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Comment by TOMDM | Hacker News Reader

Because Kessler syndrome means you don't need to hit all 10k yourself.

Lowering the orbits just means that we get back to normal faster, not that the it's impossible.

> Kessler syndrome means you don't need to hit all 10k yourself

Kessler is useless for LEO constellations. The timeframes of the cascades exceed the useful lives and dwelling times at those altitudes.

I am not aware of a military solution to prompting a cascade over even a limited area. Instead, you’d use repeated high-atmosphere nuclear detonations to fry birds in a region.

Does Kessler syndrome also mean ICBMs become nonviable?

No.

It's not a wall. The risk from going through a dangerous orbit is much much less than the risk from staying there.

That depends on how you define risk. If it means the probability of a collision, then you'd be correct. But if a collision does happen, the consequences will be worse than being in the same orbit. Based on an oversimplified model, debris in orbit is likely to have low relative velocities with respect to an intact satellite in the same orbit, since a large deltav would change the orbit. (It's not as simple as this, but it's good enough in practice.)

This is actually what asat weapons take advantage of. They usually don't even reach orbital velocity, just like ballistic missiles (of course, there are exceptions like the golden dome monstrosity). The kill vehicle just maneuvers itself into the path of the satellite and lets the satellite plough into it at hypervelocity.

I remember a short story about Canada preventing total global annihilation in WWIII, by deliberately triggering Kessler syndrome. My google-fu is failing me though.

I would love to read it:)

Stop trying to make Kessler syndrome a thing. Kessler syndrome isn’t a thing, and it will never be a thing.

PS The original paper expects the cascade to take decades to centuries. No one can afford to shoot down Starlink except SpaceX.

Stop trying to boss people around, and just make your point with some citations.

It's a reference to the "stop trying to make fetch happen" meme from the movie Mean Girls.

Ah, so I should have replied with "Yeahhh bitch, science!", because that's a reference to the Breaking Bad meme? That's how we're discussing things now?

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