Comment by techopoly
1 year ago
But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.
1 year ago
But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.
How feasible is it though once the network reaches a huge size? Starlink satellites are tiny, and they've been deploying thousands of them over the last few years. I imagine it would take enormous resources to shoot them down, especially if the US does treat them like a strategic resource and adds more for redundancy.
The huge size of the network is itself a risk. Kessler syndrome is something everyone is currently trying to avoid, but if you wanted to intentionally induce it you could just start launching giant payloads of tiny ball bearings into their orbits, or take down enough of them that the shrapnel becomes equivalent to that anyway. Starlink is low enough that the debris from even a full Kessler syndrome cascade will deorbit very rapidly, but we're still talking a 3-5 year timeframe, not months, and trying to rebuild capacity in that period will just worsen + extend the problem.
This is something commonly misunderstood. Kessler syndrome is a statistical process that happens over many years. It is not a sudden cascade like is seen in movies like Gravity. Statistical processes are not what militaries are interested in.
It's actually thought that Kessler syndrome is kind of already happening right now, which is why there's a lot of push right now to try to de-orbit the very large pieces of debris, so they can't act to form further debris.
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Pretty feasible for anyone who has enough ballistic missiles to target about 5000 targets, or is willing to invest a couple billion into stocking 5000 overpowered fighter-launched missiles. Starlink isn't that high up, and in military terms 5000 targets isn't that much.
The effort of getting a ballistic trajectory that peaks at 500km is a lot smaller than reaching a stable orbit of that height. And just like WWII aircraft you don't need to hit them, just produce enough shrapnel in their vague vicinity.
The biggest hurdle is the universal international condemnation you would receive for such an act
Even if anti-satellite missiles are too expensive to be used to shoot down thousands of targets, the ground stations could be bombed instead. Hacking the control plane and sending de-orbit commands could be even cheaper.
Starlink satellites use inter-satellite lasers and can send those signals arbitrary distances via multiple satellites. Taking out a ground station will just require routing changes and the constellation will continue to perform.
And you can't just wave around "hacking the control plane". Russia's been trying to interfere with Starlink for a while and they haven't had any long term success. And finally, even if the did somehow get access to the control systems at SpaceX, the satellites can't de-orbit quickly. It takes weeks to de-orbit, over which time they could be commanded to reverse course.
The new generation of Starlink satellites have laser connections between them (which is what the article is discussing). They can send data to the other side of the globe to a friendly country for the ground link. (That’s a less efficient use of the inter-satellite bandwidth, of course, but worth doing for war.)
Yes effectively immune to missiles. SpaceX launches a new batch of 22 satellites on average every 4-5 days right now and if needed can launch a new batch every 3 days. You'd have to shoot down thousands of satellites to create enough of a service gap, and keep shooting down the new ones. And the problem is only getting harder with time. Unless you're building up an armada of thousands of anti-satellite missiles that you need to maintain at the ready to do this task, you're not really taking the system down.
I should add that anti-satellite missiles are _large_ missiles. The missiles of this size in the US arsenal are SM-3 missiles (or larger). The number even the US has is only in the high hundreds to possibly low thousands. That's completely out of the ability of Russia. It's maybe possible for China but not in their current stockpiles.
There's no way Russia can afford to make a significant dent in the number of Starlink satellites, even assuming their ASAT missiles aren't mostly filled with water rather than rocket fuel as a result of corruption.
Missiles are expensive compared to tiny, cheap satellites.
Laser beams are also the replacement for ASAT.