5 ms·
Starlink are very low orbit. Easy to bring down.
by Helmut10001 1y ago
Starlink 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.
- wkat4242 1y agoYes but there's so many starlinks that you're going to get lots and lots of collateral damage to sats from allies and enemies alike. It's going to be a huge footgun.
- rtkwe 1y agoNot much else uses those orbits right now. Other comms satellites and surveillance birds are all higher up. The debris would in theory also clear pretty quickly and should be fairly contained so the cascade of additional damage might be relatively small too. Hard to know that without a huge simulation budget to see how high the shattered satellite bits might get tossed.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoHave you ever heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford ?
- kortilla 1y agoTiny propellant burns turn into thousands of kilometer changes quickly.
- cyberax 1y agoFor your shrapnel to hit the satellite, it needs to be at the same height and inclination. Otherwise, your shrapnel will likely miss the targets. Starlink satellites are pretty low and experience a lot of drag, with square-cube law working against you. Your shrapnel's orbit will likely decay pretty rapidly.
- 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]