Latest news with #SDI
The Hindu
3 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Student teams vie with each other at Solar Decathlon India
A student team from BMS college of Architecture, Design and Planning and BMS College of Engineering won the grand prize at Solar Decathlon India (SDI), an annual competition for undergraduate and postgraduate students to develop innovative, net-zero energy-water and climate resilient solutions for the building sector in India. During the finals of SDI held at Infosys' campus in Mysuru, six student teams, which had been declared winners in their respective divisions, were challenged to 'make' solutions that improve cooling performance in existential residential buildings. The six teams pitched their solutions to a grand jury, and team Anvaya, led by BMS College of Architecture, Design and Planning, with BMS College of Engineering as their partner institution, won the grand prize for proposing the most promising and investment-worthy design, said a statement here. The grand jury said that the team provided a versatile solution of modular systems at very affordable costs, driving net-zero targets, the statement said. The event began on May 23 with student presentations to the jury. These were followed by the Climate Smart Innovation Exhibition, where innovators from the building industry displayed products and solutions addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation. The exhibition was followed by pitch presentations the jury comprising Aiyappa Somayanda - chief business officer, Brigade REAP, Guruprakash Sastry - AVP and head – Climate Action, Infosys, Hari Prasad Hegde - Founding Partner, Edhina Capital, Harleen Oberoi - senior VP and head – Project Management, Tata Realty & Infrastructure Ltd. & Tata Housing Development Company Ltd., Johann Fernandes - co-founder, climateXcapital, Priyank Garg - managing partner, IAN Alpha fund, and Sunita Purushottam - head of sustainability and CSR, Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd. and chair, GBPN Board. Subsequently, Lambert Technovation Pvt. Ltd. was declared winner of the Climate Smart Innovation Award 2025. 'Their modular, chemical-free reactor transforms wastewater treatment for buildings & beyond—boosting sustainability in the built environment', the statement said. On May 25, 2024, Solar Decathlon India (SDI) held its career fair where leading organisations working on climate change and net-zero buildings interacted with the best and brightest minds to offer them internship and early career opportunities. Infosys, which hosted the three-day finals event pro bono, also ensured that the entire event was carbon neutral, according to the statement. Solar Decathlon India is conducted by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) under the aegis of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). It is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. The 2024-25 challenge featured 175 teams comprising more than 2,100 students from 150 academic institutions. At the finals, over 50 organisations offered internships and early career opportunities to the SDI finalists, the statement said.
Mint
6 days ago
- Business
- Mint
US' Golden Dome missile shield: Pete Hegseth rebuts China's ‘space militarization' accusations
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth firmly denied China's assertions that the Golden Dome missile defense project would militarize space. Speaking to Fox News Digital while leaving Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Hegseth said, 'All we care about is protecting the homeland.' Hegseth emphasised that the Golden Dome project is aimed at safeguarding the US against emerging missile threats rather than escalating conflict. Chinese Foreign Minister Mao Ning criticised the project this week, accusing it of having a 'strong offensive nature' that violates the Outer Space Treaty's principles of peaceful use. Mao warned, 'The project will heighten the risk of turning space into a war zone and creating a space arms race and shake the international security and arms control system.' China urged Washington to abandon the initiative to prevent destabilising global security. Russia's response was more measured. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, acknowledged 'serious concern' but dismissed the need for panic. A Kremlin spokesperson noted that Golden Dome could 'force talks between Moscow and Washington about nuclear arms control in the foreseeable future,' hinting at diplomatic engagement over the new system. President Donald Trump, along with Hegseth, unveiled the ambitious Golden Dome plan, estimating it will cost $175 billion and take three years to complete. The system intends to counter advanced missile threats from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and non-state actors. Trump described Golden Dome as a 'generational investment' critical to his 'America First' defense policy. The multilayered shield will include ground- and space-based interceptors capable of destroying missiles during all four stages of an attack — from launch detection to terminal interception. 'This is about protecting American lives,' Trump stated, noting the system's expected completion by the end of his term in 2029. Key contractors likely to contribute include SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and RTX Corp. SpaceX's involvement is notable given CEO Elon Musk's close ties to Trump. However, funding remains uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed an initial $25 billion investment within a broader $150 billion defense package. Yet, this is tied to a reconciliation bill facing significant opposition in Congress. Golden Dome revives elements of Ronald Reagan's Cold War-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), famously dubbed 'Star Wars.' While SDI never materialised due to technological and treaty challenges, Golden Dome seeks to address new missile threats with advanced technology. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed discussions with the US about joining Golden Dome, highlighting Canada's interest in missile defense. 'Is it a good idea for Canada? Yes, it is good to have protections in place for Canadians,' Carney said. He added that Canada faces potential missile threats 'in the not-too-distant future' and stressed that cooperation with the US will be evaluated carefully. 'We cooperate if necessary but not necessarily cooperate,' Carney noted, reflecting a cautious approach to the traditionally close Canada-US defense partnership.
