STARSET_MirrorThe New Arms Race Threatening To Explode In Space
Part of what makes space such volatile terrain right now is that it’s hard even to apply the existing laws of war to it. No country can claim sovereignty in orbit, and it’s impossible to occupy territory there. So what counts as an act of territorial aggression? What qualifies as a proportional response? It’s even difficult to say, with certainty, what the physics of war in space will look like. We don’t well understand, for instance, how a kinetic attack on a satellite constellation might spill over into a spiraling Kessler effect.
现在太空地形如此多变的部分原因是，甚至很难将现有的战争法则应用到太空中。没有国家可以在轨道上声称主权，也不可能占领那里的领土。那么，什么算是领土侵略行为呢？什么符合比例反应？甚至很难说，太空战争的物理学会是什么样子。例如，我们不太清楚，对卫星星座的动能攻击如何可能演变为螺旋凯斯勒效应。
Humans have “millennia of experience in blowing up things on land,” says Laurie Blank, a law professor at Emory University and a specialist in the laws of armed conflict. “We’re still learning the consequences of all these things in space.”
埃默里大学法学教授、武装冲突法专家劳里·布兰克表示，人类“有数千年在陆地上引爆物品的经验”。“我们仍在学习太空中所有这些事情的后果。”
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