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fighterace00 t1_j90ceq8 wrote

Reply to comment by HolyGig in Where does space really begin? Chinese spy balloon highlights legal fuzziness of ‘near space’ by HarpuasGhost

So your argument is national boundaries should be completely dependent on surveillance methods.

Why not make overflights valid in that case? Orbital or not has no bearing on surveillance ability. Why did it be different monitoring at 50 feet or 60,000 feet or 400,000 feet?

Because of the ability to shoot it down? Russians couldn't touch our U2's for 5 years and could probably fly over Cuba to this day. We've shot a missile from an F15. The only thing stopping satellites from shooting each other is a weak treaty and the definition of space. Maybe that's the crux of the issue then, the definition of space where we can uphold a treaty, not what distances are technically unlikely to be used force against. Once we start shooting satellites down the new definition of political space would be Lagrange points and solar orbits.

The point isn't to define boundaries based on current tech but to draw a line in the sand internationally where we will no longer engage in violence. China and Russia have already made it clear multiple times they have little respect for "international" agreements.

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HolyGig t1_j90dsw0 wrote

National boundaries are dependent on being on Earth. Each country has its airspace and whatever above that is mostly fair game, which practically speaking means satellites almost exclusively.

Orbit is protected because we all require satellites to function if we want modern life to function. That includes Russia, China and everyone else too. If you trash MEO or GEO it will be trashed for decades if not centuries. Frankly it makes some sense for everyone to not be completely in the dark on the capabilities of everyone else anyways and regulating surveillance from orbit is basically impossible

So those are the limits everyone has de facto agreed with whether there's a specific treaty outlining it or not. Nobody would be playing with balloons if they didn't produce better intelligence in some capacity. SIGINT is the most obvious.

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