Triggering Kessler syndrome as a war tactic

[OliverSedlacek]

The Kessler syndrome is the exponential growth of space junk where each collision with space junk generates more junk and more collisions, eventually rendering an orbit as unusable. As Russia now has a massive deficit in satellite launch capacity, if satellite capacity becomes militarily decisive would it be possible to trigger the Kessler syndrome to regain parity? It sounds like an insane plan, but that doesn't stop everyone.

 

[1635yankee]

Filling orbits with gravel was proposed as an ABM method during the early 80s.

 

[sferrin]

The Kessler syndrome is the exponential growth of space junk where each collision with space junk generates more junk and more collisions, eventually rendering an orbit as unusable. As Russia now has a massive deficit in satellite launch capacity, if satellite capacity becomes militarily decisive would it be possible to trigger the Kessler syndrome to regain parity? It sounds like an insane plan, but that doesn't stop everyone.

 

[OliverSedlacek]

Filling orbits with gravel was proposed as an ABM method during the early 80s.

Didn't know that. In the 1980s the situation was closer to parity, so both sides would have suffered in similar measure.

 

[Ainen]

The Kessler syndrome is the exponential growth of space junk where each collision with space junk generates more junk and more collisions, eventually rendering an orbit as unusable. As Russia now has a massive deficit in satellite launch capacity, if satellite capacity becomes militarily decisive would it be possible to trigger the Kessler syndrome to regain parity? It sounds like an insane plan, but that doesn't stop everyone.

it's useless. Kessler syndrome isn't about filling whole sphere around Earth with all-destroying even stream of splinters, near Earth space is just too large for that.

It will kill predictable lifecycle of satellites, of course, but that's to a large degree about commercial predictability. Or peacetime gov sat (ab)use.

Militaries were quite fine launching satellites with a few days worth of active life, it's public money after all. For them, Kessler is mostly an (expected, largely predictable) adjustment to the battlefield.

Just as predictable as, don't know, strikes against fixed launch sites, c&c and so on.

Neither prevents use of space.

nuclear ASAT isn't about Kessler, too. It's about a way to rapidly remove massive constellations, which are simply impractical targets for ground-based intercept.

So you either build a Multi-kill vehicle of some sorts(add some dV and it smells space warship already), or just drop the whole constellation with drag and radiation.
Yes, there will be unlucky bystanders probably - but when nukes flash between Russia and US as war fighting tools - it isn't that big a concern anymore.

 

[publiusr]

During the Cold War, the Soviets used space firsts to impress the world. Much applause.

Putin goes after space again---it won't just be America ticked off about not being able to watch their 'stories during the soap block.

After such a stunt, if China wanted to push north---the rest of the world would sit on its hands.

 

[Scott Kenny]

If various orbits are already unusable due to deliberate Kessler cascades, there's no loss for the military to use nukes to blow some holes in the debris fields to make room for critical satellites. "Unrestricted warfare" is already in effect.

You need large nukes to do this, but you won't make a very big hole due to the inverse-square rule. 10kt will only vaporize things within maybe 10m of the blast, and you'd need a 1Mt blast to vaporize everything within 100m. It'll push stuff around outside that distance, but it'll only vaporize stuff within about 100m.

During the Cold War, the Soviets used space firsts to impress the world. Much applause.

Putin goes after space again---it won't just be America ticked off about not being able to watch their 'stories during the soap block.

After such a stunt, if China wanted to push north---the rest of the world would sit on its hands.

Crud, just about everyone but India would probably help China in that case, and the Indians simply wouldn't say much.

 

[OliverSedlacek]

I think I'm reassured

 

[Ainen]

If various orbits are already unusable due to deliberate Kessler cascades, there's no loss for the military to use nukes to blow some holes in the debris fields to make room for critical satellites. "Unrestricted warfare" is already in effect.

erm, imagine how much material is to “fill” a single orbit with material.
Kessler is about probability - probability of collision with everything not in your orbit (retrograde is fair game thou ofc), but in all others(of any shape, circular or not), over time(like, as something higher degrades down - it crosses your plane).