Asia Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- Asia Times
The many holes in Trump's Golden Dome
The Trump administration's recent announcement of a 'Golden Dome' strategic missile defense shield to protect the US is the most ambitious such project since President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of the 1980s. The SDI program – better known by its somewhat mocking nickname of 'Star Wars' – sparked a heated debate over its technical feasibility. Ultimately, it would never become operational. But do we now have the technologies to realize the Golden Dome shield – or is this initiative similarly destined to be shelved? A completed Golden Dome missile defense shield would supposedly defend the US against the full spectrum of air and missile threats, including long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and those with shorter ranges, any of which could be armed with nuclear warheads. But Golden Dome would also aim to work against cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons such as boost-glide vehicles, which use a rocket to reach hypersonic speeds (more than five times the speed of sound) before continuing their trajectory unpowered. The missile defense shield could theoretically also protect against warheads placed in space that can be commanded to re-enter the atmosphere and destroy targets on Earth, known as fractional orbital bombardment systems. Ballistic missiles arguably pose the biggest threat because of the sheer numbers in the hands of other nuclear-armed nations. ICBMs follow a three-phase trajectory: the boost, midcourse and terminal phases. The boost phase consists of a few minutes of powered flight as the missile's rocket engines propel it into space. In the midcourse phase, the missile travels unpowered through space for about 20-25 minutes. Finally, during the terminal phase, the missile re-enters the atmosphere and hits the target. Plans for the Golden Dome are likely to involve defensive weapons that target ballistic missiles during all three phases of their trajectory. Boost-phase missile defence is attractive because it would only require shooting down a single target. During the midcourse phase, the ballistic missile will deploy its warhead – the section that includes the explosive charge – but could also release several decoy warheads. Even with the best radar systems, discriminating between the real warhead from the decoys is incredibly difficult. One part of the Golden Dome will involve targeting ballistic missiles during their boost phase. US Air Force However, there are big questions over the technical feasibility of targeting ballistic missiles during their boost phase – and there is also a limited time window, given that this phase is relatively short. The weapons platforms designed to target a ballistic missile in its boost phase could consist of a large satellite in low-Earth orbit, armed with multiple small missiles called interceptors. An interceptor could be deployed if a nuclear-armed ballistic missile is launched at the US. One study conducted by the American Physical Society suggested that, under generous assumptions, a space-based interceptor platform might be able to destroy a target from 530 miles (850km) away. This measure is known as the weapon's 'kill radius.' Even with a kill radius of this size, a space-based interceptor system would require hundreds or even thousands of satellites, each armed with small missiles to achieve effective regional coverage. It might be possible to get around this constraint, though, by using directed-energy weapons such as powerful lasers or even particle beam weapons, which use high-energy beams of atomic or subatomic particles. A critical vulnerability of such a system, however, is that an adversary could use anti-satellite weapons – missiles launched from the ground – or other offensive actions such as cyberattacks to destroy or disable some of the interceptor satellites. This could establish a temporary corridor for an adversary's ballistic missile to pass through. An idea for a space-based boost-phase defense system called Brilliant Pebbles was proposed towards the end of the 1980s. Rather than having large satellites with multiple missiles, it entailed having around 1,000 small individual missiles in orbit. It would have also used about 60 orbiting sensors called Brilliant Eyes to detect launches. Brilliant Pebbles was cancelled by President Bill Clinton's administration in 1994. But it provides another template for technologies that could be used by Golden Dome. Options for destroying ballistic missiles during the midcourse of their trajectories include existing weapons systems such as the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system and the US Navy's ship-based Aegis platform. Unlike midcourse-phase missile defense (which must cover a large geographical area), terminal-phase interception is a last line of defense. It usually involves destroying incoming warheads that have re-entered the atmosphere from space. A plan for destroying single warheads during the