outer space used and shared peacefully offers incredible benefits to humanity in communication science and soon resource gathering and even settlement but there are some who either heavens with distinctly unpeaceful even warlike motives the decades directly following world war ii were a time of optimism in many ways industrialization was finally improving the quality of life for a lot of us science was making incredible bounds and our sights were set on the Stars it seemed to many that we were on a trajectory to a spacefaring technological utopia the United Federation of Planets was just around the corner but the possibility of a much darker space age also loomed one in which the space around the earth became highly militarized and in fact massively weaponized in 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik one the world's first artificial satellite they also tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile ICBM the space race had begun and it inspired some incredible advances in science and exploration culminating in the moon landing in 69 it also inspired a race to win the military advantage of low Earth orbit by the early sixties the United States and the USSR were regularly launching satellites of all types and rapidly accumulating increasingly advanced ICBMs those ICBMs were the first space weaponry what they don't actually enter orbit they exceed the altitudes of most low-earth orbit satellites he's around 1,200 kilometers at the peak of their trajectories despite definitely being in space these are called sub orbital trajectories because they don't actually reach orbital velocity ballistic means that most of the journey is unpowered ICBMs follow the parabolic path dictated by gravity when they're between an initial boost phase and an optional final guided phase ICBM technology quickly developed to the point that a single missile could deliver multiple nuclear warheads several thousand kilometers away in a half hour one Soviet program the fractional orbital bombardment system actually did enter true orbit and will allow multiple warheads to be delivered anywhere in the world from any directions as the arms race proceeded both superpowers also turn to space to defend against this rising existential threat reconnaissance satellites spy SATs in particular provided a level of intelligence gathering previously impossible across the Iron Curtain this was really the only effective way to monitor the rapid proliferation of launch facilities those early spy sets came long before digital cameras and so film canisters were injected by the satellites and retrieved either on the surface or in big parachute descents the Soviets did build one spy satellite the contained actual spies pleased with the Alma's Space Station's cruise of two to three cosmonauts / peeping toms could develop film onboard for rapid response to anything they spotted only two of these were ever actually crewed for brief periods between 74 and 77 the first Elmas station Salyut 3 was also the very first weaponized satellite it was equipped with a 23 millimeter autocannon designed to defend against enemy anti-satellite measures it was only ever fired once as a test but if we're talking about satellite weapons platforms we should drop out Star Wars and by that I mean the Strategic Defense Initiative announced by Ronald Reagan in 1983 it was an attempt to break the stalemate of the arms race and transcend the dubious security of mutually assured destruction by vastly increasing the United dates missile defense capabilities it included much expanded surface launch anti-ballistic missile ABM networks but also you get this an atomic bomb powered x-ray laser satellite this was the Excalibur program and it very nearly saw the launch of what could only be described as a space-based super weapon a quick review on lasers they work by exciting electrons in a substance to high energy states then bypassing electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength tuned to an energy level transition in that substance stimulated emission can occur the excited electron releases its energy as a photon that exactly matches the phase and direction of the seed photon this produces a beam of coherent lights making it possible to deliver very large intensities in very narrow beams x-ray lasers were seen as extremely promising in missile defense because they can completely vaporize metal x-rays are quickly absorbed in the atmosphere but in the vacuum of space these lasers can have ranges of many hundreds even thousands of kilometers now normal lasers bounce the beam back and forth through a gain medium to build up power but x-rays can't be reflected easily so a powerful x-ray laser needs to start with a powerful x-ray source for Excalibur that source was a nuclear bomb set off behind an array of laser tubes the satellite doesn't survive the blast but that's okay one blast is enough to power several dozen x-ray lasers and each of those can take out an ICBM the dream of Excalibur was that a small number of platforms could take out the entire Soviet missile fleet even if it were launched simultaneously the media derisive Lee nicknamed the Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars it absorbed many hundreds of millions in funding from 1983 to 1990 but ultimately it was defunded