Russia warns United States: use of SpaceX for spying makes its satellites a target

Starlink launches forty-ish Starlink sats every other week, Russia could deplete it's entire arsenal of missiles and, if they're lucky, cause a hole in their coverage.

Starlink needs deleting too, so that would be perfect.
- As someone who spends a lot of time in the outdoors, I have to disagree with you. I'm very excited about how this will simplify logistics, and make getting weather etc much easier.
And we even made a whole movie about Kessler syndrome :|
- Enjoy spreading misinformation online? There are valid criticisms against LEO constellations but Kessler syndrome is not one of them
- Which is exactly why Russia only needs a handful of rockets at most. You only need to make debris. The rest will sort itself out.
I'm pretty sure that starlink satellites are orders of magnitudes more expensive to manufacture and deploy than the weapons that can target them.
- Really? You can put up 50 starlinks at a time for tens of millions of dollars, whereas asats need a more expensive an maneuverable kill vehicle and a launch for each one with lots more complicated targeting and maneuvering. It's pretty hard to track and follow something down moving so fast through space and hit it. Plus Russia just doesn't have the launch capacity to put up that much mass to orbit.
- How do you know that? You're launching an entire rocket to kill one satellite, that can't be cheap.
- Maybe, but one of the best traits about Musk is he's willing to throw money at this regardless of profit. So he's gunna keep throwing up more of these satellites, while Russia's rocket supply is only going to get harder to resupply for the foreseeable future.

Spy satellites have always been valid targets. I don't think they're any more likely to shoot these ones down than any of the others.

For real. This seems like something that threatens musk and space x more than anybody else. The CIA effectively has unlimited money to replace whatever Russia takes down, but musk needing to pay to replace satellites to maintain starlink will hurt his bottom line. I don't think tin foil hat wearers would be all that unreasonable to make the assumption that this is a veiled threat to keep musk in line. I frequently hear the argument that "billionaires can't be bought" but I believe the exact opposite. They care more about money than morals and ethics, and can therefore be coerced by it either through hurting their bottom line or rewarding them with more of it. A dragon's hoard can never be too big for the dragon to accept more, and nothing hurts the drain more than reducing its hoard.

Musk supports Russia so what's the play here

That CIA - SpaceX combo to make spy satellites mentioned some days back.
- Huh, found that news on Google. So Musk is quite publicly doing something in secret, with the CIA and Russia. Definitely fishy

Can't wait to hear about space X satellites falling out of a window.

- Only 3? I thought we were closing on a decade with this joke now.
- We'd stop, if the joke wasn't relevant anymore.
  But I doubt Putin will fall out of a window himself anytime soon.
- You seem stressed, would you like a cup of tea?
Hell yeah bitches!!

There are more sats than asat missiles. The math doesn't work out. Unless they use nukes or shotgun blasts or something to make the entirety of leo unusable.

The math doesn’t work out.
You only need enough asat missiles to create enough debris. Kessler handles the rest.
- Hense making the entirety of leo unusable
- And also affects China and India, both nations that Russia relies on. Doubly on China who is developing their own LEO internet service.
Probably can use a nuke to take out a lot.
Don't give them any ideas
- It's okay, Starlink is in a low enough orbit that it's basically Kessler-proof.
They could just destroy enough in a given time and place to allow an attack or other ops to go through.
Asat are cheaper to manufacture and deploy than it is for a satellite.
- Really? Where are you getting that info? This estimates a starlink costs about 1M to build and launch. The SM-3, the US asat missile, costs at least 10M each. I think it's more for the asat variant, but I couldn't find numbers for that. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-cost-for-Starlink-satellites-to-provide-high-speed-internet-across-the-United-States#:~:text=According%20to%20one%20source%2C%20the,be%20around%20%2415%2D30%20billion. https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-defense-systems-2/missile-defense-systems/missile-interceptors-by-cost/

Blast Lonnie's bullshit out of the sky and see if I care.

On one hand, I really, really want those idiots in the Kremel to cause a Kessler Syndrome...(In theory it could also prevent ballistic missiles)

On the other hand, that would be quite bad for the rest of us.

Starlink birds fly too low for that, they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead.
- I'd be worried about debris flung into steeply elliptical orbits, though. It wouldn't take much to do some real damage to sats in higher orbits and once the cascade starts there's not much we can do but wait decades for the worst of it to fall into the atmosphere.
Kessler syndrome is only a threat to satellites that are orbiting within the debris, it's not really a danger if you're only passing through (as a ballistic missile would).