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If one way or another Starlink starts providing precise positioning data it will turn their satellites into a valid military target in case of a war. E.g. if Ch
by borissk 4y ago
If one way or another Starlink starts providing precise positioning data it will turn their satellites into a valid military target in case of a war. E.g. if China invaded Taiwan, they may take down the part of the constellation that passes over China (if they can cheaply mass produce and launch interceptors).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aredox 4y agoThey could easily saturate the whole LEO where starlink operates with schrapnel - and any damaged sat would add more schrapnel, as described by the "Kessler syndrome".
- baq 4y agoThere's nothing easy about what you propose. It requires launch capability similar to what SpaceX has, i.e. state of the art.
- shadowgovt 4y agoGiven that they have a working space station, I'm certain China has enough launch capability to make the Starlink orbit hell with several well-placed rockets undergoing very dirty disassembly in orbit. (In fact, among the things that makes that scenario less likely is the fact they have a space station and would like to keep visiting it without worrying about passing through a Kessler cloud).
- panick21_ 4y agoA space station doesn't mean you have a lot of launch capability. Its and its not clear how you standard rockets can easily be used as anti-sat weapons, and if that makes finical sense.
- soperj 4y agoUS had a working space station for over a decade without the ability to put people onto that space station.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThis is true, but seems irrelevant because China is self-crewing its station.
- ncallaway 4y agoA Kessler cloud would not persist in orbit at the altitude of Starlink satellites for very long. And building and maintaining a Kessler cloud at that altitude seems like it would be… not effective with just a handful of rockets due to the significant atmospheric drag. Kessler syndrome is a real concern, but only at higher altitudes where atmospheric drag is negligible.
- mlindner 4y ago> Given that they have a working space station, I'm certain China has enough launch capability to make the Starlink orbit hell with several well-placed rockets undergoing very dirty disassembly in orbit. Yes and their "working space station" is also below that orbit. So they'd need to blow up their own station as well. Also the international space station as well.
- audunw 4y agoThat would be quite dumb. Whatever you put in that orbit will decay within a few years. Given the current situation, USA/SpaceX is in a far better position to quickly repopulate LEO with satellites when the debris has fallen down. In that case, they may send up satellites armed with weapons that can shoot down anything being launched into orbit to create debris again. I don't think entering into that kind of conflict with USA is a winning proposition for China unless they have their own Falcon 9 or Starship-like rocket.
- outworlder 4y ago> In that case, they may send up satellites armed with weapons that can shoot down anything being launched into orbit to create debris again. What happened to the outer space treaty?
- modeless 4y agoRipped up as soon as you started intentionally trying to create Kessler syndrome...
- gojomo 4y agoIn some hypothetical hot conflict where a major belligerent nation had already started taking down satellites and/or polluting orbits, the treaty will have already become a 'dead letter'.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoAs long as they're not using nukes I don't think compliance with the OST would be an issue
- TMWNN 4y agoLet me guess: You're one of those people who said that the US Space Force "violated the treaty" because it "weaponizes space", right? The treaty bans weapons of mass destruction in space. It does not ban military activity in space at all.
- sangnoir 4y ago
- modeless 4y agoKessler syndrome is not "easy" to create at 550km. The orbits decay way too fast. Whole satellites decay in 5 years or less; smaller debris decays faster due to higher surface area to mass ratio. And the orbit doesn't have to decay all the way to 0 for the debris to stop being a threat to Starlink; a few km is all it would take. I haven't seen a lot of calculations about this but my belief is that even intentionally creating Kessler syndrome at 550 km would be infeasible, and it certainly won't happen by accident.
- tomatotomato37 4y agoThe point really isn't to completely shut down that orbit, just deny it for however long you strategically need. Throwing up a huge flak cloud using magnetized cheap metal tinsel on an old ICBM isn't only easy, but also has actually been done before, albeit for different reasons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
- modeless 4y agoYou won't be able to cause Kessler syndrome promptly. It takes a while for the collision debris to build up, and it takes a while for individual satellites to get hit. Space is big and even huge debris clouds will take a long time to hit something. It's not going to help your invasion next month or anything like that. Very impractical as a weapon of war, even if it was feasible which it isn't.
- simondotau 4y agoSpace is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. Any given orbital plane is larger than the entire surface of Earth, including the oceans. Combine that with the fact that explosions and collisions introduce randomness to the orbital plane of each piece of debris, and you’ve got a lot of hurdles to overcome in order to get to some short term low earth orbit Kessler.
