3 ms·

Destroy the satellites? I mean all that have to do is screw up the trajectory of some of the satellites to cause exponential collisions...

by Noaidi 10mo ago

bhhaskin 10mo ago
Iran does not have that capability. But that would also be an act of war.
- Noaidi 10mo ago
  No, it wouldn’t be an act of war, it would be “a military operation”.
- octoberfranklin 10mo ago
  Flinging spacejunk pollution into orbit is extremely simple if you have rockets. Iran has lots of rockets. Iran also has basically zero of their own satellites in orbit that they care about. Spacejunk is a highly asymmetric tactic.
  - yehoshuapw 10mo ago
    they do have satellites. I'm less sure about how much they care about them - but they are not cheap
    - octoberfranklin 10mo ago
      That's my point. They have so few that sacrificing them would be irrelevant.
  - bhhaskin 10mo ago
    They don't have that many rockets that are capable of orbital flight let alone an ASAT capability. Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car, except Both cars are invisible most of the time. They’re moving 17,000 mph. The dart has no steering wheel only tiny nudges. If you miss by a few feet, you miss by miles. Countries that can do this reliably aren’t showing off missiles they’re showing off navigation, sensors, computing. The weapon is the least impressive part.
    - octoberfranklin 10mo ago
      > Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car Um no. Imagine rendering a highway unusable by driving a semitruck full of tire spikes down it and dumping them out the back. No precision required.
      - m4rtink 10mo ago
        Um, no - if you do this on suborbital trajectory you totally obliterate a bunch of empty space for the <10 minutes until all your garbage falls back. If you actually manage to make it into an orbit (with a much much bigger and much more expensive rocket) you will most likely do the same (eg. not hitting the intended satellite) with the added bonus of littering random orbits over time and hitting random satellites. And if you want to say "they will deny orbit for everyone!" - well, good luck without far too many orbital class rockets for anyone of their size to have. Not to mention Starlink orbits being (as alterady state so low they are self-cleaning), GPS orbits being far too high to even reach, let alone to saturate with garbage & same for GEO sats.
some_bird 10mo ago
Ah yes, Kessler's space shredder, something to be feared by all satellites! It appears that we are very close to an unstoppable runaway process of collisions in space. On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets after ruining this one. On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS, it would be chaos if that were to disappear...
- octoberfranklin 10mo ago
  GPS is in geosynchronous orbit, insanely far from the Earth's surface. You can't get chain-reaction collisions to happen at such an outrageously high orbit. That amount of mass you'd have to put into orbit is just insane. It's like trying to crash the moon.
  - wat10000 10mo ago
    Nitpick, GPS is about halfway to geosync. Your point stands.
- m4rtink 10mo ago
  Starlinks are in self cleaning orbits & are actually being moved even lower due to solar minimum & better capacity: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lowering-orbits-of-4-400-starlink-satellites-for-safetys-sake https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lo... And any weaponized junk schrapnel a DiY iranian ASAP missile would deploy would be sub-orbital and would all come down in a couple minutes.
- lxgr 10mo ago
  > On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets Kessler syndrome has little to no effect on trajectories only briefly transiting any given orbital shell. The collision probability of anything going straight "up"/"out" is negligible. > On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS GPS is in MEO, Starlink is in LEO. There's absolutely no chance any material will be propelled up to MEO via a series of even very unlucky LEO collisions, as far as I know.
Noaidi 10mo ago
[flagged]

Destroy the satellites? I mean all that have to do is screw up the trajectory of some of the satellites to cause exponential collisions...

by Noaidi 10mo ago

Destroy the satellites? I mean all that have to do is screw up the trajectory of some of the satellites to cause exponential collisions...

bhhaskin 10mo ago

Iran does not have that capability. But that would also be an act of war.

Noaidi 10mo ago
No, it wouldn’t be an act of war, it would be “a military operation”.
octoberfranklin 10mo ago
Flinging spacejunk pollution into orbit is extremely simple if you have rockets. Iran has lots of rockets. Iran also has basically zero of their own satellites in orbit that they care about. Spacejunk is a highly asymmetric tactic.
- yehoshuapw 10mo ago
  they do have satellites. I'm less sure about how much they care about them - but they are not cheap
  - octoberfranklin 10mo ago
    That's my point. They have so few that sacrificing them would be irrelevant.
- bhhaskin 10mo ago
  They don't have that many rockets that are capable of orbital flight let alone an ASAT capability. Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car, except Both cars are invisible most of the time. They’re moving 17,000 mph. The dart has no steering wheel only tiny nudges. If you miss by a few feet, you miss by miles. Countries that can do this reliably aren’t showing off missiles they’re showing off navigation, sensors, computing. The weapon is the least impressive part.
  - octoberfranklin 10mo ago
    > Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car Um no. Imagine rendering a highway unusable by driving a semitruck full of tire spikes down it and dumping them out the back. No precision required.
    - m4rtink 10mo ago
      Um, no - if you do this on suborbital trajectory you totally obliterate a bunch of empty space for the <10 minutes until all your garbage falls back. If you actually manage to make it into an orbit (with a much much bigger and much more expensive rocket) you will most likely do the same (eg. not hitting the intended satellite) with the added bonus of littering random orbits over time and hitting random satellites. And if you want to say "they will deny orbit for everyone!" - well, good luck without far too many orbital class rockets for anyone of their size to have. Not to mention Starlink orbits being (as alterady state so low they are self-cleaning), GPS orbits being far too high to even reach, let alone to saturate with garbage & same for GEO sats.

some_bird 10mo ago

Ah yes, Kessler's space shredder, something to be feared by all satellites! It appears that we are very close to an unstoppable runaway process of collisions in space. On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets after ruining this one. On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS, it would be chaos if that were to disappear...

octoberfranklin 10mo ago
GPS is in geosynchronous orbit, insanely far from the Earth's surface. You can't get chain-reaction collisions to happen at such an outrageously high orbit. That amount of mass you'd have to put into orbit is just insane. It's like trying to crash the moon.
- wat10000 10mo ago
  Nitpick, GPS is about halfway to geosync. Your point stands.
m4rtink 10mo ago
Starlinks are in self cleaning orbits & are actually being moved even lower due to solar minimum & better capacity: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lowering-orbits-of-4-400-starlink-satellites-for-safetys-sake https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lo... And any weaponized junk schrapnel a DiY iranian ASAP missile would deploy would be sub-orbital and would all come down in a couple minutes.
lxgr 10mo ago
> On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets Kessler syndrome has little to no effect on trajectories only briefly transiting any given orbital shell. The collision probability of anything going straight "up"/"out" is negligible. > On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS GPS is in MEO, Starlink is in LEO. There's absolutely no chance any material will be propelled up to MEO via a series of even very unlucky LEO collisions, as far as I know.

Noaidi 10mo ago

[flagged]