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Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

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41–50 of 162 posts

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#41

Sooner or later the US Government will realize the Starship will be a good launching vehicle for the ballistic missile defense. Currently a midcourse ground base interceptor booster [1] weighs more than 20 tons, costs a few tens of millions, and carries one single kill vehicle [2] that weighs about 64 kg. A single Starship would be able to carry more than 1000 such kill vehicles. If Russia launches a few hundred miss…

Historically, liquid fueled (cryogenic) vehicles have not been suitable for these kinds of missions because they take a long time to fuel and they can't be fueled ahead of time because the fuel boils off.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things: 1) That way you would have a single Starship launching a single kill vehicle in more than 1000 pieces. In order to be truly independent, each kill vehicle needs significant delta-v on its own, which lowers the number of kill vehicles by two orders of magnitude. 2) Starship has pretty weak engines for this task. While the missile used to launch the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle reaches ~10 km/s in less tha…

The kill vehicles are staged in orbit just like Starlink satellites.. See Brilliant Pebbles.

I think there's a consensus that orbital weapons are bad.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is 1/10th as compromised as Tim Apple, and the DoD uses iPhones.

I think it's pretty ridiculous to compare Tim Cook to Elon Musk. Elon has demonstrated in both his public and private life that he can be very flexible with his ethics and morals if it furthers his business objectives. Tim by comparison has been pretty consistent.

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Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#44
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has been launching Department of Defense payloads since 2006.

I didn’t say they were new to the game I said they probably aren’t looking super reliable all of a sudden. Things that tend to matter a lot in that world are credibility, stability and reliability. New information has come in via a very public set of car crashes and that relationship is now looking like a liability.

Musk has been a complete trainwreck for years, and it hasn't stopped SpaceX from winning a bunch of government (including defense) contracts, nor---crucially---from delivering on them. The recent Twitter stuff has gotten a lot of airplay, but I'm not sure what's supposed to have happened that would fundamentally change the equation.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#45
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that he interfered in US elections. And there was plenty of evidence other than the file that indicates that it happened.

Yes I remember the study showing the total amount of ad spending by Prigozhin was But yes, I'm sure Russia did enough to sway the election... All of the social media campaigns attributed to Russian agencies weren't even backing one party. They hit both sides. All they cared about was generating social conflict.

I am glad we can both agree that Russia did in fact interfere in the election.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#47
Sounds extremely profitable. While you can end-to-end encrypt things so it all looks like noise, you'll want to send nonsense data constantly just to make sure you can hide real data when you need to without tipping anyone off.

Like an HF numbers station, but you have to pay for every transmission.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is 1/10th as compromised as Tim Apple, and the DoD uses iPhones.

I think it's pretty ridiculous to compare Tim Cook to Elon Musk. Elon has demonstrated in both his public and private life that he can be very flexible with his ethics and morals if it furthers his business objectives. Tim by comparison has been pretty consistent.

You mean like when he committed perjury testifying to Congress that "[Apple App Store] guidelines are transparent and applied equally to developers of all sizes and in all categories"? Or how he keeps marketing iMessage as "end-to-end encrypted" while Apple continues to hold the encryption keys to the overwhelming majority of user messages and regularly decrypts them for law enforcement purposes? Or how Apple continuously bends over for the Chinese government, handing over complete control of all data in iCloud for Chinese accounts?

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kill vehicles are staged in orbit just like Starlink satellites.. See Brilliant Pebbles.

I think there's a consensus that orbital weapons are bad.

Even if they're defensive weapons only? I think Reagan's star wars program was cancelled only because the Russian threat was not as big anymore. Not because of weapons in space concerns.

FWIW only WMDs are really banned in space.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#50
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kill vehicles are staged in orbit just like Starlink satellites.. See Brilliant Pebbles.

I think there's a consensus that orbital weapons are bad.

Apparently Republicans are all for weapons in space...

https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan...

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nuclear-weapons-china-a...

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