Which is irrelevant because offensive launches can destroy many orders of magnitude more launches worth of payloads. Even with simple kinetic means. Though these days I think I'd expect to see directed energy weapons adding even more zeros to that.
Have you done the math? "Many orders of magnitude" means, IMHO, at least three. A regular Falcon 9 carries 60 Starlinks IIRC, so three orders of magnitude means destroying 60 thousand at once.
What is the offensive launch that can destroy 60 000 satellites in one mission? I don't think it exists.
Yeah, but any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war, and the provenance of the attack would be clear. You cannot exactly hide a suborbital rocket launch.
Even in Russian nationalist circles, the occassional idea of shooting down current Starlink satellites is usually met with derision from the rest of the discussion group (see, for example, topwar.ru comments). That is just step too far, too dangerous.
Meanwhile, on Earth, you have a lot of plausible deniability. "Some terrorist group sneaked in and planted a bomb, totally not our people."
SpaceX's launch capacity is an order of magnitude larger that all four of those put together.
Which is irrelevant because offensive launches can destroy many orders of magnitude more launches worth of payloads. Even with simple kinetic means. Though these days I think I'd expect to see directed energy weapons adding even more zeros to that.
Have you done the math? "Many orders of magnitude" means, IMHO, at least three. A regular Falcon 9 carries 60 Starlinks IIRC, so three orders of magnitude means destroying 60 thousand at once.
What is the offensive launch that can destroy 60 000 satellites in one mission? I don't think it exists.
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Yeah, but any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war, and the provenance of the attack would be clear. You cannot exactly hide a suborbital rocket launch.
Even in Russian nationalist circles, the occassional idea of shooting down current Starlink satellites is usually met with derision from the rest of the discussion group (see, for example, topwar.ru comments). That is just step too far, too dangerous.
Meanwhile, on Earth, you have a lot of plausible deniability. "Some terrorist group sneaked in and planted a bomb, totally not our people."
>any of those attacking US satellites means an apocalyptic war
or a tweet calling it "very weak response" and lying about being warned in advance.