no outer space treaty

this post is inspired by the thread about a longer lived Apollo program.

As the title suggests, what if the OST of 1967 is never proposed or doesn't get the approval needed to be effective? Lets say that the Soviets wanna put nukes in orbit and plant an SSR on the moon or something aggressive and more "stalin-like" and as such refuse to sign the treaty, logically not wanting to risk having russian nukes in orbit and no americans to balance them out the US government also refuse to sign. What do you guys think would happen next?
 
This business will get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Soon, there will be nuclear rockets put into orbit by the USSR and America will follow suit. Soon the more minor powers are going to feel the need to match the ability, France and England will start launching their own. Every time a militarized satellite crosses over the powers raise their alert status, causing deterioration of the actual meaning of the alerts, sending confusion through the political and military community.

Soon, the nuclear powers realize that these satellites are easy to track and efforts are made to disguise them, launching dummies, using radar absorbing materials, frequent changes in trajectory. Weapons platforms are disguised as commercially useful satellites, and nations can no longer trust the skies above their head. Weapons designed to take out space threats are slowly developed.

Every time a satellite falls out of orbit it's treated like a potential strike. Stress builds.

When the MIR (Not that MIR, earlier MIR) Space Station comes online, the Soviets announce that they have built a Mass Driver into the station, allowing them to launch a strategic attack with just seconds warning and devastating potential. The Allied nations decry this action and America threatens a pre-emptive strike. The Soviet Union replies that any attack on the station will result in immediate retaliation.

The world holds its breath and waits...
 
This business will get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live through it.

I like the Hunt for Red October reference :)

I was just thinking, the added defense expenditures will probably drive the USSR into bankruptcy earlier.
 
Probably not alot. It's main point is that it bans nuclear weapons in space, not nuclear power sources. While you could deploy them on satellites, I very much doubt that it would offer a great advantage over ICBMs. It may even be worse since it is very expensive to get things into orbit, hard to hide a launch, and at the time it was hard to hide things in orbit. Sure eventually a Russian paper that describes how to build something that scatters radar is discovered, but only the Americans have the massive computing power needed to actually use it. So maybe the Americans eventually develop some reasonably stealthy nuclear bomb sats. At least if it works out cheaper then more modern balistic missile subs, strat bombers, or cruise missiles. The soviets do what they did in OTL and focus on mobile launchers.
 
Probably not alot. It's main point is that it bans nuclear weapons in space, not nuclear power sources. While you could deploy them on satellites, I very much doubt that it would offer a great advantage over ICBMs. It may even be worse since it is very expensive to get things into orbit, hard to hide a launch, and at the time it was hard to hide things in orbit. Sure eventually a Russian paper that describes how to build something that scatters radar is discovered, but only the Americans have the massive computing power needed to actually use it. So maybe the Americans eventually develop some reasonably stealthy nuclear bomb sats. At least if it works out cheaper then more modern balistic missile subs, strat bombers, or cruise missiles. The soviets do what they did in OTL and focus on mobile launchers.

An ICBM from the SU takes about a half hour to reach its target in the US. From a satellite it'd take a couple minutes. Even if the US can track them all constantly (And there are ways to hide them in plain sight), they're still a powerful first strike threat.

Think of it this way: for a while the Soviet Union had a retaliation system that required 10 minutes from first sighting of an inbound missile to calculating its heading and origin, opening the silos, inputing the targeting, getting authorization (Optional), and firing. If you can hit a target in the USSR within five minutes of them detecting it... You win.
 
orbital nukes have the distinct advantage of not needing massive silo's and missiles to launch, they can use only minor maneuvering thrusters in stead thus eliminating the ability to use early warning sustems due to no heat plumes from missile launches, plus the time advantage as previously mentioned. I wonder would it lead to a larger manned presence in space? or just more military sattelites?
 
If you keep nukes in constant obit enemy will know of them, or at least suspect and have ASAT assets dedicated to taking them out in immediate beginning of any conflict.

FOBS approach is the "less than 10 minutes" warning thing. It launches as a satellite, enters orbit and de-orbits down on target before first orbit is complete. Its main problem was very low accuracy, and it was obsolete in any way once high orbit IR launch monitoring satellites entered service.

Both powers were for OST as it was beneficiary to both, greatly reducing risks and uncertainty of enemy intentions and capabilities.
But you likely know historical facts about poor little USA being endangered by bomber gap, missile gap, and doomsday device gap.
 
If you keep nukes in constant obit enemy will know of them, or at least suspect and have ASAT assets dedicated to taking them out in immediate beginning of any conflict.

FOBS approach is the "less than 10 minutes" warning thing. It launches as a satellite, enters orbit and de-orbits down on target before first orbit is complete. Its main problem was very low accuracy, and it was obsolete in any way once high orbit IR launch monitoring satellites entered service.

Both powers were for OST as it was beneficiary to both, greatly reducing risks and uncertainty of enemy intentions and capabilities.
But you likely know historical facts about poor little USA being endangered by bomber gap, missile gap, and doomsday device gap.

When I said that you could get a bomb to the enemy within 10 minutes, I did not mean from launch of the satellite, I meant from an orbit that had already been established to the target. Sorry for the confusion. Interceptions of these would be easier because the orbits would be rather predictable, but there are a number of problems with the assumption that you'd be able to take them out immediately prior to a first strike.

The first is just it being difficult to shoot something down while its in space. The Star Wars program demonstrated that, and the US only proved it was capable of blowing up an inbound Satellite in 2008.

