US Space Force approves plans for satellite carriers in space

I’ve spoken about flying aircraft carriers before, and now the US Space Force has a contract worth up to $60 million to develop and fly a kind-of aircraft carrier in space. No, it's not the result of a major typo. It's intended as a way to station space vehicles to quickly counter emerging orbital threats.

During the last century, as wars raged on the surface of the Earth, space was seen as something of a sanctuary – a safe haven free of conflict. Even during the Cold War and the Space Race, weaponry in space was confined to theory and real-life oddities like the aircraft cannon secretly installed in the Soviet Salyut 3 space station in 1973 to deter curious American visitors.

Today, the picture is very different with Russia and China both pursuing very aggressive policies to develop weapons on both the ground and in space designed to disable or destroy Western satellites. These include radio jammers, laser and microwave weapons, robotic grappling arms, chemical sprays, kinetic kill vehicles and even nuclear warheads that can take out entire constellations of satellites.

A very early preview of the first concept

The use of any of these weapons is something that any sane commander would wish to avoid. War in space is very different from that on Earth with very different stakes. Even the primitive Soviet gun had surprising limitations. For one thing, you couldn't fire it along the axis of the space station's orbit. If you did, and missed the target, the shell would orbit the Earth and hit the station.

The same goes for most other encounters. Satellites don't vanish from the battlefield like a shot-down aircraft or a sunken ship. They continue in orbit, either as a derelict hulk that may contain explosive elements like batteries or fuel tanks or as a cloud of debris. In either case, they could result in a cascade effect of unintended collisions that would cause far more damage than the attacker ever anticipated.

It's for this reason that the Space Force, along with other Western militaries, prefer to concentrate more on deterrence and mitigation. In other words, to make an attack in space to be as unattractive as possible by countering an attack before it happens, reducing hostile effects, or restoring communication or reconnaissance capabilities quickly enough to deny an enemy even a temporary advantage.

To do this, the Space Force needs to have assets in the form of manoeuvrable spacecraft in orbit at all times – not as individual vehicles, but stored in a mothership that can launch them as needed, rather like the fictional Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5, though not quite as cool. It's for this reason that Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) by SpaceWERX of the Space Force has allocated the new funds to Gravitics, which specializes in building large space structures like outposts, cargo craft, and, now, the Orbital Carrier.

According to the company, the new carrier will allow the Space Force a fast, flexible response to dangerous situations. It will also allow the United States and its allies to maintain space superiority, much as NATO carrier groups maintain freedom of the seas.

A demonstration may be launched as early as next year.

"We're honoured to partner with the US Space Force on this critical initiative," said Colin Doughan, CEO of Gravitics. "The Orbital Carrier is a game-changer, acting as a pre-positioned launch pad in space. It bypasses traditional launch constraints, enabling space vehicle operators to rapidly select a deployment orbit on-demand."

Source: Gravitics