nuclear weapons testing in space?

[Guardsman Bass]

There's a test ban treaty for both above and below ground nuclear tests on Earth, and (I think) Sea Skimmer has pointed out that this means we have less and less certainty about whether any of our nuclear weapons will actually work in the unfortunate chance that they might be called upon.

But could you do useful nuclear weapons testing in space, in a way that would confirm the weapons' usefulness on Earth? I'm not talking about Low Earth Orbit in the way the Starfish test was done - I'm thinking more along the lines of sending the weapons 100,000 to 200,000 kilometers out and detonating them, while having sensors farther down in a lower orbit to record the detonations.

[Terralthra]

That would break treaties on weapons use in space, as well as not being too great an idea for a couple practical reasons. For one, detonating a few hundred kilometers out will still seed the atmosphere with radionuclides, since Earth's gravity still dominates that volume of space. Second, as recent supply launches for the ISS demonstrate, rockets to space fail reasonably often. Doing so with people or supplies aboard is bad enough. Doing so with nuclear weapons aboard is potentially catastrophic.

[Zixinus]

Wouldn't nuclear weapon detonations also potentially damage satellites?

[Guardsman Bass]

That's why I said going out pretty far in my OP - 100,000 kilometers to 200,000 kilometers. That would put you out almost as far as the Moon, well beyond satellites being used in LEO and GEO.

[Simon_Jester]

As noted, the treaty banning weapons in space predates the treaties banning tests on the ground. So far, we have made "space is not for firing weapons, not to be used as a place to park dangerous weapons, or otherwise militarized" a pretty hard-and-fast rule, with the only possible violation I can think of being the 20mm cannon on a few of the Salyut stations.

It is NOT worth breaking that if there are easier ways to achieve any given result.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 is a relatively recent ban on what would otherwise be widely accepted use of underground testing.

[Welf]

There's a test ban treaty for both above and below ground nuclear tests on Earth, and (I think) Sea Skimmer has pointed out that this means we have less and less certainty about whether any of our nuclear weapons will actually work in the unfortunate chance that they might be called upon.

But could you do useful nuclear weapons testing in space, in a way that would confirm the weapons' usefulness on Earth? I'm not talking about Low Earth Orbit in the way the Starfish test was done - I'm thinking more along the lines of sending the weapons 100,000 to 200,000 kilometers out and detonating them, while having sensors farther down in a lower orbit to record the detonations.

Isn't that a good thing? if you don't know if your nuclear weapons work you are less inclined to use them and resolve issues peacefully. And at the same time you can't just attack your enemy, because theirs might actually work.

[orbitingpluto]

The burst of radioactivity would disrupt not only regular communications satellites, but also scientific sats as well, even if the explosion happens really far out. With so much expensive and useful equipment operating in space owned by so many governments and companies, any of whom with a line of sight to the test bound to affected to one degree or another, NIMBY-ism probably would strike nearly as hard up there as it would down on Earth. That is if there weren't already treaties forbidding nuclear testing up there anyway.

Also, besides at or below GEO, your test could also affect satellites at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, or sats orbiting the Moon.

I want to say something about that space cannon and the space station that had it, but to make it easy to ignore, it's spoiler boxed:Spoiler

Although flown with the Salyut name, the stations with the 20mm modified aircraft cannon wasn't Salyuts at all. Developed for the military using a different hardware(and different hulls) and using different communications frequencies(the reason Western satellite watchers where quick to identify them as different than the civilian Salyut), they probably should be called by their military code name of Almaz.

Anyway, the neat thing about these cannons was that they weren't for offense, but instead defense against Americans coming over for who knows what. The Air Force at the time of development was planing for their MOL military station, trying to rope in on NASA's Gemini or at least get their own version, and was fielding proposals like the one from Grumman about adding an arm to the LM and making a space interceptor/inspector out of it. With the Gemini program showing that the Americans were capable of real world rendezvous, worrying about secret American guests showing up to the military space station seems reasonable from the paranoid perspective of the Soviet military, after all, who wants to be the general holding the bag when the the secret American space fighter does show up and say, spray paint on the station's optics? Mechanically, the gun isn't so cool and in terms of use it's doubtful(it caused the station to vibrate badly enough in unmanned tests that it wasn't fired with a crew onboard) but I think despite that it's interesting from the perspective of why it was approved anyway.