terminal trajectory phase could use future versions of existing weapons platforms, such as the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 Missile Segment Enhancement or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. However, while there has been progress in this technology in the decades since Star Wars was proposed, the debate continues over whether these systems work effectively. Ultimately, it is the huge costs, as well as political opposition, that could pose the biggest hurdles to implementing an effective Golden Dome system. Trump's proposal has revived the idea of missile defense in the US. But it remains unclear whether its most ambitious components will ever be realized. Jack O'Doherty is a PhD Candidate in nuclear strategy, University of Leicester This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
India Today
23-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Donald Trump's Golden Dome plan could launch new era of weapons in space
US President Donald Trump's Golden Dome missile defense concept revives a controversial, decades-old initiative whose ambitious construction could upend norms in outer space and reshape relations between the world's top space announcement of Golden Dome, a vast network of satellites and weapons in Earth's orbit set to cost $175 billion, could sharply escalate the militarization of space, a trend that has intensified over the last decade, space analysts the world's biggest space powers - the US, Russia and China - have put military and intelligence assets in orbit since the 1960s, they have done so mostly in secrecy. Under former President Joe Biden, U.S. Space Force officials had grown vocal about a need for greater offensive space capabilities due to space-based threats from Russia and China. When Trump announced his Golden Dome plan in January, it was a clear shift in strategy. (Photo: Reuters) When Trump announced his Golden Dome plan in January, it was a clear shift in strategy, one that emphasizes a bold move into space with expensive, untested technology that could be a financial boon to U.S. defense concept includes space-based missiles that would launch from satellites in orbit to intercept conventional and nuclear missiles launched from Earth."I think it's opening a Pandora's box," said Victoria Samson, director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation think tank in Washington,referring to deploying missiles in space. "We haven't truly thought about the long-term consequences for doing so," she and other experts said Golden Dome could provoke other states to place similar systems in space or to develop more advanced weapons to evade the missile shield, escalating an arms race in Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for and China reacted differently to the latest news from Trump. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it was "seriously concerned" about the project and urged Washington to abandon its development, adding that it carried "strong offensive implications" and heightened the risks of the militarization of outer space and an arms race.A Kremlin spokesperson said Golden Dome could force talks between Moscow and Washington about nuclear arms control in the foreseeable seeking to defend against a growing arsenal of conventional and nuclear missiles from U.S. adversaries Russia, China and smaller states such as North Korea and Iran, the Golden Dome plan is a revival of a Cold War-era effort by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as the "Star Wars" program. SDI envisioned stationing a constellation of missiles and powerful laser weapons in low-Earth orbit that could intercept a ballistic nuclear missile launched anywhere on Earth below, either in its boost phase moments after launch or in its blazing-fast cruise phase in the idea never came to fruition mainly because of technological hurdles, as well as the high cost and concerns it would violate an anti-ballistic missile treaty that has since been abandoned.'WE'RE READY'Golden Dome has strong and powerful allies in the defense contracting community and the growing defense technology arena, many of whom have been preparing for Trump's big move into space weaponry."We knew that this day was likely going to come. You know, we're ready for it," L3Harris Chief Financial Officer Ken Bedingfield said in an interview with Reuters last month."L3 Harris has an early start of building the sensor network that will become the foundational sensor network for the Golden Dome architecture." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth make an announcement at the White House in Washington. (Photo: Reuters) advertisementTrump ally Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner alongside software firm Palantir (PLTR.O), opens new tab and drone maker Anduril to build key components of the system, Reuters reported last of the early systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Attendees at the White House press conference with Trump on Tuesday named L3Harris, Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab and RTX Corp (RTX.N), opens new tab as potential contractors for the massive Golden Dome's funding remains uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed a $25 billion initial investment for it as part of a broader $150 billion defense package, but this funding is tied to a contentious reconciliation bill that faces significant hurdles in Reel
