The Increasing Reality of War in Space

Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Max Moser
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

References

[SlipspaceEntertainment]

Glad to see something about Space conflict. A lot of people just don't know how important space is to day to day life and how vulnerable it is.

[MehrGills]

25:45 I really wanted the line to be "the consequences are just astronomical"

[Hero_Bryan]

One day the Space Force will be the most important branch of the military you'll see, that day is far but it's not science fiction

[sarysa]

I have an irrational amount fear about Kessler Syndrome, because even though I'm probably too old to reach a time where space travel is affordable, the idea of our species imprisoning itself on this planet horrifies me at some fundamental level.

And with the state of international relations in 2024, it feels like an inevitability.

[gregsmith]

To be fair to Steve Carell he initially dismissed Space Force as ridiculous but as his team did research for the movie he realized its real life importance

[thomaswalsh]

4:02 Physicist here. The differences in gravitational force caused by distance from the planet for objects in orbit is far weaker than implied here, and definitely not the reason for faster minimum velocities to stay in orbit. For example, at the altitude of the ISS, they still experience about 90% of surface gravity.

The reason for faster minimum speeds is simple geometry. Orbiting is (put simply) moving fast enough “sideways” so that, while you fall towards the planet, you are also moving so far to the side that you miss, continuously. Different gravitational pulls will affect what those sideways speeds need to be, but for the same planet and orbiting object, the distance changes the necessary speed relatively very little compared to simply how large the orbit is.

The easiest way to conceptualize it is probably this: imagine you are orbiting 1 foot off the surface. You would have to travel around a significant portion of the globe to account before falling that foot in order to remain in orbit. You would have to be traveling extremely fast for no other reason than having such little space to work with. Now imagine you’re orbiting at a thousand miles up. You now have much, much more time to “miss” the planet; instead of one foot, you have a thousand miles to use while covering that same distance to miss the planet.

Edit: If you’d like to think about it geometrically, the further satellite can account for fall and “sideways” travel in a shape more closely approximating an equilateral triangle, which has a relatively small hypotenuse (which itself approximates the necessary velocity), while the near satellite has a very lopsided triangle, needing to travel far more to the side than the distance it falls, and thus making a hypotenuse far longer than the average of the other side lengths.

Edit 2: This wasn’t meant to be a full, formal explanation of orbital mechanics, as some people seem to think I was trying to do. The entirety of my point is that the differences in felt gravitational pull via different orbital radii is not the primary reason for different minimum orbital speeds.

[Ocean_Man_Take_Me_To_The_Land]

I want to personally thank you, I have a presentation on space warfare tomorrow and i need a video and there were no good ones until now, you are my hero.

[TrentPierce]

As a guy in the Space Force (pretty sure I was in this video too lol) thanks for taking it seriously and for making this video. Really well done.

[wganspud]

This was pretty cool. I work for a contractor who is doing work on Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. Good job :)

[republicofluckteinburgpres]

This video is slightly misleading, geo stationary orbit is relatively open and clear of satellites and debris in comparison to LEO (Low Earth Orbit), which has 21457 trackable orbital and suborbital objects. There are more objects other than just these pieces, and there are about 167 million more of these smaller untrackable debris, and they pack a punch. (The ISS was struck by one of the untrackable debris and had a crack in Cupola Module window)

[felixleong]

Space warships will most probably look like the ones on the Expanse.

I can totally see the US Space Force or China building something like the UN Truman class Dreadnought or the MCRN Donnager class Battleship.

[cerebral]

>Opening sequence has late night 'comedians'.
>Closes video

[Pxndaz]

Not sure if this message will get to you, but I actually have a whole research report for college on the weaponization/militarization of space. I heavily base my style of writing off of the script used in this video so its such a crazy coincidence! So thank you for making this video!

[TotemStorms]

Very glad that this video went back to first principles to explain "why orbits". We've just started the Astronautics badge, and being able to show them the first part of this (we didn't have time for the whole thing unfortunately) made things so much easier. Also, at least one of the Scouts got excited when he realised that this was the same people as Jet Lag.

[NotSure]

To me it wasn't silly that the branch was created. It was the Name. It just sounds outlandish. Like something out of Futurama. All conflicts are in space. Orbital Defense or something similar would have been more appropriate.

[IWillBeAll]

24:34 Generally, depending on where objects are in orbit, they will eventually either drift off into the celestial body they are orbiting or escape the celestial body’s sphere of influence.

[SomeOrdinaryJanitor]

you know, i think the Space Force (as cheesy a name it is) is an incredibly underrated branch, even if their current actions are limited, conflict in space is only inevitable. better safe than sorry.

[ZMacZ]

0:39 What all the jokers didn't and most still don't know, is that it is actually a neccesity.
The anti-nuke umbrella needs to exist, besides other stuff that can be used as space
to planet warfare. Not because of aliens, but because anyone can get something up
in space today, fly it onto a piece of asteroid and direct it onto any part of the world.
And it's better than GDI, right ?

[HobbesNJoe]

Instead of destroying in orbit, capture and de-orbit. Military objective obtained, maintains a pristine orbital environment.

[bluestormcloud]

When the US bought Alaska many people in the press lampooned the purchase. "Seward's Folly", they called it. Today we look back and recognize how short sighted those critics were. It won't take as much time as it took for the Alaska purchase critics to end up with egg on their face, for the Space Force to prove that it is no laughing matter.