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Comment by djsbs | Hacker News Reader

The Russians new ICBM don't go to space and fly a “low” altitude trajectory to avoid ABM defences. including, it seems, these pebbles.

Anyway, the Russians or the Chinese, if they reasonably feel they’re being denied access to space will trigger the Kessler syndrome. what happens if the Russians counter the 1000 mini-pebbles in space with ten massive satellites filled with TNT, ball bearings and a remote trigger?

Ultimately, thats what I would do if I got bored of the space race. Put enough TNT up there to deny space for everyone if need be.

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ICBMs by definition go to space, the B stands for Ballistic. FOB systems aren't ballistic either (that B stands for Bombardment), but still go to space and Brilliant Pebbles is designed to intercept missiles during the initial boost phase, so it would work against FOB systems too. Brilliant Pebbles, once in place, can stop any satellite launch, including those intended to trigger the Kessler syndrome. Of course, Russia might have such satellites in orbit already...

What Brilliant Pebbles wouldn't be any good against is cruise missiles that remain in the atmosphere, and ultra long range nuclear torpedoes. Russia is working on both, doubtlessly for this very reason.

Ballistic doesn't mean space, it mean paraboloid trajectory. A baseball is ballistic. But I concede your point.

Its pedantic though. The new missiles do have a shallow trajectory specifically to avoid interception including in the boost phase.

Add to that, the Russians have hypersonic missiles.

Starlink wont checkmate the Russians.

I thought brilliant pebbles was long cancelled?

At the time the cost to launch it would have been insane since it called for ten thousand or more satellites in LEO. However with Starlink, SpaceX has been promising to demonstrate the ability to economically launch such massive satellite constellations. If they succeed, I expect Brilliant Pebbles to return, although probably under a new name.

Interesting take by one of the SDI/Brilliant Pebbles architects pitching Starlink http://highfrontier.org/january-8-2019-brilliant-pebbles-is-...

Hypersonic tech and reduced launch costs have brought something similar back if the funding keeps coming.

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