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119 points cratermoon | 30 comments | | HN request time: 2.029s | source | bottom
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mapt ◴[] No.42198516[source]
The current trajectory is that SpaceX proved the commercial and military viability of an LEO megaconstellation, repeatedly lowering their target altitudes and raising their satellite count because of debris and cell size concerns...

And now the rest of the world is trying to catch up in a sort of arms race, and not taking any care about debris concerns. The most tempting orbits are the ones in upper LEO that permit them to launch fewer satellites.

SpaceX are going to end up well under 500km (orbital lifespan: a decade) before things are finished, and they switched to very low orbit staging with SEP spiral out to reach final orbit a ways back.

China's newest constellation Thousand Sails is at an altitude of 800km (orbital lifespan: thousands of years), with a thousand satellites in the works over the next year or so and 14,000 planned, and they're launching them using chemical upper stages designed to explode into a thousand pieces at the target altitude. This is sufficient for Kessler Syndrome all on its own, without counting interactions with anything else up there. A catastropic debris cascade at 800km percolates down to lower altitudes over time and impacts.

We need viable treaties limiting development beyond 400 or 500km and we need them ten years ago.

I don't know how to sell the urgency of this predicament. You can have as many satellites as you want, a million uncoordinated bodies, at 400km because direct collision potential scales with (satellite count / orbital lifespan) ^2 . At 1000km, satellites decay so slowly we are already too crowded; we have already overused the space. We are speed-running the end of the space age and we are doing it to save a small number of dollars and to avoid a small amount of diplomacy.

This is not something we get a do-over on. There is no practical way to collect ton-scale debris at present, no way to track kilogram-scale debris, no practical way to shield pressure vessels against gram-scale debris, and even milligram-scale debris can hit with the force of a bullet. After collisions start occurring at a rapid clip, the mass of potential impactors quickly forms a long tailed lognormal distribution that denies us space for centuries.

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1. perihelions ◴[] No.42199177[source]
Why would any of the US' adversaries agree to that? We have SpaceX, and they do not; lowering the altitude of megaconstellations is asymmetrically far more costly for them then it is for us.

Stopping China's (highly strategic, military) satellite constellations isn't a "small amount of diplomacy". It's an impossibility.

(It's even their declared planning that deliberate Kessler cascades are on the table [0]—to try to ground this discussion in diplomatic reality).

[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3178939/chin... ("China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists")

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2. maxglute ◴[] No.42199498[source]
I think OP is suggesting US concede to sharing 500km orbits that SpaceX has disproportionately squatted rights to, since current international law is first come first serve. Where concede is to rejigger international law to increase density of 500km so others wouldn't have to go higher, i.e. PRC mega constellations going ~800 because ~500 mostly taken. Or in ops suggestion, free for all. This is more costly for US since it saves entrants from going extra 300km, but imo proximity also greatly enhances chance for friction... i.e. if everyone chilling around same plane, and it's going to get magnitude more croweded, expect a lot more overt/hidden space war assets there to trigger kessler.
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3. mapt ◴[] No.42199937[source]
Invite them in. Launch their satellites for them, at 400km. Give them cash or territory. Give away the farm. How doesn't matter. What matters is that we start coexisting at 300-500km, and we mutually taboo launching large amounts to altitudes much higher than that.

There is no stable Mutually Assured Destruction Nash equilibrium here, if either of us does this thing it causes dramatic harm to both.

Not regarding that as a worthwhile goal is "mineshaft gap" thinking - a zero-sum mentality entirely ignoring our collective advantage in order to pursue competitive advantage.

It is perfectly feasible to run a Chinese constellation alongside Starlink sharing the same space, orbitally. Very low orbits are self cleaning.

