• 4am@lemmy.zip
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    4 hours ago

    If you have the capability to build a laser that can focus enough energy, from the ground through the atmosphere, with enough precision to lock on to an LEO constellation member long enough to disable it, you’d probably already either be captured, or working for DoD.

    Also: great, you exploded it before reentry. Now we have a hundred thousand smaller, lighter fragments skipping off the atmosphere, disbursing randomly, and spinning around like hypersonic chaff bullets for actual worthwhile spacecraft and satellites to fly through, twinkling in infrared like a billion new streaky sparkles on those telescopes. It takes a lot longer for all that bullshit to rain down, and it pollutes just the same. Tell me, who were you fighting for again and why?

    This is like when the humans blacken the sky in the Matrix to defeat the machines. Yeah it wrecked the earth, but is also didn’t defeat them and they just found something else to exploit.

    • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      I mean I was trying to Broach a theoretical, completely academic, discussion about what could or could not take these satellites out.