Scientific American
22-05-2025
- Business
- Scientific American
Why Some Experts Call Trump's ‘Golden Dome' Missile Shield a Dangerous Fantasy
During a briefing from the Oval Office this week, President Donald Trump revealed his administration's plan for 'Golden Dome'—an ambitious high-tech system meant to shield the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile attacks launched by foreign adversaries. Flanked by senior officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the project's newly selected leader, Gen. Michael Guetlein of the U.S. Space Force, Trump announced that Golden Dome will be completed within three years at a cost of $175 billion. The program, which was among Trump's campaign promises, derives its name from the Iron Dome missile defense system of Israel—a nation that's geographically 400 times smaller than the U.S. Protecting the vastness of the U.S. demands very different capabilities than those of Iron Dome, which has successfully shot down rockets and missiles using ground-based interceptors. Most notably, Trump's Golden Dome would need to expand into space—making it a successor to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) pursued by the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Better known by the mocking nickname 'Star Wars,' SDI sought to neutralize the threat from the Soviet Union's nuclear-warhead-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles by using space-based interceptors that could shoot them down midflight. But fearsome technical challenges kept SDI from getting anywhere close to that goal, despite tens of billions of dollars of federal expenditures. 'We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,' Trump said during the briefing. Although the announcement was short on technical details, Trump also said Golden Dome 'will deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors.' The program, which Guetlein has compared to the scale of the Manhattan Project in past remarks, has been allotted $25 billion in a Republican spending bill that has yet to pass in Congress. But Golden Dome may ultimately cost much more than Trump's staggering $175-billion sum. An independent assessment by the Congressional Budget Office estimates its price tag could be as high as $542 billion, and the program has drawn domestic and international outcries that it risks sparking a new, globe-destabilizing arms race and weaponizing Earth's fragile orbital environment. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. To get a better sense of what's at stake—and whether Golden Dome has a better chance of success than its failed forebears— Scientific American spoke with Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. [ An edited transcript of the interview follows.] It's been a while, but when last I checked, most experts considered this sort of plan a nonstarter because the U.S. is simply too big of a target. Has something changed? Well, yes and no. The killer argument against space-based interceptors in the 1980s was that it would take thousands of them, and there was just no way to put up that many satellites. Today that's no longer true. SpaceX alone has put up 7,000 Starlink satellites. Launch costs are much cheaper now, and there are more launch vehicles available. So, for the first time, you can say, 'Oh, well, I could have a 7,000-satellite constellation. Do I want to do that?' Whereas, when the Reagan administration was talking about this, it was just la-la land. But let's be clear: this does not solve all the other problems with the general idea—or the Golden Dome version in particular. What are some of those other problems? Just talking about space-based interceptors, there are a couple [of issues that] my colleagues and I have pointed out. We ran some numbers using the old SDI-era calculation from [SDI physicists] Ed Teller and Greg Canavan—so we couldn't be accused of using some hippie version of the calculation, right? And what this and other independent assessments show is that the number of interceptors you need is super-duper sensitive to lots of things. For instance, it's not like this is a 'one satellite to one missile' situation—because the physics demands that these satellites ... have to be in low-Earth orbit, and that means they're going to be constantly moving over different parts of the planet. So if you want to defend against just one missile, you still need a whole constellation. And if you want to defend against two missiles, then you basically need twice as many interceptors, and so on. You probably have to shoot down missiles during the boost phase, when the warheads are still attached. For SDI, the U.S. was dealing with Soviet liquid-fueled missiles