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…
1. Not sure what you mean by significant delta-v. An 8km/s vehicle meeting a 6km/s warhead coming from the opposite direction will kill it just as surely as a 10km/s one. If you mean delta-v to go laterally, for that 1km/s is probably more than enough. A vehicle with 1km/s delta-v is, in the worst case scenario, twice as heavy than one with 100m/s delta-v, not 100 times as heavy. 2. 9 minutes is plenty. A ballistic m…
2. The midcourse phase typically takes ~20 minutes. You can't predict the trajectory accurately during the boost phase, and you have the wrong kind of missile for intercepting the target during the terminal phase. If your boost phase is 9 minutes instead of 4 minutes, you have 11 minutes instead of 16 minutes for political and tactical decisionmaking.
3. What is the price of a fully disposable Starship? How many of them do you need to have one ready to launch at any time? Because if you have them on standby, you can't use them for any other purpose, and they are effectively disposable.