150
Russia warns United States: use of SpaceX for spying makes its satellites a target
(www.reuters.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
150 points (95.7% liked)
World News
32364 readers
303 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
On one hand, I really, really want those idiots in the Kremel to cause a Kessler Syndrome...(In theory it could also prevent ballistic missiles)
On the other hand, that would be quite bad for the rest of us.
Starlink birds fly too low for that, they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead.
I'd be worried about debris flung into steeply elliptical orbits, though. It wouldn't take much to do some real damage to sats in higher orbits and once the cascade starts there's not much we can do but wait decades for the worst of it to fall into the atmosphere.
Those steeply elliptical orbits would probably deorbit even quicker since a random impulse that boosts the apogee is likely to lower the perigee even more.