that would boost, or burn, for about four minutes. Well, modern ones burn for less than three—that's a whole minute that you no longer have. This is actually much worse than it sounds because you're probably unable to shoot for the first minute or so. Even with modern detectors [that are] much better than [those] we had in the 1980s, you may not see the missile until it rises above the clouds. And once it does, your sensors, your computers, still have to say, 'Aha! That is a missile!' And then you have to ensure that you're not shooting down some ordinary space launch—so the system says, 'I see a missile. May I shoot at it, please?' And someone or something has to give the go-ahead. So let's just say you'll have a good minute to shoot it down; this means your space-based interceptor has to be right there, ready to go, right? But by the time you're getting permission to shoot, the satellite that was overhead to do that is now too far away, and so the next satellite has to be coming there. This scales up really, really fast. Presumably artificial intelligence and other technologies could be leveraged to make that sort of command and control more agile and responsive. But clearly there are still limits here—AI can't be some sort of panacea. Sure, that's right. But technological progress overall hasn't made the threat environment better. Instead it's gotten much worse. Let's get back to the sheer physics-induced numbers for a moment, which AI can't really do much about. That daunting scaling I mentioned also depends on the quality of your interceptors, your kill vehicles—which, by the way, are still going to be grotesquely expensive even if launch costs are low. If your interceptors can rapidly accelerate to eight or 10 kilometers per second (km/s), your constellation can be smaller. If they only reach 4 km/s, your constellation has to be huge. The point is: any claim that you can do this with relatively low numbers—let's say 2,000 interceptors—assumes a series of improbable miracles occurring in quick succession to deliver the very best outcome that could possibly happen. So it's not going to happen that way, even if, in principle, it could. So you're telling me there's a chance! No, seriously, I see what you mean. The arguments in favor of this working seem rather contrived. No system is perfect, and just one missile getting through can still have catastrophic results. And we haven't even talked about adversarial countermeasures yet. There's a joke that's sometimes made about this: 'We play chess, and they don't move their pieces.' That seems to be the operative assumption here: that other nations will sit idly by as we build a complex, vulnerable system to nullify any strategic nuclear capability they have. And of course, it's not valid at all. Why do you think the Chinese are building massive fields of missile silos? It's to counteract or overwhelm this sort of thing. Why do you think the Russians are making moves to put a nuclear weapon in orbit? It's to mass kill any satellite constellation that would shoot down their missiles. Golden Dome proponents may say, 'Oh, we'll shoot that down, too, before it goes off.' Well, good luck. You put a high-yield nuclear weapon on a booster, and the split second it gets above the clouds, sure, you might see it—but now it sees you, too, before you can shoot. All it has to do at that point is detonate to blow a giant hole in your defenses, and that's game over. And by the way, this rosy scenario assumes your adversaries don't interfere with all your satellites passing over their territory in peacetime. We know that won't be the case—they'll light them up with sensor-dazzling lasers, at minimum! You've compared any feasible space-based system to Starlink and noted that, similar to Starlink, these interceptors will need to be in low-Earth orbit. That means their orbits will rapidly decay from atmospheric drag, so just like Starlink's satellites, they'd need to be constantly replaced, too, right? Ha, yes, that's right. With Starlink, you're looking at a three-to-five-year life cycle, which means annually replacing one third to one fifth of a let's say Golden Dome is 10,000 satellites; this would mean the best-case scenario is that you're replacing 2,000 per year. Now, let's just go along with what the Trump administration is saying, that they can get these things really cheap. I'm going to guess a 'really cheap' mass-produced kill vehicle would still run you $20 million a pop, easily. Just multiply $20 million by 2,000, and your answer is $40 billion. So under these assumptions, we'd be spending $40 billion per year just to maintain the constellation. That's not even factoring in operations. And that's not to mention associated indirect costs from potentially nasty effects on the upper atmosphere and the orbital environment from all the launches and reentries. That, yes—among many other costly things. I have to ask: If fundamental physics makes this extremely expensive idea blatantly incapable of delivering on its promises, what's really going on when the U.S. president