To shoot something down at 70,000 ft (21 km) all you need is a conventional military jet fighter, and a long-range rocket, or even a MiG-31 with a conventional cannon. At best you can make these birds cheaper than the rocket + flight time.

Something that flies at the upper edge of the stratosphere, at 40-50 km (160,000 ft) would be hard to reach with currently available means. You can of course fire a THAAD at it, but you can fire a THAAD at a Starlink satellite as well.

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pacificmint 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> you can fire a THAAD at a Starlink satellite as well.

You can fire a THAAD at one Starlink satellite, but probably not at 8000 of them.

For comparison we’re currently producing THAAD interceptors at a rate of 96 a year (though Lockheed is aiming to increase it to 400).

	▲	nine_k 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly; it's a limited and very expensive capability. Nobody would want to spend it on a $100k stratospheric flying vehicle, if the latter existed. It does not exist though, if you do not count weather balloons.