Russian arms control officials have now made public statements suggesting that commercial space infrastructure that is used to support the conflict may be a legitimate target.
EA did the analysis on alienating billionaires, so nobody is going to mock a US billionaire who wants to colonize space, but deployed a commercial sat swarm that is now being talked about as a valid military target.
I'm guessing nobody funded by EA is putting the work in from an engineering standpoint to see if there's an existential risk there.
There are no new physics required, just engineering analysis. An engineer at a relevant firm could answer the questions. What breaks their system, how much debris does that course of action generate, is their constellation equipped to avoid cascading failure due to debris, what would be the impact on launch windows for high orbits of the worst case scenario?
I guess it has been done already and everything is totally fine, let's focus on other stuff, no need to call this an emergency.
A kessler syndrome of sufficient severity prevents spacecraft from leaving Earth for, depending on its' duration, centuries to millennia.
A kessler cascade will eventually result in such a syndrome, it's only a question of time, and this can be estimated by looking at the slope on the graph of the rate of debris increase from collisions. This slope is easy to increase and hard to decrease.
Starlink has a lot of small satellites in orbit.
Starlink is carrying communications for a party to a terrestrial conflict, these may include military communications.
A different party to the conflict, wishing to deny use of the constellation for the military communications of its' enemy, may take actions to degrade or destroy the constellation in the course of the war.
Are there classes of action that would sufficiently degrade Starlink, such that it is no longer suitable for use as a communications platform for the party to the conflict, which would lead to a near term kessler syndrome?
Optimistic: No, there's no risk to manned spaceflight of any action that could be taken against the Starlink constellation, including kinetic destruction of its' spacecraft in their current locations.
Pessimistic: any damage to the constellation or its' control systems results in an immediate kessler syndrome, which prevents manned spacecraft from ascending to the high (or escape) orbits required to colonize the solar system.
SpaceX engineers should be able to definitively answer this question.
In the most pessimistic case, the kessler syndrome will outlive terrestrial energy resources and/or climate reserve, so the human race will end starving, buried in our waste.
Someone at spaceX is taking meaningful action to mitigate this, thankfully. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacex-curbed-ukraines-use-starlink-internet-drones-company-president-2023-02-09/
Maybe seeing the Russian sat throw debris is what it took to ask the 'so...about our constellation' question: https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-satellite-breaks-up-orbit-space-debris-could-last-century-2023-2?utm_source=reddit.com
Thanks for the downvotes everyone!
Russian arms control officials have now made public statements suggesting that commercial space infrastructure that is used to support the conflict may be a legitimate target.
EA did the analysis on alienating billionaires, so nobody is going to mock a US billionaire who wants to colonize space, but deployed a commercial sat swarm that is now being talked about as a valid military target.
I'm guessing nobody funded by EA is putting the work in from an engineering standpoint to see if there's an existential risk there.
There are no new physics required, just engineering analysis. An engineer at a relevant firm could answer the questions. What breaks their system, how much debris does that course of action generate, is their constellation equipped to avoid cascading failure due to debris, what would be the impact on launch windows for high orbits of the worst case scenario?
I guess it has been done already and everything is totally fine, let's focus on other stuff, no need to call this an emergency.
Anyone thinking about this?
A kessler syndrome of sufficient severity prevents spacecraft from leaving Earth for, depending on its' duration, centuries to millennia.
A kessler cascade will eventually result in such a syndrome, it's only a question of time, and this can be estimated by looking at the slope on the graph of the rate of debris increase from collisions. This slope is easy to increase and hard to decrease.
Starlink has a lot of small satellites in orbit.
Starlink is carrying communications for a party to a terrestrial conflict, these may include military communications.
A different party to the conflict, wishing to deny use of the constellation for the military communications of its' enemy, may take actions to degrade or destroy the constellation in the course of the war.
Are there classes of action that would sufficiently degrade Starlink, such that it is no longer suitable for use as a communications platform for the party to the conflict, which would lead to a near term kessler syndrome?
Optimistic: No, there's no risk to manned spaceflight of any action that could be taken against the Starlink constellation, including kinetic destruction of its' spacecraft in their current locations.
Pessimistic: any damage to the constellation or its' control systems results in an immediate kessler syndrome, which prevents manned spacecraft from ascending to the high (or escape) orbits required to colonize the solar system.
SpaceX engineers should be able to definitively answer this question.
In the most pessimistic case, the kessler syndrome will outlive terrestrial energy resources and/or climate reserve, so the human race will end starving, buried in our waste.