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> Now we're entering an era where nobody has air superiority. There's a mostly empty sky. If it flies, it dies. The danger here is everyone filling space with
by mabbo 3y ago
> Now we're entering an era where nobody has air superiority. There's a mostly empty sky. If it flies, it dies.
The danger here is everyone filling space with satellites as a means of defense. When the war starts, Kessler Syndrome kicks in, and everyone loses their defenses in a few days.
Ground based lasers may have less range, etc, but they can be hardened, protected, even hidden.
Imho, we'll see a day where every major city on the planet has a set of anti missile lasers.
- frumper 3y agoHow about moon based lasers?
- chrisco255 3y agoHow else are we going to defend the 51st state?
- mabbo 3y agoThat only covers half the earth! We'd need another set of lasers at the earth-moon L3 point. (Also the distance would be a problem for a variety of reasons)
- ars 3y ago> When the war starts, Kessler Syndrome kicks in No, these defenses would be in low orbit, and low orbits are rapidly self cleaning. Kessler Syndrome is only for high orbits. There no reason for an attacking missile to go into a high orbit, they would stay pretty low.
- mabbo 3y agoWhile I agree that these would be in a lower orbit, if they are low enough that debris would fall quickly then so would satellites. Debris doesn't know it's debris and so it should fall when the satellite did not. Yes, some satellites can self-boost with ion drives giving them longer life in lower orbits, but they can't do that very often or for very long due to reaction mass limits. You're still talking about orbits where debris would last years.
- PeterisP 3y agoNo, debris in the same orbit would fall much more quickly than satellites, due to the square/cube difference, a larger piece gets slowed much less than many smaller pieces with the same combined mass. Also, "the same orbit" is the best/worst case scenario, since after an impact any new orbit still passes through the point of impact, but if the new orbit is more elliptic than the original (which most likely was close to circular), then it has a lower perigee, where most of the drag occurs, and thus would get dragged down faster than in the original orbit. If a satellite is in a low orbit that needs re-boosting every few years, then the debris from its destruction would get cleared out in weeks or months.
- panick21_ 3y agoYou can not have Kessler Syndrom as early as you think. And even then not on all orbits. If you deploy defensively, you can keep sats working fine even Kessler Syndrom existed on some orbits. You can hide things in space as well.