Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-internet-satellite-con...
It's less expensive than launching satellites, and the Chinese goverment has enough money to do it if they want.
I doubt it, since a single Falcon Heavy launch would carry dozens of Starlink satellites but the existing anti-satellite technology can only hit one at a time. Keep in mind they have said the final constellation will be 12,000 satellites!
edit: and BFR could theoretically carry 300 when it is operational. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/25525/how-many-spa...
Moving something to the same altitude as Leo requires much less energy than moving something to Leo. Rockets don't fire straight up because the need their momentum to be at an angle. In addition, the payload of a communication satellite is more expensive than the payload required to throw it either disable the satellite or put it into a declining orbit.
Maybe Elon's rockets are just so cheap he can make it up in margin, but we are really talking about we aren't talking about marginal amount of difficulty difference, but an entire order of magnitude.
I'm not sure how efficient China's military industrial complex is, but I wouldn't trust the US's military to be able to build a weapon system that could destroy SpaceX satellite's more efficiently than SpaceX can launch them, haha.
Are you sure? If China knocks out one of ours, we’ll knock out at least one of theirs. We’ll also likely implement a suite of sanctions. Shooting down a satellite is an act of war.
Wars kill lots of people. You knew that, right?
No, we won’t. We’ll impose several decades of meaningless tariffs and embargoes with tons of loopholes so it looks like we’re doing something until everyone forgets what everyone was mad about in the first place.
Do you have more info on this? Or anyone?
That's so crass. It's plain indefensible. I really want to know more.
edit: Thanks for the links.
I’m sure lots of North Americans wouldn’t want Chinese satellites overhead for concern of privacy.
I mean, generating tons of space junk is not cool. But what else are you going to do if others are lurking on your airspace?
It is going to be shift is policy though. We are going to need to update space law.
Umm, there are of course Chinese satellites overhead and they have excellent imagery of all of our military bases. As we do for theirs (and every other country!). Orbits aren't very friendly to avoiding airspace.
If there is a willingness to do it once, it tests the barrier of what's acceptable.
It's bad for everyone—present, and future.
accidental example:
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=iri...
no nation-state wants to start the game of shooting down another's satellite, either military or commercial, because everything up there is so vulnerable. it would open china to retaliatory strikes taking down their own polar orbit LEO, inclined LEO (35-45 degree) molnia, MEO and GEO satellites. satellites are fragile things and can be killed with one 200g chunk of tungsten at a closing velocity of 18,000 km/h.
Your defining 'space' as airspace is odd also
These are not government satellites and china owns the airwaves over their nation. I highly doubt the US government would retaliate whatsoever against China if they shot down a satellite that illegally interacted with their airspace.
> China wouldn’t risk it. This is a great opportunity to break the great firewall and finally give the Chinese people access to unfiltered information.
Take this with a grain of salt since this is mostly based on what I have heard hearsay, but they can jam the signals and/or monitor who transmits back and go after the citizens using said signal (and china is not a country where you want to poke the government). I doubt this will have any effect on the great firewall.