that, Americans have not been able to reproduce it so far. They still do not have space reactors. Thus, it is not nuclear explosions against their satellites that Americans fear now — this is all bluff. Satellites can easily be shot down from the ground by the S-400 air defence system that already protects the peaceful skies of Belarus, not to mention the S-500. It is not the 1967 Outer Space Treaty banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in space that Yankees allude to, either — a peaceful power plant cannot be a weapon in any way. It is just that Americans do not have it. 

And it is just because it opens up limitless possibilities the peaceful atom has for the construction and uninterrupted power supply of the largest, most equipped and most independent  of Americans Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) by 2027, which Russian and Belarusian cosmonauts will use to surf the near-Earth expanses. Whether they will then see the United States through their portholes or some other states blinking affably from the Earth’s surface instead depends not at all on the presence of some mythical Russian nuclear weapons in space, but more on how soon the United States will finally refuse to finance the war in Ukraine and stop using space for its grandiose provocations.

By Vadim Yelfimov, political expert, Candidate of Historical Sciences