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Comment by uxhacker | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the us has a means of protecting the Starlink satellites?

I think it’s unlikely. At LEO constellation altitude, you could use ground to space energy weapons (~3-10MW) to disable these satellites, no on orbit anti satellite capability required.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1544/1/...

So they can be disabled from the ground? Why has russia not thought of that? Is that why Starlink is actually concerned about them been used by Ukraine?

It's unlikely Russia has a 3 megawatt laser and the optics to hit a satellite at this time. Anti-drone defence would be much easier with much worse than that.

That said, the ongoing improvements to lasers, and price reductions, in a decade I expect the limiting factor for random terrorists performing such an attack would be adaptive optics to get past atmospheric distortion.

I strongly believe China has this laser and adaptive optics capability today, they’re just not going to show their hand until they’re ready.

Agree in a decade any rando will be able to accomplish this.

From what I've seen, I believe the only possible option is threatening to use the US military against anyone who attacked Starlink.

Space is hard place to attack in the first place, but even harder to defend against attacks from those who can reach it.

>of protecting the Starlink satellites

Like shooting down all Russian satellites in retaliation? The US can produce and launch new satellites much faster than Russia.

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