GC055 Space Weapons

When the Chinese government demolished one of its aging weather satellites a few weeks ago, they did more than just test out a potentially useful technology. They also cluttered up low Earth orbit with a huge amount of debris, and stirred up a comparable amount of controversy in the press. While nobody is yet quite sure what the motivation behind the test was (to send a message to the White House? to start discussions on a new space treaty?), there's been no shortage of speculation on the subject. What hasn't received much attention is the history of this technology. So this episode is all about the history of efforts to militarize space.

You can listen to GC055 Space Weapons online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

GC055 Space Weapons is an episode from Geek Counterpoint -- Your antidote to soundbite science! by Lorne Ipsum.

This episode is 00:34:13 long.

This episode was published on Feb 10, 2007.

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