Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending | Hacker News Reader

Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

arstechnica.com

40 pointsrntn28 comments

> The questioner specifically asked how the US military might respond if Russia attacked SpaceX's Starlink broadband network

> Saltzman didn't directly address the scenario posed in the question

> In a modern war, "there are going to be commercial entities, commercial organizations, commercial capabilities and assets that get caught up in the conflicts," Saltzman said. "Space is no different than sea lanes. It’s no different than civilian airliner traffic in Europe right now. The US has a long history of saying we’re going to protect the things that we need to be successful. So it would stand to reason that that same philosophy would extend into space, and I have no reason to believe that that will be different.”

Not much here, just a reasonable, seasoned response expertly crafted to avoid using SpaceX as a specific example. A+

TLDR: It's the high seas -- some cross-section of maritime law & piracy. Presumably, this means that SpaceX can & should actively defend themselves too?

Sure, but much like the high seas, Space-X trying to acquire the space version of a "modern missile destroyer" will likely violate many laws, so their ability to "defend themselves" will be fairly limited.

Could they on paper start launching satellite destroying drones into space? Yes. Would the US military and political apparatus ever allow them to do so? Absolutely not (unless they're launching them FOR the government).

How does that follow? The US just confirmed they will do it. Why spend money on something you know someone else is going to do for you?

Because that “protection” is not going to be free, it will come (if it isn’t already), with a lot of strings attached

Having their own protection could potentially buy them a little more independence

What's going to be there to defend after low earth orbit is saturated with shrapnel from the first battle?

no silly, that's the space shield!

Might a Kessler belt of known quantities eliminate or make harder launch from some areas more than others? (Essentially a space shield?)

The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit increases due to space pollution, causing collisions between objects to generate more space debris, increasing the likelihood of further collisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

It'll just bring in a whole new meaning to the term launch window. Not only do you have to wait to launch your new thing for the orbital mechanics to work to your favor, but you'll also have to wait for the opening in the space shield to align as well.

Kessler syndrome is about orbits becoming unfit for satellite to stay on them.

On the short periods involved in a launch, you'll need many orders of magnitude more trash on orbit. It's quite possible that it's not viable at all to launch that amount of stuff from Earth.

Creating a Kessler cascade is almost impossible for the Starlinks in 340km orbit. It's possible but very difficult for the 550km orbit. 550km orbit technically takes a few years to naturally deorbit, but ASAT weapons create small debris and eccentric orbits, drastically decreasing the deorbit time.

Fascinating. How would a country defend against this sort of attack?

With a stockpile of their own anti-sat weapons and the threat of MAD.

Starlink doesn't need defending. It's too low to cause Kessler, and big enough that the loss of a small number of satellites is inconsequential.

It's a different story for pretty much every other satellite, though. GPS, for example.

You also avoid Kessler with geosynchronous orbits anytime soon because everything out there is all doing the exact same orbit and thus the relative velocity is very low. It also helps that the orbital shell is so huge.

Is there any literature on what kind of attacked are possible apart from ASAT & cyberattack on satellite?

Just wants a bigger budget

I guess that's a hazard of being in a near constant state of war and seeing practically every country as an adversary.

They are, whether you choose to admit it or not.

How do you avoid the misaligned incentives in this case in terms of asking whether or not thing X needs protection to the person whose job is justified by thing X needing protection? If the answer were a resounding "ohh no, that's silly," do we think someone in his role would ever utter it?

This is hardly news, here a report from 2020: https://spacenews.com/pentagon-report-china-amassing-arsenal...

2030: Space Force chief says military satellites defending commercial satellites need defending.

Of course you would defend commercial projects if they are strategically important like SpaceX or if they serve a political role like not letting countries do whatever they want to your things

In related news, man with hammer searches for nails.

> Space Force chief says commercial satellites may need defending

"... so, I'll need a bigger budget to help with all that defending. Let me assure the committee, that I'll use some of the money to create a space defence drama of some sort, so it becomes obvious how much that money was needed... .... which will feed into next year's budgetary proposal.

PS if anyone on the committee needs a non executive board membership in an up and coming enterprise, grab me after this meeting. K?"

"That's a real nice satellite you got over there. It would be a real shame if something were to happen to it..."

"Congress is going to decommission us because our name is dumb"

.....from space pirates presumably.

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