Comment on Holy shlit Elon - contingency for Russia blowing up Starlink satellites
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years agoStarlink sats cost 250k $. They are launched 48 at a time, 15 million $ per launch. So ~560k $ to replace one.
US anti sat missiles/anti-ICBM missiles RIM-161 cost 12 million $. Russia uses similar missiles A-235. If the price is similar, Russia would spend 12 million $ to cost Elon 0.56 million $ per Starlink they blow up. 21:1 disadvantage. Its so expensive because they destroy their complex rockets at every launch, instead of reusing them like Elon.
Cost correlates to complexity, so speed of producing 12million $ missiles should be much less than $250k satellites. Russia has 1400 deployed ICBMs. Their Anti-ICBMs should be around that number logically. If Russia blew up the 2000 Starlinks in orbit, they would have a shortage of missiles to counter a nuclear attack. Unlikely they would put themselves in this position. It would also cost them 24 Billion $ to damage Elon for 1.1 Billion $.
He paid 11 Billion $ in taxes last year, enough to replace the entire Starlink fleet ten times over. He can afford the loss.
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Think you need to account for misses. I would bet most miss. Could be wrong though.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Starlinks had to avoid debris from the last Russian test. There is a high risk with every exploding sat, the debris could take out others, for example Russian and Chinese sats. If hundreds of sats blow up, it will cascade out of control.