What Happens if a Nuclear Weapon Detonates in Space?

Um, could you, one of you, uh, start with maybe just a short description of what really motivated you to, you know, obviously pursue this line of, uh, research and writing and then kind of lead that towards-

towards-Uh, the impetus of the paper.

Sure.

So I would say there were, there were two motivations.

One was we had completed our book, Space Shock, and it was clear, you know, to the, the funder of, of those, of that project, um, that they were curious how we would explore a scenario, uh, based upon the, the new, um, revelation that Russia might be pursuing such a weapon.

On my end, it was very clear to me that even though I had had a hazy notion of this threat, um, I wasn't in a position to provide any kind of meaningful policy advice.

Um, and since I had had a pretty broad background in, in, you know, space and, uh, and its challenges, um, the fact that I didn't have a, a clear idea about what exactly this threat meant, what it would do, um, meant that I wasn't in a position, uh, to have a good, uh, conversation with policymakers.

And that made me suspect that very likely policymakers also had only a hazy notion about what the threat meant and what we would need to do about it.

And just to jump in, uh, and piggyback on what Peter was saying, when we're trying to think through what we're structuring for our next projects, you know, we spent two books advocating for why the U.S. should take a proactive approach to space as in the next Space Race.

And then the second book was on, uh, what happens if you don't take a proactive approach, and you sit back, and what happens? Now, the reality is we realize that the investments in space are, are really important, and we've already gotten down that path.

There's lots of, you know, companies that are mega constellations.

We use it for a lot of different resources.

The reality is a nuclear weapon detonation in space is a great equalizer, right? It could really wipe out everything.

So we really wanted to get a sense for what would happen if, if this, um, if this horrible event could take place.

Uh, it makes sense to write about it.

And, and if we're not prepared, what, what should we be doing? So that, that analysis just wasn't really out in the public domain, and we thought maybe we would be able to help contribute.

And again, it's not just a Rich Harrison, Peter Garretson show with this project.

We, we did a lot of, uh, wargaming with very senior people in different facets of the, uh, space community.

Excellent.

Um, so you know, it's not so much that our adversaries have to match us with what we're doing.