and the secretary of defense announce their intention to pump $175 billion into it for a three-year crash program? Some critics claim this kind of thing is really about transferring taxpayer dollars to a few big aerospace companies and other defense contractors. Well, I wouldn't say it's quite that simple. Ballistic missile defense is incredibly appealing to some people for reasons besides money. In technical terms, it's an elegant solution to the problem of nuclear annihilation—even though it's not really feasible. For some people, it's just cool, right? And at a deeper level, many people just don't like the concept of deterrence—mutually assured destruction and all that—because, remember, the status quo is this: If Russia launches 1,000 nuclear weapons at us—or 100 or 10 or even just one—then we are going to murder every single person in Russia with an immediate nuclear counterattack. That's how deterrence works. We're not going to wait for those missiles to land so we can count up our dead to calibrate a more nuanced response. That's official U.S. policy, and I don't think anyone wants it to be this way forever. But it's arguably what's prevented any nuclear exchange from occurring to date. But not everyone believes in the power of deterrence, and so they're looking for some kind of technological escape. I don't think this fantasy is that different from Elon Musk thinking he's going to go live on Mars when climate change ruins Earth: In both cases, instead of doing the really hard things that seem necessary to actually make this planet better, we're talking about people who think they can just buy their way out of the problem. A lot of people—a lot of men, especially—really hate vulnerability, and this idea that you can just tech your way out of it is very appealing to them. You know, 'Oh, what vulnerability? Yeah, there's an app for that.' You're saying this isn't about money? Well, I imagine this is going to be good for at least a couple of SpaceX Falcon Heavy or Starship launches per year for Elon Musk. And you don't have to do too many of those launches for the value proposition to work out: You build and run Starlink, you put up another constellation of space-based missile defense interceptors, and suddenly you've got a viable business model for these fancy huge rockets that can also take you to Mars, right? Given your knowledge of science history—of how dispassionate physics keeps showing space-based ballistic missile defense is essentially unworkable, yet the idea just keeps coming back—how does this latest resurgence make you feel? When I was younger, I would have been frustrated, but now I just accept human beings don't learn. We make the same mistakes over and over again. You have to laugh at human folly because I do think most of these people are sincere, you know. They're trying to get rich, sure, but they're also trying to protect the country, and they're doing it through ways they think about the world—which admittedly are stupid. But, hey, they're trying. It's very disappointing, but if you just laugh at them, they're quite amusing. I think most people would have trouble laughing about something as devastating as nuclear war—or about an ultraexpensive plan to protect against it that's doomed to failure and could spark a new arms race. I guess if you're looking for a hopeful thought, it's that we've tried this before, and it didn't really work, and that's likely to happen again. So how do you think it will actually play out this time around? I think this will be a gigantic waste of money that collapses under its own weight. They'll put up a couple of interceptors, and they'll test those against a boosting ballistic missile, and they'll eventually get a hit. And they'll use that to justify putting up more, and they'll probably even manage to make a thin constellation—with the downside, of course, being that the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans and everybody else will make corresponding investments in ways to kill this system. And then it will start to really feel expensive, in part because it will be complicating and compromising things like Starlink and other commercial satellite constellations—which, I'd like to point out, are almost certainly uninsured in orbit because you can't insure against acts of war. So think about that: if the Russians or anyone else detonate a nuclear weapon in orbit because of something like Golden Dome, Elon Musk's entire constellation is dead, and he's probably just out the cash. The fact is: these days we rely on space-based assets much more than most people realize, yet Earth orbit is such a fragile environment that we could muck it up in many different ways that carry really nasty long-term consequences. I worry about that a lot. Space used to be a benign environment, even throughout the entire cold war, but having an arms race there will make it malign. So Golden Dome is probably going to make everyone's life a little bit more dangerous—at least until we, hopefully, come to our senses and decide to try something different.
