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Could you bring something like a starlink mini for backup i wonder? Id imagine this would be very worrying being stuck there as a foreigner in such a situation.
by wkat4242 1y ago
Could you bring something like a starlink mini for backup i wonder? Id imagine this would be very worrying being stuck there as a foreigner in such a situation.
- methou 1y agoA friend of mine tried, no signal.
- NitpickLawyer 1y agoIf war breaks out, it'll likely be enabled.
- andrewinardeer 1y agoEntirely speculation.
- NitpickLawyer 1y agoOf course it is entirely speculation. But there are previous datapoints you can look at (i.e. iran).
- andrewinardeer 1y agoElon doesn't sell cars or Powerwalls in Iran.
- Helmut10001 1y agoStarlink are very low orbit. Easy to bring down.
- Zacharias030 1y agohow though?
- 4gotunameagain 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi... Every major power has polluted near Earth space as a show of power.
- cyberax 1y agoOne missile for one satellite? This gets expensive really fast.
- therein 1y agoThey follow well defined orbits and propellant limited. You could easily cover their trajectory with some shrapnel and attack it one lane at a time.
- perihelions 1y agoNot feasible. That would entail putting shrapnel into orbit (unlike extant anti-sat weapons which are short-range suborbital), which would mean a full orbital launch for every satellite target orbit. There's hundreds[0] of Starlink orbital groups already, so that'd require hundreds of independent orbital launches in a short timescale—far beyond China's launch capabilities today. [0] https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/planes.html https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/planes.html (On general principles, you could argue you'd need 1:1 launch vehicle parity (number, not payload) to defeat a satellite constellation this way. For each satellite launch, you'd need one corresponding anti-satellite launch into that same, newly-defined orbit).
- rtkwe 1y agoIf you make a dense-ish cloud that cuts across the Starlink orbits you'd eventually intersect them all if you could make the artificial debris field last It wouldn't require that many different counter orbiting fields to cover most of the orbits.
- perihelions 1y agoVery expensive to take down 10-100k at once. No one today has that many antisat-capable missiles stockpiled. Relevant, Chinese domestic media reporting on China's own perspective: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3178939/china-military-needs-defence-against-potential-starlink-threat https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3178939/chin... ("China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists" (2022)) > "Researchers call for development of anti-satellite capabilities including ability to track, monitor and disable each craft / The Starlink platform with its thousands of satellites is believed to be indestructible" "Easy to bring down" vs. "believed to be indestructible"—some tension there!
- ceejayoz 1y agoEMP?
- perihelions 1y agoIf you're talking about nuclear weapons, their major effect on satellites (Starfish Prime as the reference point) isn't EMP effects, but ionizing radiation—creating a persistent radiation belt of MeV electrons. (A physical process that took months to disable some satellites). Beyond that I don't know much.
- lazide 1y agoAt the point anyone is using nukes in LEO, things have gotten really out of control already.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- progbits 1y agoNo it won't but if it did would take just few hours for china to shoot a bunch of them down and with how tightly packed their orbits are the debree would take care of the rest.
- senectus1 1y agopotentially very dangerous for everyone if they did that. could make it impossible for even them to make a launch. Kessler Syndrome is nothing to toy with.
- audunw 1y agoI’m not so sure debris would help take down other satellites in that orbit. The orbit is very low so much of the debris that ends up with a deviation in its orbit will fall down. Even if it doesn’t there’s still air resistance up there which may cause more of the debris to deorbit before jt has time to hit other satellites. And I doubt China would want to make LEO impossible to move through anyway. It’d affect China badly as well
- baq 1y agospace is huge and the orbit is low. I'm not so sure debris would be as effective as on higher orbits.
- esseph 1y agoVery easy to jam. Also, fairly easy to find from the air.
- maxglute 1y agoDepends on if Elon wants to be sanctioned by PRC or not.
- stevage 1y agoDepends a lot whether Starlink decides to let you.
- spwa4 1y agoNo it does not. Against a huge state adversary like China it does not matter. They have satellites looking down so they can quickly locate any starlink users. And then ... The only thing that could bypass is GPS + laser links (meaning physically aiming a laser both on the ground AND on a satellite). You cannot detect that without being in the direct path of the laser (though of course you can still see the equipment aiming the laser, so it doesn't just need to work it needs to be properly disguised). That requires coherent beams (not easy, but well studied), aimed to within 2 wavelengths of distance at 160km (so your direction needs to be accurate to 2 billionths of a degree, obviously you'll need stabilization), at a moving target, using camouflaged equipment. This is not truly beyond current technology, but you can be pretty confident even the military doesn't have this yet.
- threeducks 1y agoWhat makes it so that this kind of precision is required? I have little knowledge of the physics behind it, but a few decades ago, a local university had an open day where they bounced lasers off of a retro reflector on the moon to measure the distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment... The moon is 700 times farther away than the starlink satellites (or twice that, if you consider the bounce), so I find it hard to imagine that it would be impossible to communicate with much closer satellites over laser when both sides can have an active transmitter.
- spwa4 1y agoYou want to hide, with sufficient guarantees, from someone looking down from above.
- mnw21cam 1y agoThe aim doesn't need to be that accurate. Laser beams diverge due to diffraction. You can't break the laws of physics - a non-divergent laser beam would need to be infinitely wide. A 1cm wide laser beam of 700nm light will have a divergence width of approximately asin(0.0000007/0.01) which is 0.004 degrees, which is 14 arcseconds, which is very easily aimable using off-the-shelf components. People get a tracking accuracy around 1 arcsecond using standard hobbyist telescope mounts. However, this solution is going to stop working when a cloud drifts past.
- mryall 1y agoStarlink connects you to the internet via a ground station in the country where you are registered, and the antenna will also only operate in an approved zone (depending on your country and account type). You cannot use it in China.
- Tuna-Fish 1y ago> Starlink connects you to the internet via a ground station in the country where you are registered Not true anymore. > and the antenna will also only operate in an approved zone (depending on your country and account type). You cannot use it in China. This is still correct.
- rtkwe 1y agoThey have a minor capability to do intra-constellation routing now but if they want to operate in China the authorities are going to demand all data be downlinked through Chinese downlink stations so they can do their monitoring.
- wkat4242 1y agoI wasn't aware that China does this. I know India does too though, for this reason only Inmarsat is allowed there because they cooperate with the authorities (and I believe even that is subject to local licensing). Though India doesn't have a great firewall so it's much less of an issue for foreigners visiting there.
- rtkwe 1y agoI don't know specifically that they do but it makes sense they would and Musk has a lot of points where China can squeeze him if he tries to not comply and China takes their internet monitoring seriously so I can't see them not demanding it.
- a012 1y ago> Not true anymore. It’s still true because in order to be operating in a country Starlink has to get approval from the Gov and if the Gov requires Starlink to have to connect through a ground station then they’ll either comply or not operate in that country
- preisschild 1y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2022/10/10/23397301/elon-musk-starlink-china-great-firewall-censorship https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/10/23397301/elon-musk-starl...
- patrakov 1y agoYou can still bring a foreign SIM card. 100% effective (via data roaming) at bypassing the firewall, but expensive.
- lazide 1y agoOddly, many travel SIMs have started to route traffic through China. I used one in India that clearly routed through Hong Kong, and caused a lot of problems.