- godelski 4y agoThat just makes it more likely. If you think war is going to last awhile, or you have a severe disadvantage, you shut down access to space for a few years. The cost of such an attack is lower BECAUSE it resolves itself rather quickly. Though the issue is that it is substantially harder to create the Kessler Syndrome than people claim.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoStarlink already is a valid military target in time of war. Also, the way the orbits are established and the fact that Taiwan is roughly equatorial, I thin every satellite eventually passes over it. Starlink is not geostationary
- chickenpotpie 4y agoI would be more worried about the undersea fiber optic cable. There's 13 cables that provide the vast majority of internet into the country and they're deep underwater where they could easily be destroyed with no defense.
- njarboe 4y agoSee Nord Stream 1 and 2 for an example.
- dylan604 4y agoI'm guessing it's a bit easier to repair/splice a fiber break than repairing gas pipes
- pencilguin 4y agoHarder if they roll up the cable, or just drag the cut end a mile away.
- modeless 4y agoEvery part of the constellation passes over China. The Starlink satellite constellation is practically invulnerable to physical attack because it would be prohibitively expensive to hit thousands of individual satellites with interceptors. And SpaceX can keep launching them, 50 at a time (potentially hundreds at a time once Starship is working, along with an increase in constellation size to 30,000+). Physical attacks on the ground stations are more feasible from a physics perspective, but now that the satellites have laser links you'd have to take out ground stations all over the world to completely cut service, not just locally. The way to attack Starlink would be hacking, either of the command and control system or the user terminals. Failing that, then jamming, and/or anti-radiation missiles targeted at the user terminals. Russia is known to be trying hacking and jamming already (recall that they were already successful in hacking Viasat at the very beginning of the war). I haven't heard about them locating user terminals by their transmissions but I'd be shocked if they aren't trying that too.
- mike_d 4y agoChina already has an extensive network of fixed location coordinated signal jammers deployed across the country. It is regularly used to overpower Radio Free Asia and Voice of Tibet broadcasts, and has conducted exercises blocking GPS. But a much more likely response would be equipping local police with direction finding equipment for signals in the 10-12 GHz band and bashing in the skulls of anyone found with a terminal.
- modeless 4y agoThe military threat of Starlink to China is as a way for the Taiwanese defense to communicate during an invasion. In peacetime they can prevent Starlink from operating in China simply by threatening Elon Musk with the loss of his Shanghai factory.
- wolpoli 4y agoStarlink seems to be protected by the fact that it could launch satalites cheaper than the adversary. That advantage will hold until the opponent gains the ability to launch small satalites at a low cost. Eg. Opponents launches and pre-positions mini suicide satalites 100 at a time in orbit, leading to a weaponization of space. Or it might be easier to just pressure Musk's other business interests.
- VincentEvans 4y agoRecent actions of Russia in Ukraine have shown how vacuous the term “valid military target” is, to the point that there’s very little sense in discussing it. (One may argue that along with that it also exposed how empirically inadequate are a lot of other terms, institutions, conventions, and rules we’ve become accustomed to relying on for maintaining our peace, security, and ensuring that bad guys don’t go unpunished, but i guess that would be a digression for another time). The meaning behind such terms, absent methods of enforcement when they are violated, exists only for those warring states that choose to respect them - the list that likely does not include any of the realistic opponents we consider today, such as Russia, or North Korea, or Iran, or unfortunately, China.
- rzimmerman 4y agoThere are a few technical reasons I don’t see this as a real threat: 1. There isn’t a particular part of the constellation that passes over China. There are probably a few launch groups that never or rarely pass over China, but a majority do. An adversary would have to destroy or disable a few thousand satellites. 2. Anti-satellite weapons aren’t nearly plentiful enough and given the ground support required, I’d be surprised if launching more than a few per day is feasible. A counterattack would come too quickly. 3. Precise positions don’t help that much. Even knowing a satellite position to ~2m still requires some active tracking on the interceptor. It’s not much benefit over knowing the position to 1km. 4. The debris created would be catastrophic and likely to damage the ISS even at Starlink’s low altitude. All of the first three apply to GPS as well even though it’s only ~32 satellites.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoAny communication systems are valid military targets in case of war. So much so that they are usually among the first targets. But there are also other considerations. In your example I doubt China would want to provoke the US by shooting American-owned satellites out of the sky, and I doubt Starlink would be that important anyway.