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by modeless 336 days ago
Taking out one or even a few dozen satellites isn't going to make communication unreliable. They can redistribute themselves to fill holes. You'd need to take out thousands, requiring hundreds of launches at least. And neither Russia nor China has reusable rockets, so the costs would be much higher than SpaceX's costs. The interceptors would take a long time to spread out to reach their targets if they were launched in groups like Starlink is, so it wouldn't be a surprise attack and SpaceX would have time to prepare. They would need to start launching on-orbit spares for each orbital shell, but there are only a few shells, not hundreds.

And in a few years when Starship is launching Starlink, the economics will be tilted even more wildly in SpaceX's favor.