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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

Until one of them shoots down one of his satellites and ruins LEO for everybody.

Space as a shared resource (as opposed to e.g. airspace) only works if countries (and corporations) respect each others sovereignty.

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How is Musk responsible for what amounts to a terroristic atrocity committed by an evil regime?

Because people like me pay for his service, and if his service stops working we'll stop paying for it.

Because people like me pay for his service, and if his service stops working we'll stop paying for it.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I'm probably missing your point. Can you clarify?

I am a Starlink customer. I don't love or hate Musk particularly, but when he makes bold claims that foreign leaders are helpless to stop LEO internet I hope he's ready to back that up. In light of recent developments[0] I don't think it's appropriate to assume all adversaries are helpless, and terrorism or not I'd assume Russia feels they have casus belli on Starlink after Musk's clashes with Russian governance and cooperation with NATO allies.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pentagon-official-warns-r...

Sure, go ahead, shoot down a Starlink satellite. There will be another along in a few minutes.

Shoot down every one that passes over country X? Hope you've got a few thousand antisatellite weapons, and you're willing to burn them on this...

Might only take one shot to give us a Kessler Syndrome scenario and trap mankind on the planet.

I thought Starlinks are below geostationary orbit, so I assume any debris should burn sooner or later.

What government are you talking about? That of Botswana, Ghana, or South Africa?

One satellite wouldn't "ruin LEO for everybody" and even if enough were shot down to cause a problem it would be a short-lived problem because most of the debris would decay within a few years. Furthermore, "ruin" is relative, "Kessler syndrome" doesn't mean instant satellite death, it results in an increased attrition rate which can be addressed by simply launching more of the highest value satellites and leaving the others on the ground until the situation clears up in a few years. SpaceX is in a good position to do this since they can replace satellites in LEO very cheaply.

Also, the countries most likely to do something this stupid are the ones the US government is giving him permission to defy, particularly Iran or Russia. If something happens, it will be more on the US government than SpaceX.

I didn't say "ruin forever". "Elon-exclusive for a couple of years" honestly sounds bad enough.

There's not only Starlink in LEO. Some of the existing constellations there are safety-of-life relevant (e.g. Iridium for polar flights or shipping routes), and Iridium doesn't have a stockpile of spares sitting on launchpads for an "Elon poked the bear one too many times" scenario.

Iridium is 140 miles further away from earth than starlink, though..

I could imagine that in a head-on intercept of an Iridium satellite, some of the debris might make it into higher or lower orbital shell, but to be fair I don't know how realistic that actually is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

Oh, I was aware of that even but not of that debris distribution graph. Thank you!

So it does seem like some debris making it into higher and lower orbital shells is quite likely.

> Some of the existing constellations there are safety-of-life relevant (e.g. Iridium for polar flights or shipping routes), and Iridium doesn't have a stockpile of spares sitting on launchpads for an "Elon poked the bear one too many times" scenario.

Iridium is only useful in safety-of-life because it's too expensive for anything else. If SpaceX were that bad at creating a market for satellites no one would be trying to shoot their satellites down.

Yes, but does that make it any less useful for safety-of-life, especially given that Starlink is not even a viable alternative for that application yet?

No one's saying it makes it less useful for that.

Not to nitpick, but polar flights can (and do, as a back-up, sometimes not only) use HF comms (which do not rely on a line-of-sight, as the waves are long enough to "bounce" off the ionosphere). It's slow (~300bps if transmitting data?), sometimes (but rarely) can have latency up to 15 minutes (interference from the Sun and others stars breaking/jamming comms for some short time, along other phenomenons), but it works. Even 15 years ago not every commercial airplane had satcom link installed, and even now, HF is the only thing which is required when flying away from VHF range. But anyway satcom is just more convenient usually (as long as it is available and it works).

On the other hand, I also think that some *ground* safety systems will rely on satellite data links as a back-up, as well.

> One satellite wouldn't "ruin LEO for everybody"

Why would it be one satellite? Many countries consider LEO sovereign airspace. And there would be international cover from countries like China and Russia.

If potting sats becomes normalised it ceases to be something that can be privately financed.

I responded to "Until one of them shoots down ONE OF his satellites and ruins LEO for everybody." And furthermore, the rest of my comment covers a scenario where many satellites are hit instead of just one.

The precedent is set once one is shot down. At that moment, SpaceX loses control over Starlink because it becomes clear its decisions carry military implications for America as a whole. (Nobody will expropriate it. But laws would need to be passed to ensure Bezos going on a bender won’t start WWIII.)

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