Starlink launches forty-ish Starlink sats every other week, Russia could deplete it’s entire arsenal of missiles and, if they’re lucky, cause a hole in their coverage.
And we even made a whole movie about Kessler syndrome :|
Enjoy spreading misinformation online? There are valid criticisms against LEO constellations but Kessler syndrome is not one of them
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Did you read the comment? It’s not about LEO satellites. It’s about a military arsenal destroying a fleet of LEO satellites. The satellites won’t do a Kessler, but a fleets worth of shrapnel would be a problem.
Which is exactly why Russia only needs a handful of rockets at most. You only need to make debris. The rest will sort itself out.
But that is a strategic capability, not a tactical one. It’s another form of MAD.
It’s another form of MAD.
Russia has nothing in that LEO orbit (that I’m aware of… I could be horrendously wrong). I don’t think there’s anything “mutually assured” here.
I’m pretty sure that starlink satellites are orders of magnitudes more expensive to manufacture and deploy than the weapons that can target them.
Really? You can put up 50 starlinks at a time for tens of millions of dollars, whereas asats need a more expensive an maneuverable kill vehicle and a launch for each one with lots more complicated targeting and maneuvering. It’s pretty hard to track and follow something down moving so fast through space and hit it. Plus Russia just doesn’t have the launch capacity to put up that much mass to orbit.
Not to mention that SpaceX has designed things so that they can piggyback starlink deployments on the back of other commercial launches. So, for example, AT&T pays them $25 million to launch a new telecom satellite, and they toss in another dozen or so starlink satellites along with it.
AT&T pays for the majority of the launch costs and starlink benefits from it.
How do you know that? You’re launching an entire rocket to kill one satellite, that can’t be cheap.
Yes, it is probably expensive, but a satellite is probably even more expensive, and not just by a little.
I don’t think it is… one of the satellites cost USD 250k in 2019. it is likely cheaper now.
There have been Anti Satellite Weapon tests (for example from China) to see if it is feasible. The cost for such an attack would be much much higher than 250k (we are talking multiple millions)
Hmm you made me think and if they use their reusable rockets tech and maybe some other similar things, it may be cheaper in the end because they save a lot of money in places where others don’t
They do have more equipment on them now, so it’s possible they’ve gone up in cost.
I doubt it, not at the rate they throw them up.
Maybe, but one of the best traits about Musk is he’s willing to throw money at this regardless of profit. So he’s gunna keep throwing up more of these satellites, while Russia’s rocket supply is only going to get harder to resupply for the foreseeable future.
Spy satellites have always been valid targets. I don’t think they’re any more likely to shoot these ones down than any of the others.
For real. This seems like something that threatens musk and space x more than anybody else. The CIA effectively has unlimited money to replace whatever Russia takes down, but musk needing to pay to replace satellites to maintain starlink will hurt his bottom line. I don’t think tin foil hat wearers would be all that unreasonable to make the assumption that this is a veiled threat to keep musk in line. I frequently hear the argument that “billionaires can’t be bought” but I believe the exact opposite. They care more about money than morals and ethics, and can therefore be coerced by it either through hurting their bottom line or rewarding them with more of it. A dragon’s hoard can never be too big for the dragon to accept more, and nothing hurts the drain more than reducing its hoard.
Musk supports Russia so what’s the play here
Can’t wait to hear about space X satellites falling out of a window.
I Fucking Love the same joke for 3 years straight!!!
Only 3? I thought we were closing on a decade with this joke now.
We’d stop, if the joke wasn’t relevant anymore.
But I doubt Putin will fall out of a window himself anytime soon.
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Hell yeah bitches!!
There are more sats than asat missiles. The math doesn’t work out. Unless they use nukes or shotgun blasts or something to make the entirety of leo unusable.
The math doesn’t work out.
You only need enough asat missiles to create enough debris. Kessler handles the rest.
Hense making the entirety of leo unusable
Eh, not for long. LEO everything falls eventually. HEO… that can take a long hot minute.
LEO we’re still talking the better part of a decade, especially the derbies that get kicked to higher altitudes by the collisions. It’s not as permanent as higher up, but it’s still a strategic level capability, not tactical.
The numbers I’ve heard for LEO are like 4-5 years. But that point is whatever.
Kessler’ing the LEO means it’s now harder to retaliate in HEO. It would be an easy win for Russia to knock out Starlink if the US government is actually relying on it in any meaningful capacity.
It sounds like they are using it as a backup for their geostationary sats which would be much higher resolution and data rate. But there aren’t as many of them, so they’re feasible to shoot down.
And also affects China and India, both nations that Russia relies on. Doubly on China who is developing their own LEO internet service.
They could just destroy enough in a given time and place to allow an attack or other ops to go through.
Don’t give them any ideas
It’s okay, Starlink is in a low enough orbit that it’s basically Kessler-proof.
Probably can use a nuke to take out a lot.
Asat are cheaper to manufacture and deploy than it is for a satellite.
Really? Where are you getting that info? This estimates a starlink costs about 1M to build and launch. The SM-3, the US asat missile, costs at least 10M each. I think it’s more for the asat variant, but I couldn’t find numbers for that. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-cost-for-Starlink-satellites-to-provide-high-speed-internet-across-the-United-States#:~:text=According to one source%2C the,be around %2415-30 billion. https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-defense-systems-2/missile-defense-systems/missile-interceptors-by-cost/
Blast Lonnie’s bullshit out of the sky and see if I care.
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Yeah. Targeting SpaceX might be less provocative than a DoD-operated satellite, but either way Russia would be crazy to do it.
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Win-win
On one hand, I really, really want those idiots in the Kremel to cause a Kessler Syndrome…(In theory it could also prevent ballistic missiles)
On the other hand, that would be quite bad for the rest of us.
Starlink birds fly too low for that, they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead.
I’d be worried about debris flung into steeply elliptical orbits, though. It wouldn’t take much to do some real damage to sats in higher orbits and once the cascade starts there’s not much we can do but wait decades for the worst of it to fall into the atmosphere.
Those steeply elliptical orbits would probably deorbit even quicker since a random impulse that boosts the apogee is likely to lower the perigee even more.
Kessler syndrome is only a threat to satellites that are orbiting within the debris, it’s not really a danger if you’re only passing through (as a ballistic missile would).
So…Goldeneye part 2?
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It is… for gonorrhea.
