Probably. In a war I don't think they'd hesitate, since they've already demonstrated their willingness to cause huge clouds of LEO debris with simple tests. But the upside is that it's much less of a problem for the rest of humanity. Losing access to space for a few years is certainly not something we want, but in the context of a major war between two space powers it will be among the least of our worries.
Note also that "Kessler Syndrome" is not a binary condition. As debris gets worse, the expected lifespan of satellites in those orbits drops, and as does the success rate of launching rockets through the effected altitudes. However these don't drop off to zero immediately. If the satellite is important enough to justify the elevated risk and additional expense then you can simply plan to launch several of them to get one of them through. Manned missions would be a bad idea, but odds are good that vital weather satellites and the like would be kept aloft.
They already have global coverage via a range of communication satellites used by various programs going back decades. For example the F-16 program had an independent network for effectively global coverage via 4 geostationary satellites. Other systems used polar orbits for actual global coverage.
Starlink has more total bandwidth and lower orbits, but the US military only needs so much bandwidth.
I would expect the bandwidth demands of the US military to be effectively infinite. Especially if the connection can be guaranteed and is low latency.
Communication is incredibly valuable in maneuver based combined arms warfare. The main limit is being able to quickly react and properly coordinate. For that comms are important, and reliability of comms is incredibly valuable, with latency being important as well.
Starlink has the very nice feature of being robust, just by virtue of having soo many satelites. China can easily knock out 4 geostationary satellites. But hundreds of low-orbit satellites make for a very difficult target.
The DoD has far more than just 4 satellites. Anyway Starlink satellites are really low making them much easier targets.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a single HARP style light gas gun couldn’t cheaply take down every Starlink satellite for a few hundred million total. The best defense is having a wide range of satellite orbits and the ability to quickly deploy more. If nothing else, a single nuclear EMP could wreck a huge swath of the Starlink network.
The DoD has far more than just 4 satellites up there.
Anyway, it’s vastly easier to destroy LEO satellites than Geostationary ones. A surprisingly tiny missile fired from an aircraft doing Mach 2 can take out Starlink satellites as you only need vertical speed the satellite provides energy at collision, but geostationary orbit takes significantly more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon
From the sources I looked at, NDSA is supposed to be less than 1,000 satellites by 2030 which isn’t a huge jump over what they already have. They just don’t benefit from that kind of satellite density at the bottom of LEO when it comes at the cost of lower lifespan.
What they want from NDSA is multiple different systems each with a separate focus that can all use a uniform transmission layer.
You're talking about boost-phase interceptors, not mid-course interceptors. Starship to replace GMD (as suggested by credit_guy) doesn't make much sense, but Starship does have the technical ability to launch a massive constellation of space-based interceptors for quite cheap. With Starship, it should be possible to put tens of thousands of interceptors into LEO, and to rapidly replenish the constellation.
As for the "general consensus that weapons in space are bad", there's also a general consensus that war is bad, so we should all breath easy! Wait no.
The problem with weapons in space are that they put the opposing super-powers in an impossible position. Hence it forces them to make a move asap to prevent being at a total disadvantage. This is mostly because weapons in space can be used with very little warning. There is little defense, and not even any notice that allows you to prepare or setup a second strike.
Plenty of people don't think that's bad, but it seems that the top military decision makers of all super-powers do see the problem with that, and hence they have managed to keep weapons out of space.
This remains a high-level decision, so it only takes a few rational people for the game-theory to work.
Consider the external politics around mobilization. It is a big deal to mobilize externally, because it forces opposing players to also mobilize, hence moving everyone closer to conflict. The thing about weapons in space is that they are effectively always mobilized. Even if you could sustain perpetual mobilization, it wouldn't be a good strategic move.
Something similar goes for missile defense systems that are too effective. It disrupts MAD, and pushes the opposing side in to a corner. Either make a move before the defense system is up, or accept a role as a second grade power from now on. The problem, specifically, is that it removes the second-strike capability much more than that it removes the first-strike capability.
