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Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

arstechnica.com

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Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#21

Post by tw04 »

beambot wrote: post #17
josefresco wrote: post #6

> The questioner specifically asked how the US military might respond if Russia attacked SpaceX's Starlink broadband network > Saltzman didn't directly address the scenario posed in the question > In a modern war, "there are going to be commercial entities, commercial organizations, commercial capabilities and assets that get caught up in the conflicts," Saltzman said. "Space is no different than sea lanes. It’s no d…

TLDR: It's the high seas -- some cross-section of maritime law & piracy. Presumably, this means that SpaceX can & should actively defend themselves too?

Sure, but much like the high seas, Space-X trying to acquire the space version of a "modern missile destroyer" will likely violate many laws, so their ability to "defend themselves" will be fairly limited.

Could they on paper start launching satellite destroying drones into space? Yes. Would the US military and political apparatus ever allow them to do so? Absolutely not (unless they're launching them FOR the government).

Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#23

Post by Retric »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19
swader999 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. How would a country defend against this sort of attack?

Starlink doesn't need defending. It's too low to cause Kessler, and big enough that the loss of a small number of satellites is inconsequential. It's a different story for pretty much every other satellite, though. GPS, for example.

You also avoid Kessler with geosynchronous orbits anytime soon because everything out there is all doing the exact same orbit and thus the relative velocity is very low. It also helps that the orbital shell is so huge.

Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#26

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

How do you avoid the misaligned incentives in this case in terms of asking whether or not thing X needs protection to the person whose job is justified by thing X needing protection? If the answer were a resounding "ohh no, that's silly," do we think someone in his role would ever utter it?

Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#27

Post by giraffe_lady »

beambot wrote: post #17
josefresco wrote: post #6

> The questioner specifically asked how the US military might respond if Russia attacked SpaceX's Starlink broadband network > Saltzman didn't directly address the scenario posed in the question > In a modern war, "there are going to be commercial entities, commercial organizations, commercial capabilities and assets that get caught up in the conflicts," Saltzman said. "Space is no different than sea lanes. It’s no d…

TLDR: It's the high seas -- some cross-section of maritime law & piracy. Presumably, this means that SpaceX can & should actively defend themselves too?

How does that follow? The US just confirmed they will do it. Why spend money on something you know someone else is going to do for you?

Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#28

Post by marcosdumay »

adolph wrote: post #11
dylan604 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no silly, that's the space shield!

Might a Kessler belt of known quantities eliminate or make harder launch from some areas more than others? (Essentially a space shield?) The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit increases due to space pollution, causing collisions between objects to generate more space debris, increasing the likelihood of further collisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Kessler syndrome is about orbits becoming unfit for satellite to stay on them.

On the short periods involved in a launch, you'll need many orders of magnitude more trash on orbit. It's quite possible that it's not viable at all to launch that amount of stuff from Earth.

Re: Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

#30

Post by nico »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #27
beambot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: It's the high seas -- some cross-section of maritime law & piracy. Presumably, this means that SpaceX can & should actively defend themselves too?

How does that follow? The US just confirmed they will do it. Why spend money on something you know someone else is going to do for you?

Because that “protection” is not going to be free, it will come (if it isn’t already), with a lot of strings attached

Having their own protection could potentially buy them a little more independence

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