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by mooktakim 29 days ago
Eventually someone somewhere will decide these LEO satellites are used for the military against their own sovereign countries and will have to start destroying them. We will end up with a graveyard in space where fragments will make it difficult to continue any space activities.
2 comments

> someone somewhere will decide these LEO satellites are used for the military against their own sovereign countries and will have to start destroying them

Military potential is true for all materiel. Including DoD satellites.

> We will end up with a graveyard in space where fragments will make it difficult to continue any space activities

No, we won’t. Specific orbits will get trashed. And even then, only for a few years—LEO deörbits in months to years, the latter only for small things in high LEO.

If you're determined enough you can cause damage that does not decay or go higher than LEO. This risk already exists for accidents. If your goal is to cause it, it wouldn't be too difficult
> If you're determined enough you can cause damage that does not decay or go higher than LEO

Source? The only solutions for orbital denial I know of are in GEO, and even then it’s cheaper to just shoot down birds as they go up.

IIUC in this particular instance of corporate <-> government space warfare, orbital decay should clear out the debris relatively quickly.