The problem with shooting them down at the start of any armed conflict is that they'd be used as a first strike program. The first indication that a total war is going on is going to be these satellite weapons dropping from orbit onto missile bases. You could try shooting them down prior to a total conflict, but that's more likely to escalate it into a total war anyway and you'd still be screwed (although they will be too).

There would also probably be fallout over the issue of having surface-to-space interceptors anyway because it might be construed as a breech of the ABM treaty.

And then there are ways to make orbital weapons harder to intercept, including frequent changes in orbital patterns (To make it harder to detect when an attack is coming or to just make the pattern slightly more difficult to predict), decoys (These could be inflatable balloons that appear to be satellites on radar in order to give more targets to interceptors), radar absorbing materials, or something I just haven't thought of.

As time goes on they could even develop even worse weapons than nukes. A mass driver would give even less of a warning than a plummeting satellite would. A captured asteroid would be more obvious but impossible to stop (and would cause more damage).

The whole thing just leads to an escalation where everybody is so terrified of a first strike that each side will feel it more and more necessary to launch one to protect themselves.
 
I disagree. Even if the USSR launches a 100% successful premtive strike on the US, and destroys all of the ICBM's, the second-strike capability of the US, all in submarines, is totally unharmed, and would then destroy the USSR with their nuclear warheads. So I don't think the lack of an space treaty would greatly change the balance of powers. Plus, there are terrible logistical issues when your putting nukes in space. Maintaining them, making sure they don't fall out of the sky, etc.
 
Both USA and USSR tested and operated nuclear and non nuclear anti satellite weapons in '60es and '70es. Conventional systems, a F-15 launched ASAT missile for USA and a (potentially reusable) killer satellite named IS (istrebnitel sputnik - satellite killer) for USSR were declared operational in '70es. And a nuclear blast in low orbit would EMP both everything in orbit in LOS and everything below it. (yes, you need atmosphere for EMP, there is quite enough atmosphere even at 1000km altitude of Starfish Prime)

USA had almost lost its ASAT capabilities by discontinuing systems. It is unknown whether Russians still keep launch prepared boosters with IS as payload, since they scavenged a lot of military surplus booster for commercial use in '90es.

Last year test was forcing a ABM missile to ASAT duty, nearly outside its engagement envelope, and it still worked. Even the freaking Chinese did a sucessfull ASAT test a year or so before that.

Let me put this all in one simple sentence. It was technically possibly to shoot down satellites in orbit since '60es, and systems were tested in practice. Storing warheads in orbit would have been worst possible choice. FOBS was theoretically better until space based surveillance made it obsolete.

Not signing OST would be very destabilizing. In potential crisis both sides would view all existing satellites and confirmed non ICBM launches as suspicious and dangerous, and could likely cause a preventive attack on enemy satellites causing war they wish to avoid. It would lower the threshold of starting nuclear war much lower.
Though its already very low when we are talking about satellites. USA and USSR operated launch warning satellites in high orbits and in GEO. They were considered so crucial to early warning that any attack on them would have likely caused immediate nuclear escalation. Yes, hitting a target in GEO is far difficult than one in LEO, though their very nature forces them to stay in same orbit, warning satellite that isnt looking at what is supposed to isnt worth that much. And when you can launch GEO platforms of your own, you have all technical know how to build a ASAT capable of hurting others GEO assets.

Ahem. You cant change orbits constantly, as it consumes limited supply of maneuvering fuel satellite has on board, once your out you cant maintain orbit or change it in need, and you will run out very quickly if you want to be unpredictable. Stuff you said about mass drivers and asteroids is still pure science fiction, outside our current technical capabilities, and not even worth a laugh in '60es or '70es. It cant be done with current technology and space launch capabilities, and not even keeping Saturn V could help a bit. You might as well say "omg what could we do if Commies started getting starships and weapons from Cardassians", it is as much plausible.
 
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I disagree. Even if the USSR launches a 100% successful premtive strike on the US, and destroys all of the ICBM's, the second-strike capability of the US, all in submarines, is totally unharmed, and would then destroy the USSR with their nuclear warheads. So I don't think the lack of an space treaty would greatly change the balance of powers. Plus, there are terrible logistical issues when your putting nukes in space. Maintaining them, making sure they don't fall out of the sky, etc.

I agree to an extent, but in this scenario the actual ability to wipe out the entire nuclear arsenal of a country is not the paramount issue in how it will end. It's the perceived threat that will make relations deteriorate and that will have the biggest impact in this scenario.

Not signing OST would be very destabilizing. In potential crisis both sides would view all existing satellites and confirmed non ICBM launches as suspicious and dangerous, and could likely cause a preventive attack on enemy satellites causing war they wish to avoid. It would lower the threshold of starting nuclear war much lower.
Though its already very low when we are talking about satellites. USA and USSR operated launch warning satellites in high orbits and in GEO. They were considered so crucial to early warning that any attack on them would have likely caused immediate nuclear escalation.

This very nicely sums up the main point, thank you.

You cant change orbits constantly, as it consumes limited supply of maneuvering fuel satellite has on board

That's why I said frequently and not constantly. The logistics of it would make it difficult but not impossible to do so enough to keep the other side on their toes.

Stuff you said about mass drivers and asteroids is still science fiction

This is true enough, though I think it's probably possible to push the railgun idea ahead significantly, considering that there would be an actual use for such a thing ITTL.
 
This is true enough, though I think it's probably possible to push the railgun idea ahead significantly, considering that there would be an actual use for such a thing ITTL.

Various US defense groups have been playing with and developing rail guns for decades. Before budget crisis they had plans to put a prototype on a ship by 2015-2020, some timeframe like that. With eventual (as in, they had no idea where it would be truly technically possible) to have a 64MJ rail gun.
 
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