From a comment :

>The first move in the coming WWIII, where the emperors try to expand their empires militaril,y will be to wipe out any orbit with Starlink satellites.

I find this highly unlikely, given Starlink is soon to reached 10k satellites and will continue to grow. Why expand 10 000 ballistic missiles to bring down one of many communications networks ?

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TOMDM 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because Kessler syndrome means you don't need to hit all 10k yourself.

Lowering the orbits just means that we get back to normal faster, not that the it's impossible.

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lijok 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Does Kessler syndrome also mean ICBMs become nonviable?

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Dylan16807 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No.

It's not a wall. The risk from going through a dangerous orbit is much much less than the risk from staying there.

	▲	goku12 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That depends on how you define risk. If it means the probability of a collision, then you'd be correct. But if a collision does happen, the consequences will be worse than being in the same orbit. Based on an oversimplified model, debris in orbit is likely to have low relative velocities with respect to an intact satellite in the same orbit, since a large deltav would change the orbit. (It's not as simple as this, but it's good enough in practice.) This is actually what asat weapons take advantage of. They usually don't even reach orbital velocity, just like ballistic missiles (of course, there are exceptions like the golden dome monstrosity). The kill vehicle just maneuvers itself into the path of the satellite and lets the satellite plough into it at hypervelocity.

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gpderetta 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I remember a short story about Canada preventing total global annihilation in WWIII, by deliberately triggering Kessler syndrome. My google-fu is failing me though.

	▲	iberator 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I would love to read it:)

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Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or why try to shoot them down when you can also go to the command center and turn them off? Or do a targeted strike on said command center. The sattelites are plentiful and redundant, but the network will collapse very quickly when they're no longer controlled from the surface.

In fact, if SpaceX can no longer do any launches due to whatever reason, Starlink will no longer be feasible after a few year - if I'm reading it correctly, the sattelites have a lifetime of only 5 years, meaning they will have to continually renew them at a rate of 2000 new sattelites a year.

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aucisson_masque 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don’t need 10k missiles. You need just one to blow up all of starlink satellites.

This is like bowling, you hit one, it hits the other one etcétéras.

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jdiez17 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You would likely need at least one per orbital plane, of which there are about 24.

	▲	goku12 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Blowing up something in the same orbit as the targets isn't an effective strategy. The explosion disperses the fragments into different orbits that intersect the original orbit only at one or two points. And even if some of those fragments find their targets, the collision velocity will be low (relatively slow). It will be like getting hit with with shrapnels from a grenade. Depending on how they collide, the target may survive. If you think that grenade shrapnels are fast, you need to understand the 'hypervelocity impact' that happens when objects in different orbits collide, or when an interceptor hits a satellite. Hypervelocity impacts are impacts where the impactor moves faster than the speed of sound in the solid target. What that means in practice is that the debris/interceptor may have hit one end of the satellite and vaporized already, while the other end of the satellite doesn't yet feel the shock and vibration from that impact. That end doesn't yet know about the carnage that's about to hit it in a few milliseconds.

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ben_w 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looking at the price of industrial lasers, right now the only thing stoping a random 3rd world terrorist cell from being able to afford to destroy all of them is the adaptive optics to compensate for atmospheric turbulence.

Well, that and the fact that so much of the stuff on Amazon etc. that's listed as "welding laser" is actually a soldering iron.

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tlb 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You could launch some missiles, blow a few satellites into smithereens, and gradually over the next few months they would take out the others. That's a poor kind of war weapon. An effective weapon is one where you can inflict damage continuously, and are able to stop immediately upon some concession. If you can't offer to stop in return for concessions, you won't get any.

	▲	RealityVoid 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You don't take down satellites in order to force someone to negotiate, you take them down for denial of capabilities.
	▲	panick21_ 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Its not really that easy, to cause such a chain reaction, specially if the other person reacts. And its also really expensive, each sat you take down costs you far more then what you hit. So unless you can actually cause a chain reaction its a losing proposition.
	▲	ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not really. That’s more science fiction than reality. You should try some Kerbal Space Program and explore how orbits are affected by thrust = collisions, in different directions. As soon as a satellite is hit the rest of the fleet can start thrusting and raise their orbits to create a clear separation to the debris field. Following such an attack the rest of the fleet would of course spread out across orbital heights and planes to minimize the potential damage done by each hit, leading to maximum cost for the adversary to do any damage. Rather than like today where the orbits are optimized for ease of management and highest possible bandwidth.

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xxs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Starlink has already been used in Russian's war against Ukraine. Of course the satellites can take photos as a bonus.

It's a massive spy network, if weaponized.

	▲	GuB-42 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What kind of pictures can starlink would take? When I look at pictures of starlink satellites, I don't see a camera. Maybe they have one, but if we can't see it, it is most likely useless for observation, except for taking pretty pictures of the Earth, or maybe other passing satellites. Spy satellites are more like space telescopes, but pointed at the Earth. As an example, Hubble is designed after a spy satellite, the "camera" is pretty massive and obvious. Starlink can probably be weaponized for a variety of thing, like for communication, obviously, but I don't think earth optical observation is one of them.
	▲	DrScientist 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's also been used for regime change attempts - part of the internet that's harder to shutdown, though apparently jamming GPS currently appears to be quite effective. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-in...

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bell-cot 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it's WWIII, and you're using ballistic missiles against satellite constellations, then either:

- You are not targeting individual satellites; you're setting off nuclear warheads in space, and relying on the EMP to disable all satellites within a large radius of the blast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

- You're nuking the ground-based command & control centers for those satellites. Again, nothing like 10,000 missiles needed.

(Or both.)

To target 10,000 satellites directly, the "obvious" weapon would be a few satellite-launch rockets, lofting tons of BB's (or little steel bolts, or whatever) - which would become a sort of long-duration artillery barrage shrapnel in orbit.

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LightBug1 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What was that game on old PC's? ... Minesweeper ...