[heyamar]

> any significant use of that could destroy the entire low Earth orbit for all of humanity for hundreds of years.

I do not want to answer this question in ChatGPT. What happens if someone launches a missile against say... any one satellite cluster?

[somenameforme]

Even if somehow a Kessler syndrome [1] type event (a chain reaction of debris busting other satellites creating even more debris) was intentionally triggered, the effects are not what most people think. Launches would remain perfectly safe simply because space is massive. What would happen is that certain orbital velocities would end up with an unacceptably high risk of collision over time, and so you wouldn't want to go into orbits that spend any significant amount of time at those velocities.

The neat thing about orbital mechanics is that your orbital altitude is determined 100% by your orbital velocity. Even in the case of an eccentric orbit, your velocity changes as you go from your furthest point to your closest point. A purely circularized orbit is an orbit where your velocity stays constant.

Extremely high energy debris would often end up escaping Earth's orbit and probably end up orbiting the Sun. And lower energy debris would often end up entering the atmosphere and burning up. So only fragments that remain in a sort of demented goldilocks zone would end up being dangerous. So in general I think the answer is - not much, especially in strikes of satellites near LEO. US, Russia, China, and India have all carried out live fire tests of anti-satellite weapons.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

[ethbr1]

You us missile effector(s) against individual satellites. Hence why clouds of smaller satellites are more survivable.

If kinetic, then a bunch of space debris are created. Some larger pieces, some smaller. If those intersect with other satellites, they may generate additional debris (see Kessler Syndrome, what parent was talking about).

But on the other hand, low earth orbits (where Starlink et al operate) will decay much faster than higher orbits, so it's a {wait time} problem rather than a {have to cleanup manually} problem.

And also space, even Earth orbits, is big. Satellites manage not to hit each other most of the time. A limited strike (e.g. the previous US or Chinese demonstrations) probably won't cascade.