for two reasons one it was never clear whether any of the ten underground test detonations produced anything new the promised laser amplification - no one could come up with a decent plan to protect the satellites these things would need to live in more mirror orbits highly elliptical orbits that allow them to spend most of their time above a particular location on the surface ie Russia but that left them extremely susceptible to attack by missiles another slight issue with the Excalibur program was that it would pretty thoroughly violate the amount of Space Treaty this treaty ratified by the US in 1967 prohibits signatories from placing nukes or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on a celestial body the treaty is now ratified by 107 Nations and seriously limits the potential for nuclear space war ICBMs are still allowed because they don't actually enter orbit but the nuke powered Excalibur was a definite no-no the Outer Space Treaty does have its loopholes so-called conventional weapons are allowed in space so non new powered lasers and also the potentially very deadly kinetic impact weapons the successor to Excalibur brilliant pebbles was just such a weapon a kinetic weapon does all of its damage by hitting things with fast-moving non-explosive chunks of matter brilliant pebbles proposed an orbiting weapons platform the delivered non-explosive missiles to destroy ICBMs besides is not violating the Outer Space Treaty this plan beat Excalibur because you didn't need to destroy the weapons platform to use it that meant a few pebbles could be launched to protect against an incoming anti-satellite missile while leaving the platform functional but even this proposal proved too expensive and it was cancelled in the early 90s another example of a kinetic impact proposal was project Thor it was never a funded project as far as we know but the idea was to drop 9 ton 6 meter long tungsten cylinders from orbit they would strike the ground at Mach 10 with a destructive equivalent of more than 11 tons of TNT similar to the lowest yield tactical nukes these rods from God had a pretty niche application very some precision strikes with no surface launch signature to service warning and they wouldn't violate the Outer Space Treaty by the way both Excalibur and brilliant pebbles were considered as anti-satellite weapons a sets as well as being anti ICBM measures but research into destroying satellites began much earlier in the two years following a launch of Sputnik the US was already testing anti-satellite missiles launched from a b-47 bomber however the first successful ASAP missile was in 1985 when a u.s. f-15 fighter launched a specialized missile that destroyed Seoul wind a retired Solar Observatory satellite the USSR pursues some very different a set paths there is the Rabbitohs Sputnik literally satellite fighter was a missile design to actually enter orbit and maneuver up close to its target satellite before exploding by the early seventies these things were successfully damaging test satellites the program was even upgraded in the late 70s to be effective against the upcoming US Space Shuttle true to their Western stereotypes as bond supervillains the USSR also played around with powerful ground-based lasers which supposedly blinded some US spy satellites and particle beams actual death rays which never really worked then there was the poorest spacecraft a full-fledged orbiting battle station that would have had a megawatt laser designed to take out these yet and launched u.s. anti-missile satellites pontius never became operational though it was very close over the decades multiple nations have worked on adapting suborbital ballistic missiles to targets delights however very few satellites have ever been destroyed in this way in 2007 China destroyed one of its own weather satellites with a missile and this was scary in two ways one the resulting debris massively increased the amount of space junk in low-earth orbit something like one-sixth of currently tracked debris in soon as one events and two it also sparked a new race to develop a Sat capability the u.s. quickly followed in 2008 by destroying one of its own spy sets with a repurposed ship based anti-ballistic missile the official line is that the satellite was decaying from orbit and the purpose of its destruction was to avoid the unlikely event of its fuel tank of toxic hydrazine from reaching the ground whether or not this was the true main motive at the very least the debris wasn't as dangerous as the Chinese explosion because that debris is orbit will decay much more quickly currently the US Russia China Israel and India have either functioning or developmental ASAP missile capabilities there's a potential new arms race threatening that's concerning even a few destroyed satellites could begin a chain reaction as the resulting debris hits and destroys more satellites in increasingly crowded low-earth orbit there's a serious risk of reading the earth in a growing shell of mangled silicon and metal as real as that risk is we once risk much worse the Cold War arms race was on track to fill Earth's orbit with satellite destroying weaponry and nuclear warheads for the most part and for the moment saner heads have prevailed and humanity remains committed to the peaceful use of outer space time