8 thoughts on “About That Russian Nuclear Satellite Thingy”

  2. Project Thor. Hmm

    Anyone want to bet that in the middle of the 3,000+ Starlinks the government didn’t get SpaceX to put up a few ringers to test Thor or CASABA HOWITZER.

    And now 100 Starlink are being deorbited….

  3. We are talking about a version of Project Thor with Russian quality control.

    Mr. Putin pushes a button, and instead of wiping out the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, it lands somewhere in Tehran.

    Sawww-reeeee!

  4. Also consider that this greatly lower the threshold for small actors to cause a serious international incident. Imagine if a extremely important military satellite gets permanently damaged by terrestrial-side heavy duty EMP or blinding lasers from a neutral country. It could be a covert superpower op or a terrorist/insurrection group finding a new way to misbehave.

    Now what happens if the owner of that satellite is prepared to carry out some dire threats? It’s one thing if your important weapon systems are under secure control (like a sub, airbase, or missile silo). That’s James Bond level sophistication to harm or misuse. It’s another to have this system in a poorly secured satellite subject to attack from any habitable part of the globe.

  6. Add the word “nuclear” to make it really scary. Nuclear bombs or reactors don’t add much capability as space weapons. Reactors are a particularly bad idea, ever seen a terrestrial reactor cooling tower, do the calculation and see what sort of radiator it takes to replace that.

      1. I’ve seen the damage space sharks can do in one of the later Sharknado movies. They got on board the ISS or Space Shuttle, if I recall correctly.

        But more seriously, is the threat a nuclear powered anti-satellite weapon or nuclear explosions in orbit? I’m having trouble understanding the widescale satellite threat from an orbital nuke, as the environment is already extremely harsh. Direct radiation and flash effects should only extend out a few miles, and satellites are generally hundreds of miles apart, so the weapons would cost vastly more than the targets, and run out of nukes long before we ran out of satellites.

        A nuclear-powered ASAT weapon could do quite a lot of damage, but I wouldn’t think it could remain active very long before a Starlink satellite accidentally crashed into it, unless it was in a very odd orbit.

Comments are closed.