The Almaz itself was similar in that respect too, being not just an outgrowth of seeing what military use a space station would have, but also given a firm kick towards flight by reactions to Americans looking to do their own military station. I could go on and on, but it's further off topic. Russian Space Web has a section on Almaz, and I recommend it.

[dragon]

The highest nuclear detonation was 400km (240 miles).

On July 9, 1962, the US launched a Thor missile from Johnston island, an atoll about 1500 kilometers (900 miles) southwest of Hawaii. The missile arced up to a height of over 1100 km (660 miles), then came back down. At the preprogrammed height of 400 km (240 miles), just seconds after 09:00 UTC, the 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead detonated.

link

Also the emp effects were greater that anticipated, causing electrical probles hundreds of miles away and damaging 6 satellites. There are alot more satellites today so more would be affected.

e strength of the pulse was so huge that it affected the flow of electricity on the Earth hundreds of kilometers away! In Hawaii it blew out hundreds of streetlights, and caused widespread telephone outages. Other effects included electrical surges on airplanes and radio blackouts.

The EMP had been predicted by scientists, but the Starfish Prime pulse was far larger than expected. And there was another effect that hadn’t been predicted accurately. Many of the electrons from the blast didn’t fall down into the Earth’s atmosphere, but instead lingered in space for months, trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, creating an artificial radiation belt high above our planet’s surface.

When a high-speed electron hits a satellite, it can generate a sort-of miniature EMP. The details are complex, but the net effect is that these electrons can zap satellites and damage their electronics. The pulse of electrons from the Starfish Prime detonation damaged at least six satellites (including one Soviet bird), all of which eventually failed due to the blast.

link
The space station which is between 370 and 460km. link

[Pelranius]

There's a test ban treaty for both above and below ground nuclear tests on Earth, and (I think) Sea Skimmer has pointed out that this means we have less and less certainty about whether any of our nuclear weapons will actually work in the unfortunate chance that they might be called upon.

But could you do useful nuclear weapons testing in space, in a way that would confirm the weapons' usefulness on Earth? I'm not talking about Low Earth Orbit in the way the Starfish test was done - I'm thinking more along the lines of sending the weapons 100,000 to 200,000 kilometers out and detonating them, while having sensors farther down in a lower orbit to record the detonations.

Well, I don't know how much data the sensors in a lower orbit (you mean GEO?) could gather from the deep sea nuke test (though you probably could get around that by placing the sensors as close as possible without said sensors getting fried by the radiation).

[dragon]

There's a test ban treaty for both above and below ground nuclear tests on Earth, and (I think) Sea Skimmer has pointed out that this means we have less and less certainty about whether any of our nuclear weapons will actually work in the unfortunate chance that they might be called upon.

But could you do useful nuclear weapons testing in space, in a way that would confirm the weapons' usefulness on Earth? I'm not talking about Low Earth Orbit in the way the Starfish test was done - I'm thinking more along the lines of sending the weapons 100,000 to 200,000 kilometers out and detonating them, while having sensors farther down in a lower orbit to record the detonations.

Well, I don't know how much data the sensors in a lower orbit (you mean GEO?) could gather from the deep sea nuke test (though you probably could get around that by placing the sensors as close as possible without said sensors getting fried by the radiation).

Well LEO (low earth orbit) is from 180km-2000km), MEO (mi earth orbit) is 200km-35,780km and GEO (geosynchronous orbit) is 35,780km.
100,000km to 200,000km is a good portion of the way to the moon as the moon is 238,900km away.

[Adam Reynolds]

What is currently being done is known as subcritical testing. By detonating conventional explosives next to subcritical masses of uranium or plutonium, one can determine the characteristics of their overall quality and thus attempt to model how they would detonate.

Though recent events with the US Air Force nuclear community clearly show that few really consider the weapons likely to ever be used anyway. That never ends badly.

[Pelranius]

Well LEO (low earth orbit) is from 180km-2000km), MEO (mi earth orbit) is 200km-35,780km and GEO (geosynchronous orbit) is 35,780km.
100,000km to 200,000km is a good portion of the way to the moon as the moon is 238,900km away.

That's be interesting if you put the test sensors on the Moon, then.