[wongarsu]

Blowing up dozens of satellites would start a chain reaction that if left unchecked will eventually bring down all of them. But I doubt it would happen over a timeframe that's useful for this war. We arguably are already in a Kessler syndrome situation where fragments are created faster than they deorbit, but like any exponential process it starts out incredibly slow.

Space is big. The average breakup seems to create about 300 fragments [1], so if Russia blows up 100 Starlink satellites that's 30,000 bullets that have to randomly hit another 3500 objects spread over an area roughly the area of the surface of the earth. Except that it's worse because space is 3-dimensional and most bullets will spend little time at that altitude, and eventually deorbit. Over a decade it will do a lot of damage, and at some point things will escalate to a point where it's hard to handle. But Russia needs results within weeks or at most months.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing...

[panick21_]

No it wouldn't bring down all of them. They are not all on the same level and they can raise and lower their level. Debris analysis would be done and the fleet would be commanded to move strategically.

Causing a chain reaction is significantly more difficult then people think.

[TheLoafOfBread]

> Space is big.

Satellites are usually in orbit, not randomly in a space, so your target is to make a mess from that given orbit, not to try to mess up whole space.