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"Low" is tough to say until someone does some proper sort of 'true mapping' of space debris in the range somehow. Protection would require a lot of complexity and cost due to the need for shielding and the delta-v to move it up there.

Every launch failure will result in more debris and even lower probability of a successful future launch.

> as drag pulls down all the resulting debris over the next thousand years, the 800km debris becomes circular 700km debris, and then circular 600km debris, and then circular 500km debris

Circularisation isn’t the unexpected part. Sphericalisation is. One requires orbits to desync. The other requires plane changes.

Or just destroy their rockets and launch complexes. It’s better than Kessler syndrome.

There is no world in which giving cash or territory to the Chinese Communist Party would be acceptable to US taxpayers, regardless of the consequences.

> Launch their satellites for them, at 400km. Give them cash or territory. Give away the farm. How doesn't matter.

That sounds not just expensive but unrealistic. I think it’s easier and more politically acceptable to just cripple their launch capabilities with cyberattacks or direct force. It’s not like the world trusts or likes the CCP, or looks favorably upon their aggression against Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Bhutan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, etc. And this stakes are too high with orbital pollution

You think the Chinese capitalists aren't also trying to become dominant?

And it will continue to happen and nothing can be done about it. Except global nuclear war, I suppose. That's not off the table.

Yeah well it means a lot of satellites are going to end up in space then.

Going from a treaty and cooperation with Iran to cutting them off was a pretty substantial change that has already had global implications.

The US civil war is not the only time the US has been politically unstable. The civil rights movement, the labor disputes of the 1970s, the economic shocks every decade or so from market crashes all have been moments of instability.

What is January 6th if not a concrete example of recent political instability?

As for foreign policy consistency, 7 administrations takes us back to Reagan... The entire movement to sell out our industrial capacity to China and now the movement to try to reverse that have occurred in this time frame. This is just as important as our endless wars in the middle east, imo.

I don't disagree totally but I felt the need to put some nuance here.

We can and should have satellites, but we can certainly be thrifty with how we use them.

The megaconstellation concept isn't necessary for most of the "cool stuff you can do with satellites." You might need a handful of weather or GPS satellites, and you can be more selective for orbits and lifecycle management if you're a responsible government operator.

The Starlink fiasco (and its clones) solely exists because we're abysmal at getting telecom projects built. If 80% of the country had the network connection you'd expect by 2024-- something like symmetric 10Gbps FTTH for $150 per month, and the other 20% was on a "real soon now" waiting list, there's precious little business case for Starlink.

Think about it: It was easier to plan out and deliver DOZENS OF ROCKET LAUNCHES AND A GALAXY OF SATELLITES than to tie down our existing telecom firms until they actually built a decent network, using technology like "backhoes" and "fibre-optic cables" that have existed for decades, cost next to nothing, and don't require literal rocket scientists to deploy.

The American telephone network under Ma Bell was almost a Wonder of the World for its scale, resilience, and universal accessibility-- and in barely one generation we ripped it out and failed to replace it with anything comparable.

I would argue the case there's a marginal case for one modest capacity public data constellation. The business case is basically Iridium warmed over-- for the places where there is no other practical option (ships at sea, completely undeveloped territories)-- you can pay $10 per gigabyte for 128k down, or to support some form of 911 outside of cell ranges. Arguably, we already had the infrastructure for that with the pre-Starlink satellite products (Viasat/Hughesnet)

But we hardly need every major power (and probably a bunch of private competitive duplication) blasting crap into space to make the deluxe version that's still not as good as a fibre running to your home.

Sure, GPS is nice to have, but we lived without it for many centuries before it, it's also a "first-world-problem" if it goes down. GPS is also notoriously susceptible to ground-based jamming. And because of that there's also other ways to track position. Weather forecasts are nice to have, but often wrong. My original comment was framed more towards space travel.

> so you can greatly simplify your sentence

You didn't need to use "greatly" here because the suggestion you're offering without being asked is not particularly great or meaningful.

> I think that would greatly aid in your online communications.

I communicate online just fine, thank you, I'm also happy to be an individual and to allow that individuality to be expressed through my communications.

Thanks again for the unwelcome and unnecessary advice. Please don't use your time to police other peoples writing. It's rude.

"True" here is not a boolean, it's the truth of the matter.

The claim is that coordination is decreasing. Calling that "false" might mean coordination is steady. Calling it the "opposite of true" means that coordination is increasing.

By adding energy (and momentum)? That seems unlikely to work. I guess you could try to shoot at things headed towards you over the horizon, to slow things down?

I was assuming it was to vaporize things to make the re-condensed remnants small and dispersed enough to be less of a problem. Though that seems like a tough problem if you have to stay trained on an orbiting bolt for any length of time, as the atmosphere wobbles your laser around.