A aircraft carrier, but spatial. On calls Orbital Carrier, and is financed with 60 billion dollars from Spacewerx, the technological arm of the United States Space Force. It is an orbiting vehicle, just like a aircraft carrier in space, only that instead of planes it houses satellites that can be launched in orbit in case of need, for example if a spy satellite is destroyed or blinded by an enemy.
In this way, the US will greatly reduce the necessary times to send the satellites to orbit (to launch one it takes in particular weeks, between production, authorization and launch), which will already start from the Orbital Carrier. Which presumably must be assembled in low orbit (difficult to launch it in a single piece), between 500 and 1000 km altitude (perhaps using the Falcon Heavy or the Space X Starship).
The control of the Earth’s orbit is increasingly important on a strategic level, and has a precedent: in 2023 the “Victus Nox” mission had shown how the US could, in the event of an emergency, have a response time between the order and launch of a 27 -hour satellite. Certainly the US does not remain back in the defense, on the contrary, they do not mind at the expense.
Orbital Carrier will only be the first step of a long -term project for spatial supremacy. The idea is to build a real fleet of orbital carrier on different orbits (low, media and geosynchrona), with maneuverable bugs, spatial surveillance drones, systems replace the destroyed satellites.
Certainly the AI will also be implemented, and we think of “intelligent” satellites, which can act in absolute autonomy.
But we also think of the scenario that will open in twenty years when, according to the forecasts, we will have “colonized” the moon (perhaps a few years more, the forecasts are often optimistic also to obtain more funding): the Orbital Carrier can also be launched in lunar orbit (perhaps to protect the Elio-3 mines and industrial structures). In short, do you remember the famous show Spazio 1999, from 1975? The right date of about seventy years had made a mistake.