Let’s go with your setting; if the sea anchor underperforms and the ship ends up on the rocks anyway then there’s not much debating that it was worthless. So it can be effectively worthless. You said the same thing yourself: “If it keeps the ship off the rocks…”, yes if and if not then it was ineffectual, a failure, effectively worthless. You’re phrasing it from the point of view of success and I’m phrasing it from the point of view of failure.

Returning to the space weapons ban a slowdown could (oh no there it is again! ^_^) be something but what are the arguments for such a ban actually slowing down for example ASAT weapons development? Sure you couldn’t actually blow up satellites any more but there are other ways to test things, even publicly and in space (for example automatic/autonomous approach and docking; a much harder and more complex version of the most difficult thing an ASAT rocket does. There are differences but those can be minimized).

Still if we assume such a slowdown is the argument for the ban then isn’t it more likely that the nations suggesting it views the slowdown as hitting US efforts harder than their own?

Without anything on offer to US interests the conclusion must be that this simply isn’t intended as a serious proposal. Instead they’re using the idea to play politics and form a story-line advantageous to themselves. But even that won’t work if people see it for what it is.

unverifiability… can render the agreement effectively worthless in respect to the effort required…

“effectively worthless” is tendentious weasel wording. As long as R&D is undetectible, what I expect from such treaties is not a freeze but the slowdown imposed by the inability to test. That may be worth quite a lot.

When storm-driven sailors don’t have a big enough anchor or the bottom is too deep, they deploy a sheet anchor: a weighted sail that adds greatly to drag, slowing leeward movement. If it keeps the ship off the rocks until the wind subsides, try convincing the captain it’s “effectively worthless” because it’s not a true anchor.

As for “in respect to the effort required”… sending lots of diplomats to lots of meetings is dirt cheap compared to flight testing or deployment of a weapons system.

By the way the problem with unverifiability isn’t that it can give you a sense of false confidence but that it can render the agreement effectively worthless in respect to the effort required –something one sees time and time again in popular feel-good treaties (and policies).

The assumption behind “treaties that aren’t 100% verifiable are bad” is “…because they give us false confidence, we’ll relax and fall behind the state of the art, and one day the Bad Guys will surprise us.” In the real world, I’ve seen little evidence that we (or they) are or ever have been that naive. Nor, in this specific case, does it appear that the challenges of ASAT are amenable to breakthrough or “breakout” technology.

Any endeavor that even looks like it might be a new space weapon or contribute to one is being avoided for fear of triggering an arms race, and the 1980/90s era prototypes are in museums or have been cannibalized because they contain excellent components that aren’t made any more.

The anti-space weapons people I know are emotionally and ideologically driven. They still believe space weapons are a big problem even when the reality on the ground (in the US at least) says otherwise. They wish for a treaty to end weapons because they think it will confine the evil enterprise of war to Earth. Logic does not apply, these are emotionally-held beliefs. Believe me I’ve tried.

But I digress. I’m actually quite surprised that Russia still feel they can trust China on this issue. While Russia focuses on Europe, China benefits.

One word

Unverifiable.

My take on the off-topic discussion:
As noted Russia (then Soviet Union) is among the three largest producers of oil in the world (even though they do it with fairly low efficiency). During the Cold War they were giving some of it away to Cuba in return for sugar they didn’t really need. They were of course supplying the rest of their allies as well before selling leftovers for “pure” profit.

High tech is far more costly for a country that doesn’t mind using millions as cannon fodder (I would even say they’re proud of it and in some ways they ought to be). The Stinger (and its ease of use) won the Afghan war, end of that story.

However the lesson of Afghanistan had ramifications particularly in respect to NATO defense of Germany. The envisioned massive Soviet/Warsaw Pact tank invasion of Germany (one of the three main WWIII European scenarios) looks very different when you have experience suggesting/supporting and lending credence to the idea of three-man fireteams destroying an average of three tanks before dying. The Soviets realized it too; their (still superior?) active tank armor can be traced to both the Afghan war and the German scenario.

The SDI (and I would note that everything SDI expect the fancy illustrations of orbiting battle-stations has been a part of the US military for a while now in some form or another) and other high-tech military endeavors had the Kremlin worried enough to spend plenty of resources. Whether or not their ground-based laser stations in Sibir ever became operational money was spent (to the best of my knowledge they went for the very culturally Russian brute force solution; at least ground-based lasers with orbiting mirrors seems like the one requiring the most brute force to me since the laser had to traverse the atmosphere twice). And how about that Buran?

Back to the original topic.

I don’t know the orbital mechanics of it and the more I think about it the less likely it seems but when I read about banning space weapons I wonder how many satellites could have somewhat inherent dual use. Could circumstances (orbit and fuel) allow already orbiting satellites to function as improvised kinetic kill vehicles?

I’d like to hear technical opinions on that considering how a lot of satellites aren’t that remote from each other in terms of delta v. How many satellites have sufficient delta v/propellant to potentially ram at least one other satellite? How many satellites would be able to deorbit fairly quickly in an aggressive manner and hitting a satellite (possibly in a lower orbit, possibly one owned by yourself) to produce debris fields? If only a few satellites have this possibility it would still blow a big hole in the notion of a ban.

Perhaps that’s all too farfetched but I have another issue I’d like to see discussed.

Sputnik allowed the US (and everybody else) to treat orbits as being outside the borders of sovereign nations.

The Chinese ASAT test allows the US (and everybody else) to…? If the answer is nothing then a piece of paper with the word “ban” might make sense but if the answer is “…to codify that national interests don’t stop 100 km up and that they will have to be defended militarily when deemed necessary” or something else (suggestions?) then such a treaty is at best officially supported idiocy (but sometimes that can be useful so there might still be a case for it).

Stay away from economics, Vladislaw, it embarrasses you (or should).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nominalrealoilprices.gif

Monte see if you can wrap your mind around this:

The average price of oil from 1970 THROUGH half of 1979 was 12 dollars a barrel, this what you call the:

” add in the impact of the high oil prices they were getting in the 1970s vs. the low prices of the 1980s.” Monte Davis

It was only after deregulation that the price soared in late 1979 to almost 40 dollars ( nominal dollars) so the “70’s” did NOT see the high prices YOU SAID they did. The average price through the 1980’s was 28 dollars a barrel, more then TWO TIMES the price during the 70’s. The 80’s ended at the low 20’s dollars a barrel, STILL MORE then they were getting in the 70’s.

The soviets paid peanuts only provided domestically produced food and clothing through a command economy and stamps out AK 47’s like we produce video games, the standard russian troop in the early 80’s was pretty cheap in their system. What DID cost in THAT system, was HIGH TECH, and their planes and helicopters represented that. They did not have a commerical high tech sector to buy from so that equipment was pretty costly in relative terms.

Monte YOU ARE THE ONE having trouble with economics. I just showed you TWO TIMES, your statement
” add in the impact of the high oil prices they were getting in the 1970s vs. the low prices of the 1980s.” Monte Davis

was incorrect, deal with it.

Vladislaw