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Comment by tmmm | Hacker News Reader

Can you shoot other satellites (above 100km) without any repercussions then (with your own satellite above 100km)?

Or, what would happen if I sent my own satellite, and it hit Elon's by accident?

I am asking these questions, because I am not sure big countries would be very happy if their people's internet requests went through USA's company.

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Property rights still apply in space: Any vehicle you launch is yours and you can be held accountable for damage you do to somebody else's vehicle. Proving that somebody killed your satellite on purpose should be pretty difficult though.

Is that really how it works in practice? There's no legal system with any real international jurisdiction. I'd have thought if state actors were going to be "held accountable" it would be done diplomatically, and that non-state actors would be held to account by the states in which they reside.

> There's no legal system with any real international jurisdiction.

Not entirely necessary. Most nation states have enough property spread over the world that suing them can be sufficient. For example: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/feds-win-seize-ave-tower...

I don't think it works like that. If one of Elon's Satellites get hit (intentionally or not) by a Russian/Chinese missile/satellite... I don't think SpaceX has any realistic way to enforce rights.

But I don't see why they would wanna do that. I don't know how these things works but it seems like there's enough space in space for all the satellites SpaceX would wanna launch.

You're talking about a company that makes tricked out ICBMs. I suspect that SpaceX could handle a tit-for-tat exchange with any space power. The only real limit would be budgetary, but I'm pretty sure the U.S. government could find a way to funnel funds. Of course, none if this would ever happen in the real world, I just wanted to point out that SpaceX is making some if the bigger rockets flying today, and they far from helpless.

This may be slightly pedantic, but Space-X's launch vehicles are not ICBMs.

Yes, it is being pedantic ;). You may also have noted that nobody "tricks out" ICBMs (the aftermarket parts available for ICBMs is rather limited...), and may have concluded that the original post was simply taking a few liberties with the language...

> nobody "tricks out" ICBMs

Russia does :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr-1

In rocketry, the words "payload" and "warhead" are interchangable.

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