So having a missile-defense system in orbit has game-theoretical downsides both for being in space, and for removing the enemies second-strike capability.
The same does not quite hold for having the capability to launch such a missile defense system. It gives your opponent time to react when you launch it. Hence they do not need to immediately react to you having the capability. So I think research into this area, preparations, and development of the system are fine. Heck it is even important and desirable. We just need to continuously refuse to even ready such systems outside of well-announced and limited tests.
Indeed, that's the classical game theoretic view. However, consider two possibilities:
- what if deployment of an effective BMD is covert and piecemeal, and is presented as fait accompli? The first to do that wins, and we only have one real contender. You might say that's a very dangerous gamble, but…
- what response do you envision if the cover is blown? Yes, classic game theory suggests launching everything, but let's think about, say, Putin's options. If he launches, he is guaranteed to die very soon and have his country obliterated. If he doesn't, his nuclear deterrent is indeed worth less now, but it's not given he'd ever need it. Both because it might not be needed during his long and happy life, and because the US is not very keen on attacking random dictatorships despite some historical precedents. So the choice for him is between immediate death and potential problems in the future, and hey maybe it's not actually BMD or maybe it's not very effective, right? Covert/deniable deployment helps here, a lot
So between those two possibilities, I think it's not given that an effective BMD would be as dangerous as you suggest.
Piecemeal deployment might work, if not discovered. But the discovery risk is rather large.
When an opponent discovers the deployment, either after-the-fact, or during deployment. They have many responses beyond immediately launching everything. The main problem is that this deployment corners them. Perhaps they try to attack the missile shield in space. Perhaps they run covert operations to disable the shield. Perhaps they take economic warfare counter-measures. I imagine plenty of former allies might side against whomever made such a huge uni-lateral move.
In any case, as we say in my native language, a cornered cat makes weird jumps. I don't think it makes sense to corner China or Russia in this field. MAD works well enough.
How do these cell systems respond to the network no longer existing? Do they continue trying to ping towers that no longer exist? Do they give up eventually and turn themselves off forever?
Probably try forever. The last head unit firmware added a deep sleep so it doesn't drain the battery and polled much less frequently (this was before 3g shut down and made the telematics much less useful anyway). Might have just been parked in an underground garage or driving through tunnels everywhere. I really should pull the fuse though.
When the 2G networks were sunset, Nissan offered a voluntary service campaign for some of their cars with 2G modems: either pay $200 to get a replacement telematics unit with a 3G modem, or they'll disable the 2G modem for free so it doesn't drain your battery trying to connect to a non-existent network 24/7.
But did Nissan disable the "we're collecting data and sending it off to the homeland: OK/Cancel" startup screen? No. So now every time I drive the thing, I have to push a button that does nothing so that I can see the screen.
One of but many little duck bites that has us firmly in the "never buy another Nissan" camp.
On Volkswagens, nag screens like that (and "menu disabled while vehicle is in motion" lockouts, and a million other things) can be tweaked with cheap dongles that let you change settings using your phone or laptop. Maybe there's something similar for Nissan?
Ya know, now that you mention it, there are apparently dongles of some sort (perhaps OBDC? It's been a while...) that give all kinds of extra info, maybe there's something like you mention. It's been a while since I've been over to mynissanleaf.com, perhaps it's time to go pay a visit for a search.
Thanks for the prompting.
EDIT: though it does not look like the tool will disable the nag screen, LeafSpy Pro does a lot of other things Leaf owners might find handy, such as change the backup warning tone, door unlock/lock behavior, et. al.
OBD2 / OBDII refers to generic powertrain diagnostics (engine, emissions, etc) for all vehicles. Plenty of dongles for that. But I mean something that emulates the tool a dealership would have for specific makes of vehicle, which goes far beyond just the engine, extending into every module, possibly like what you found. Although usually it would be for a family of makes, not just a family of models.
For VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat the popular ones are VCDS and OBDeleven (the name of the latter being a play on OBDII, confusingly, being that I am trying to differentiate actual OBDII... ugh).
