I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Shooting down satellites isn’t scifi anymore. Any medium sized country can do it if they want to.
Why don’t they already then? Russia could shoot down satellites providing communications to Ukrainian drones for instance, couldn’t they? I think it is because doing so triggers a large shitstorm and real geopolitical consequences, if it becomes the norm then no one will get to benefit from any satellites, so a smaller and less influential country is not getting off easy if they do that, same kind of deal as nukes and access to them except probably a little less so. The similarity being that there is a cutoff point below which no one has access, and above which heavy coercion and other manipulation can be imposed as an effective deterrent.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/07/china-missile-test-where-when-timing-response-controversy
https://united24media.com/latest-news/ukraine-quietly-tested-space-launch-capabilities-in-middle-of-war-twice-17852
Mostly because it’s expensive and some satellites are in way higher orbit than you want to fire randomly at, and hitting just a few satellites is more of a very very expensive annoyance unless you’re doing it to time it with other strikes (and yes there’s also escalation risk, but countries without their own satellites won’t care much)