TheEconomistDecember 7th 2019 751B
y shooting amissile into one of its
own satellites in March, India upped
the ante. The immediate intention, sug-
gests Jeffrey Caton, a retired American air-
force colonel who teaches at the Army War
College, was to fire “a shot across the bow”
of India’s rival China. The Chinese had,
after all, blown up one of their own satel-
lites in 2007, in a similar demonstration of
their ability to do such things. India’s test,
along with the wider profusion of anti-
satellite weapons, has lent credence to the
worries of defence chiefs around the world
who believe that future conflicts between
great powers will stretch into space.
Satellites are too militarily useful to
pretend that adversaries will consider
them off-limits, says William Roper, the air
force’s assistant secretary for technology
and acquisitions. America must therefore
ready itself for warfare in space. America is,
indeed, especially vulnerable. It has morespace assets than any other country and re-
lies on them more for its war-fighting capa-
bility. Moreover, as John Hyten, the vice-
chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff,
eloquently puts it, America’s kit in space
consists mainly of large, “exquisite” satel-
lites that make for “big, fat, juicy targets”.First responders
One approach to reducing the risk this
poses is to make those targets less fat and
juicy. That is happening, as both civil and
military satellite users shrink their hard-
ware and scatter its functions over multi-
ple pieces of equipment. In particular, peo-
ple are deploying more of the modular
designs known as cubesats. Among other
things, that means individual satellites are
smaller and cheaper, and therefore easier
to stockpile in advance. But for this ap-
proach to be really useful, it must also be
possible to launch them quickly if, forwhatever reason (whether enemy action or
otherwise), an orbiting asset stops working
and needs replacing.
That concept is known as “responsive
space”, and, in today’s outsourced world, it
often means calling on the private sector to
do the actual launching. American officials
are therefore pleased that a firm called
Rocket Lab, whose services they often rely
on for lifting payloads of up to 150kg, has
quickened the tempo of cubesat launches
from its pad in New Zealand to once a
month. Rocket Lab hopes that, by early next
year, it will have improved this rate to once
a fortnight—an objective which will be as-
sisted by its construction of a second
launch pad in Virginia.
Rocket Lab is also a pioneer of the 3d
printing of rocket parts, such as the noz-
zles, valves, pumps and main combustion
chamber of the motor. That reduces the
number of components involved, and
greatly speeds up manufacture and assem-
bly. Rockets being expensive, no one wants
to carry a large inventory of them. Having a
“just in time” approach to launcher avail-
ability is therefore desirable.
Relativity Space, another American
firm, also plans to print its rocket, the Ter-
ran 1. This will carry a payload of 900kg. Its
first orbital launch is scheduled for next
year. Relativity Space’s biggest printersWarfare in spaceQuickening the countdown
Growing fears of conflict in space mean America’s officials are seeking faster
ways to launch satellitesScience & technology
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