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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Starlink fails if Russia or any other country decides to shoot down its satellites. That’s enough reason for musk to be a patsy of any government that threatens to do it.
If one state starts shooting down satellites, they're going to get their own ones targeted and it only ends when neither has any satellites left. That's not a box anyone is willing to open.
I'm pretty confident that Musk has insurance for that. They can't shoot down enough of them to make a big difference, you may have a hole but the network will be ok.
Look up: Kessler syndrome
https://universemagazine.com/en/a-million-avoidance-maneuvers-starlink-threatens-orbit-with-kessler-syndrome/
Yup, they're already having problems without even getting attacked. Shooting "down" (they wouldn't fall down) some of the satellites, could easily create enough debris to start a cascading collision effect and turn the whole orbit into a minefield.
It's even worse, because they are in orbits creating a crisscross grid, meaning debris from one satellite would cross the paths of dozens of others in a short period of time.
Also, disabling a dozen or a thousand satellites, wouldn't create a "hole" in the network over any single place, since every single satellite goes over the whole globe, replacing any disabled one.
Someone trying to attack Starlink, would either have to trigger a cascading effect, or get no effect at all.
couldn't you toss up a towing satellite that goes from sat to sat and hooks them together?
If you mean to "scoop them up" as a means of attack... there are thousands of them already, they're all over the globe, with plans to go up to 40k. They do have engines, and while not particularly powerful (hall effect ion thrusters), they could try to counter the attack by trying to deorbit, along with the attacking satellite. My guess is it would be too slow and ineffective.
The best physical attack would be to cause a collision cascade at their orbital height... or set off a nuke in orbit and EMP them by the hundreds, but that would also EMP a bunch of other satellites, mess up the Van Allen belts, hit anything in a wide area on the ground, and breach several international treaties.
They'll avoid the debris as they do now. It's every day business
The number of debris avoidance maneuvers is growing faster than the number of satellites. Even without an attack, it's anyone's guess when the amount of debris will overcome their ability to avoid it.
In the case of an attack, they'd quickly run out of avoidance ability (onboard fuel) and either have to use the remaining fuel to de-orbit, or become part of the cascade of collisions.
No business wants to rely on insurance. It will never cover all the future losses in a business like this.
A network with regular outages is nearly worthless for most use cases..
Oh you could put a million dollar missle on a 25 thousand dollar satellite. But, you're going to run out of missiles.