[mschuster91]

> These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it.

Well, it's not about debris, it's about the capability to sneak up to an enemy satellite and disrupt it without outright destroying it or making it look like a failure.

Shooting a satellite with a rocket ("ASAT") is easy enough - the US, China, Russia and India have proven that capability, and Israel likely has it as well. EMPs from nuclear blasts are another option. But either of that leaves undeniable traces (an EMP blast would likely fry a lot of stuff on the ground!) and the debris can endanger your own satellites as well, so you need something that acts in-space, preferably very difficult to observe from Earth. And something that can grab a dead satellite and drag it out of orbit can also just go and deposit a small explosive charge.

And at that point, 50 million euros are chump change to test that capability - if needed, replace the magnet/hook/whatever with a bomb and that's it.

[mgiampapa]

What's the X-37 cost again? $200M over 4 years of development?