T2K in space

[RN7]

As part of my ongoing write up about Germany in T2K I've touched on the low level space race that existed in the 1990's. Does anyone think the militarisation of space is feasible in the T2K setting of this time period?

The period had all the right ingredients for it. Renewed East-West rivalry and large funding available for prestige and one-upmanship projects. At the time space stations, and manned reusable and rocket launched spacecraft existed. There were ongoing US, Soviet, Chinese and European military satellite programmes, as well as the US military SDI and ASAT programmes and the lesser known Soviet ones.

The Soviet Mir space station was in orbit at the time (1986-1996). The Soviet planned to replace it with the larger Mir-2 space station in the 1990's, and the US was planning the even larger Freedom space station. Both stations were eventually cancelled and were morphed into the current International Space Station.

The US Space Shuttle programme produced the Columbia (Destroyed in 2003), Challenger (Destroyed in 1986), Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, as well as the never flown Enterprise. I've always been partial to the USAF taking control of the Enterprise and rebuilding it for military flights into orbit. The rival Soviet Space Shuttle produced the Buran which was flown unmanned in 1988. If the USSR hadn't broken up I'm sure the Soviets would have used it for manned flights, and the Ptichka was over 95% complete when the Soviet shuttle programme was cancelled. The Soviets/Russians maintained a rocket launched manned spacecraft programme throughout the period but who knows what might have been? The US DoD and NASA were working on a number of Space Shuttle replacements at the time and the European Space Agency (France) was also tinkering with the Hermes Spaceplane project, and the British were (and still are) working on air-breathing spaceplanes. I'm sure the USAF and Soviet Air Force had some ideas about space marines on shuttles and space stations.

The USA, USSR, China, France, Israel and Japan were all launching military imagery and SIGINT spy satellites at the time, while Britain, Italy and West Germany had the technology to build them, and India, Iran, South Korea and Turkey had plans to launch them.

Someone brought up the USAF ASM-135 ASAT programme a few years ago stating that there was a real possibility it may have continued after its official cancellation as a Black Project. Certainly the US put a great deal of effort into SDI in the late 1980's and 1990's. The current Space Based Infrared System programme owes its origins to this period. Space based energy weapons such as X-ray lasers, chemical lasers, particle beams and rail guns may have been a bit too far fetched, but the Brilliant Pebbles space based interceptor with a kinetic warhead projectiles, and the ground based Homing Overlay Experiment had a lot of promise. I've always wanted to fit the YAL-1 airborne laser onto a space shuttle in orbit and see what happens!

From the late 1960's the Soviets developed a fractional orbital bombardment system from an ICBM, and secretly deployed a regiment of them until it was deactivated in 1983 as part of the SALT II treaty. The Salyut 3 space station in the 1970's was fitted with a 23mm canon, and the Terra-3 Shuttle attack rumour about a ground based laser in Sary Shagan targeting the Challenger in 1984 is still a popular story. The Soviets did develop a prototype laser pistol for cosmonauts and armed cosmonauts with a triple barrelled TP-82 pistols.