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4. nradov ◴[] No.42200763[source]
There is no world in which giving cash or territory to the Chinese Communist Party would be acceptable to US taxpayers, regardless of the consequences.
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5. blackeyeblitzar ◴[] No.42200975[source]
Or just destroy their rockets and launch complexes. It’s better than Kessler syndrome.
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6. immibis ◴[] No.42201421{3}[source]
They, in turn, will destroy ours, and then you have basically caused the same outcome as Kessler syndrome: nobody can launch things to space.
7. tehjoker ◴[] No.42201455[source]
basically, it sounds like the U.S. should not treat China as a competitor and we should cooperate. this insane hypercompetition for literally no reason (other than US capitalists wanting to remain dominant) is going to destroy us all.
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8. tehjoker ◴[] No.42201457{3}[source]
i think you mean war-hawk capitalists, this taxpayer thinks cooperation is fine
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9. shiroiushi ◴[] No.42201570[source]
You think the Chinese capitalists aren't also trying to become dominant?
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10. neilv ◴[] No.42201742{3}[source]
Please don't commit acts of war. War is bad.
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11. mapt ◴[] No.42202054{3}[source]
We've been doing it since Deng for the sake of making a few CEOs and shareholders richer. China operates or is monopsony sponsor of numerous pieces of infrastructure around the world in the name of trade.
12. mapt ◴[] No.42202085{3}[source]
It is trivial to retaliate in orbital disputes, and ASAT warfare produces long-lived hazard which cannot be cleaned up. Imagine two rival nuclear plants in nearby cities buying artillery and shelling each other, including with aerially deployed landmines.

Either you get along or you do not get to be a spacefaring civilization.

13. mapt ◴[] No.42202101[source]
I make no claim about what we should do in other contexts, only that mutual destruction of access to orbit is so easy to achieve we're currently careening towards it full speed without what politicians perceive as 'open hostilities'. This particular domain requires an approach more like OPEC than like the Cold War, and the consequence of failure to collaborate is you never get to play around in orbit again.
14. mionhe ◴[] No.42202580{4}[source]
Not in that context.

China as a whole is seen differently than the Chinese Communist Party.

15. perihelions ◴[] No.42202680[source]
No; rather, that commenter's argument was

"The most tempting orbits are the ones in upper LEO that permit them to launch fewer satellites."

Higher altitude => wider coverage => fewer satellites

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16. m4rtink ◴[] No.42202979[source]
Others would use theblower orbits - but it is just not viable for them, as their rockets suck (eq. are not reusable) and thus they need to put their few expensive satellites with meager propulsion capabilities higher to last longer. Not to mention spot beams being wide enough with so few satellites.
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17. perihelions ◴[] No.42203010[source]
Not agreeing with any of this.

- "Launch their satellites for them, at 400km."

No reasonable person would help their adversary build powerful weapons that could immediately be used against them. The point of satellite constellations—Chinese or American, either—is to create undeniable, high-bandwidth communications for armies; to create real-time (as opposed to sporadic) satellite imagery for armies; to create, in short, an overwhelming situational awareness advantage in a conventional war.

- "Give them cash or territory."

We are not giving away countries.

18. lupusreal ◴[] No.42203046[source]
> Stopping China's (highly strategic, military) satellite constellations isn't a "small amount of diplomacy". It's an impossibility.

Put 100k boost-phase interceptors into LEO. Permit them a fixed quota of launches per year, shoot down the rest. Pax Americana.

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19. poulpy123 ◴[] No.42203067[source]
you mean total nuclear war
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20. perihelions ◴[] No.42203086[source]
Then they'd retaliate in kind, and we'd get nowhere. It's certain they have that capability, or can develop it.

We stand to lose a lot more from a space war, right now, than anyone else. We (US/west) hold the lion's share of space commerce and orbital launch capacity. "Earth orbit is free and open for everyone" is more than Star Trek idealism—it's a precedent we've set that benefits us, especially.

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21. throwaway290 ◴[] No.42203114{4}[source]
"Please don't hurt the bully in the playground, fighting is bad"

The bully isn't going to learn with this implicit encouragement.