I just imagined the wireless unlock button sequentially stepping through the 16 lock/unlock states for a 4-door vehicle. "The car is locked. 13 quick clicks later, both front doors are unlocked and both back doors are locked."
I went from a Nissan LEAF to a VW ID4. Now I have to press "OK" to confirm a driving profile instead of a legal agreement every time I turn on the car, and my app has even fewer features than NissanConnect EV had. The grass is always greener on the other side, as they say.
My Volvo has had this happen. I have no idea if it still pings anything but the app access has been shut down.
Annoyingly every so often the car gives me a warning that the Volvo service has expired. I’d love to turn that off. But it must still be trying to connect to something.
Yeah, I still get the warning every so often that Ford has access to my GPS for trip tracking... I think if I factory reset the headunit, that'll go away, but then I lose my presets. If I had thought about it, I could have deassociated while the modem was online. :(
> So I’m not sure why Signal should drop them other than because of the general volatility in crypto.
The affiliation to a cryptoscheme casts the entirety of Signal in a disreputable light. Not least because it gets Signal tangled up in stories like this one.
Whats "technically correct"? You think making a money sending feature using a currency that has random 1000% swings from fraudsters is "technically correct"? It's fucking useless garbage is what it is. Good thing their users didn't buy into the fraud seeing how this scam has no volume (ironically enabling this scam).
Rage against it all you want, people are judged by the company they keep. Ideally not in court rooms, but in everyday life? Abso-fucking-lutely. You don't have to like it but that's how life works.
Moxie was a technical advisor for mobilecoin, helping people send money privately sounds like a noble pursuit to me. At least it has a real world use case + legitimate real world userbase/implementation. Most crypto companies don't have that.
I don't think a messenger should provide a way to transfer money. It is one reason I hate Facebook Messenger. I liked Signal more before then because of its focus on messaging.
That's not a resolved matter by the way. He's still alive, still a convicted rapist, still a fugitive, and still defended and respected by Hollywood-centric media. He continues to evidently be immune to 'cancellation' because... influential people in movie industry like his movies I guess.
That was a product of a bubble of 1970s liberalism that was open minded towards sex between adults and young teenagers. It was an intersection of the 1960s sexual revolution, and the 1960s trend of treating kids more like adults (e.g. Tinker v. Des Moines)—but prior to the #MeToo era focus on affirmative consent and power dynamics. They simply couldn’t understand the backlash against Polanski.
There's probably not much point explaining the cultural value of free speech to somebody who thinks free speech is so awful they can't even bring themselves to mention it without using a minced oath, as though they fear even the term itself.
'freeze peach' is a dig at the blatant disingenuity of some self-styled 'free speech absolutists' who are actually dedicated trolls out to upset people. Since you're new here this trope might not be familiar to you.
I'm very familiar with it. It's a minced oath used by those who disrespect free speech so intensely they suspend any pretense of decorum and resort to childish wordplay. It's the same as FOSS activists who insist on writing "M$" instead of Microsoft.
I didn't say it was a HN meme. I think you could benefit from reading the HN guidelines if you want to have a good time here. They're in a link at the bottom of the page.
There's a group that does this, but supposedly has not made much of an impact on the city's rat population and the practice has stirred some controversy (content
warning: dead rats)
Even if you make egg freezing cheap, it will still have an abysmal success rate (particularly if a woman waits until her 30s to have the eggs freezed), and should rationally be viewed as a hail Mary of last resort. This should not be viewed as the default rational path towards pregnancy, even if it were free. A society which is structured to encourage this path is setting people up for serious disappointment.
Note also that "Kessler Syndrome" is not a binary condition. As debris gets worse, the expected lifespan of satellites in those orbits drops, and as does the success rate of launching rockets through the effected altitudes. However these don't drop off to zero immediately. If the satellite is important enough to justify the elevated risk and additional expense then you can simply plan to launch several of them to get one of them through. Manned missions would be a bad idea, but odds are good that vital weather satellites and the like would be kept aloft.