3 ms·

At some point, nations are going to claim the orbital space above them as national territory and develop technology to shoot down violators.

by lenkite 3mo ago

kadoban 3mo ago
That would be fairly nonsense. There's _very_ few orbits that can stick over a particular place, and it's only places on the equator. We'd be giving up 99+% of useful orbits.
- kube-system 3mo ago
  I think most current wars in progress have much less logical reasons for happening
  - kadoban 3mo ago
    It's possible, it would just be _very_ dumb. It'd also turn into just...shooting them all down, restrictions of who anything is over wouldn't survive.
    - kube-system 3mo ago
      It wouldn't be an all-or-nothing type scenario -- and in fact there is already no common international agreement about where a nation's boundary extends to in the z-axis. The observed limit is "however high that country can detect and shoot something down"
      - kadoban 3mo ago
        Once you start getting shooty up in space, I think you fairly quickly get into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome cascades of collisions and debris anyway, so it probably wouldn't matter. > in fact there is already no common international agreement about where a nation's boundary extends to in the z-axis. The observed limit is "however high that country can detect and shoot something down" That's the thing though, if you use that definition then 99.9+% of them are fair game, because _only_ ones around equator at a specific height are at a fixed point. Otherwise they migrate a lot and what country they're over would depend on what second you look.
- lenkite 3mo ago
  If Russia had been the one to launch over ten thousand satellites in mega-constellations occupying LEO space, there would have already been a dozen senate hearings all talking about extraordinary and imminent threat to US national security and urgent need to eliminate the problem.
FabCH 3mo ago
ASAT already exists and multiple countries have already shot down (their own, defunct) satellites.

At some point, nations are going to claim the orbital space above them as national territory and develop technology to shoot down violators.

by lenkite 3mo ago

At some point, nations are going to claim the orbital space above them as national territory and develop technology to shoot down violators.

kadoban 3mo ago

That would be fairly nonsense. There's _very_ few orbits that can stick over a particular place, and it's only places on the equator. We'd be giving up 99+% of useful orbits.

kube-system 3mo ago
I think most current wars in progress have much less logical reasons for happening
- kadoban 3mo ago
  It's possible, it would just be _very_ dumb. It'd also turn into just...shooting them all down, restrictions of who anything is over wouldn't survive.
  - kube-system 3mo ago
    It wouldn't be an all-or-nothing type scenario -- and in fact there is already no common international agreement about where a nation's boundary extends to in the z-axis. The observed limit is "however high that country can detect and shoot something down"
    - kadoban 3mo ago
      Once you start getting shooty up in space, I think you fairly quickly get into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome cascades of collisions and debris anyway, so it probably wouldn't matter. > in fact there is already no common international agreement about where a nation's boundary extends to in the z-axis. The observed limit is "however high that country can detect and shoot something down" That's the thing though, if you use that definition then 99.9+% of them are fair game, because _only_ ones around equator at a specific height are at a fixed point. Otherwise they migrate a lot and what country they're over would depend on what second you look.
lenkite 3mo ago
If Russia had been the one to launch over ten thousand satellites in mega-constellations occupying LEO space, there would have already been a dozen senate hearings all talking about extraordinary and imminent threat to US national security and urgent need to eliminate the problem.

FabCH 3mo ago

ASAT already exists and multiple countries have already shot down (their own, defunct) satellites.