You can't do anything to Kessler with nukes other than rearranging the already observed state of chaos into a new, still unpredicted one.

 

[Halcyon66]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/27/science/space-junk-earth-kessler-syndrome/index.html

Regards,

 

[PFJN]

Hi,
As I understand it,its not really about "filling an orbit" with anything but rather more of a "triggering a chain reaction/reaching critical mass" type thing. Specifically, if you can get enough "objects" of suffcient size/mass/energy to intersect with the orbital paths of various satellites any "collisions" with one of those satellites will produce additional high energy/velocity "debris"in that "orbit band" radiating out in slightly different directions (due to the mechanics of the collision) which could then impact other additional satellites in or near that orbit. Eventually, if the density of the objects is great enough within that "orbit band" and you create enough "cascading debris"you can reach a sort of "critical mass" chain reaction that will cause the amount of potentially damaging debris tocontinue to grow.

Here it should also be borne in mind that although an object in a specific orbit will travel at a specific speed to keep it in orbit and that objects in other orbits will have other speeds, a collision can result in particles of differing speeds, which would lead to this debris potentially spreading into higher and lower orbits, hence the refefence to "orbit bands". And also, orbits can intersect,where for example an object in a highly elliptical orbit can cross paths with other orbits including a wide band of more circular ones, potentially spreading the range of danger from collisions, if Iam understanding correctly.

 

[Justo Miranda]

In my opinion, using space junk as a strategic weapon is as stupid as starting a nuclear war in the hope of winning it. Anyone can attack New York with a hijacked plane or spread sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, but no sovereign country would try, for its own good.

 

[Josh_TN]

Attempting to cause a deliberate cascade of debris would likely make the launching country incredibly unpopular with both China and the United States States, which is a horrible place to be. And both of those countries have too much of an advantage in space over everyone else (except for each other) to want to cause such a situation.

Another consideration is that the effect would not be prompt: there would be long term effects but probably nothing strategically decisive in the short term.

Exception to the rule: intentional detonation of a large nuclear weapon in LEO such that a lot of ionized radiation gets trapped in the magnetic field. This would kill a large number of LEO satellites in days, not month or years. Russia is reported to have or be working on a purpose built system for such (FOBS like) but most any missile/warhead system of suitable altitude and yield would work. In that case, the neutralization of large numbers of satellites would be what triggers the cascade instead of the other way around. Though again, the entire world, and most especially the U.S. and PRC, would be pissed.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Attempting to cause a deliberate cascade of debris would likely make the launching country incredibly unpopular with both China and the United States States, which is a horrible place to be. And both of those countries have too much of an advantage in space over everyone else (except for each other) to want to cause such a situation.

Another consideration is that the effect would not be prompt: there would be long term effects but probably nothing strategically decisive in the short term.

Exception to the rule: intentional detonation of a large nuclear weapon in LEO such that a lot of ionized radiation gets trapped in the magnetic field. This would kill a large number of LEO satellites in days, not month or years. Russia is reported to have or be working on avv cv purpose built system, but most any missile/warhead system of suitable altitude and yield would work. In that case, the neutralization of large numbers of satellites is what triggers the cascade instead of the C other way around. Though again, the entire world, and most especially the U.S. and PRC, would be pissed.

As Iraq found out in 1991, it's a bad day when both existing superpowers put aside their differences to go stomp you.

Russia would not enjoy being on the wrong end of both China and the US, they'd just about guaranteed lose all of Siberia to China, nevermind what the US would do.

 

[Tomboy]

As Iraq found out in 1991, it's a bad day when both existing superpowers put aside their differences to go stomp you.

Russia would not enjoy being on the wrong end of both China and the US, they'd just about guaranteed lose all of Siberia to China, nevermind what the US would do.

Why would China want Siberia, it's basically a giant no mans land with little potential for development imo

 

[Scott Kenny]

Why would China want Siberia, it's basically a giant no mans land with little potential for development imo

Do you know how much oil and gas is there?

It'd give China direct control of one of the largest oil and gas production fields outside the Middle East.