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22. maxglute ◴[] No.42203279{3}[source]
>others would use theblower orbits

Orbital slots are managed by ITU United Nations International Telecommunication Union who manages availability / congestion. SpaceX reserved substantial % of sub 500 km slots. Hence PRC announching their megacontestallations to reserve 500km+ slots, specifically because there isn't enough room in sub 500km for another mega constellation so they're grabbing next best ones.

PRC megaconstellation is targetting 500km+, they're not going to put up 10,000s of mega constellation without economic reusable, hence many options under development. They're choosing orbits based on assumed reusables not current launch costs / vehicles, which btw LM5 is $3000/kg, or ballpark enough to F9/kg for disposable megaconstellation launches despite cost. But bottleneck is resusable vehicles can sustain the required tempo for megaconstellation that disposable can't.

23. maxglute ◴[] No.42203462{3}[source]
We're talking about megaconstellations for communications, you want lower for latency, stronger signal (denser/less distance for beamforming) for better data through put -> less satellites for more coverage, and costs is cheaper since less energy. Realistically starlink has combination of 340km-1200km satellites working together, but the critical point is SpaceX reserved a lot of the sub 500km orbit slots with ITU (UN agency who manages orbits), so PRC competitors have no space real estate to try to throw up another mega constellation that can mimic spaceX economics due to location, location, location. Hence PRC registering Thousand Sails at 800km, Guowang at 500km-1200km orbits, etc, which according to OP is exponentially bad for Kessler (I have no idea). So either ITU opens much more 400km slots, or all the megaconstellations going forward going to satuate >500km LEO. Part of the reason PRC rushed to announce their megaconstellations before they even had reusable was to reserve the next closest available orbit slots that they can.
24. lordgroff ◴[] No.42203972{3}[source]
We've seen Russians shoot their own satellites, officially to ensure no large object re-entry (or some such nonsense, I don't remember), but I'm 10000% that it's a demonstration to the United States. If the Russians can do it, I'm sure China either already can or is very close to there. It's time to stop pretending that US can enforce rules by fiat without ramifications that scale from getting space assets blown up to a global war.

The world is already dangerously unstable and here we are discussing new ideas on how to make it more so.

25. MrBuddyCasino ◴[] No.42204027[source]
There is no such thing as international law. There are only voluntary agreements.
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26. lupusreal ◴[] No.42204675{3}[source]
Once a boost-phase interception constellation is demonstrated, nuclear war would be infeasible. They could try it with cruise missiles but that would only ensure their own destruction. They could try launching their own BMD constellation but that can be denied by the first.
27. maxglute ◴[] No.42205435{3}[source]
Sure, issue is, if OP math checks out, currently everyone already voluntarily agrees to international law - ITU coordinating LEO orbits that extends to 2000km, meaning hard to clean >400km orbits is going to be filled with 100,000+ megaconstation hardware in next decades, substantially increasing chance of kessler. Op propose limiting >400km orbits... which means US is going to be unhappy sharing space with PRC megaconstellations. PRC not going to accept limiting >400km orbits without openning more <400km orbits because it means ceding advantage to US who locked in high% of <400km orbits since US grabbed megaconstellation spots earlier. So either everyone shares / free for alls <400km orbits, or everyone suffers Kessler, in which case whoever has the most space hardware might end up losing the most.
28. tehjoker ◴[] No.42207221{3}[source]
They are, but China regularly dispossesses them and sometimes executes them, so the communist party, with huge popular membership, is in control.
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29. neilv ◴[] No.42207914{5}[source]
Neither kid is an angel, but they both are smart enough not to risk an all-out fight with each other.
30. shiroiushi ◴[] No.42209961{4}[source]
I'm talking about the CCP itself, not the various business people running other companies there. The CCP are capitalists, in case you haven't noticed. (I know, Americans can't really wrap their heads around that one.)