Has anyone publicly confronted/asked Elon about Strategic Defense Initiative?
I can't find him _ever_ touching the subject, which is strange given it's huge significance.
> Others believe -- mainly on the political -- that Brilliant Pebbles is a classic fallacy that attracts those who believe there is a technological solution to everything without understanding the value of diplomacy and the fundamental interdependence of humanity. It is thought unlikely to be reliable and will inevitably lead to an arms race where either side shortens the time to launch nukes (by pre-launching / staging them in orbit or otherwise).
Yeah I just don't see a technological solution to nuclear explosives. Several countries have enough nukes to kill the whole population of earth multiple times over.
Even without rockets at all I can imagine alternative ways a nation could get nuclear explosives into all the major cities of another country if it was life-or-death.
The question for this type of system isn't "Could I picture any scenario where it works?" but rather "Can I picture any scenario where it doesn't?"
In support of this, a bunch of SpaceX-ers who worked on Starshield joined a startup that is building hypersonic warheads "at massive scale" (according to their website: https://www.castelion.com/team )
These would be ideal as interceptors staged in orbit onboard Starlink/Starshield satellites.
"Win", at nuclear war?
Just when I thought the modern disconenct from physical reality couldn't get any worse...
Let me repost what I posted yesterday the last time this was posted. Everyone should know that the original source of this is a random person from reddit. It's not backed up by facts of any kind so it's surprising that it's gotten so much attention.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40509016#40518795
> I've very recently seen numerous posts starting to show up on both reddit and various websites as well as anonymous wikipedia editors pushing this conspiracy theory. They all repeat the same thing. They'll claim Griffin as basically a founder of SpaceX (who in reality had almost no involvement with starting SpaceX) and they'll claim Griffin basically "gave" SpaceX its first government contracts even though NASA administrators have almost no sway over where contracts go (that'd be illegal). They'll also claim other things like that Starlink is somehow developing weapons to be put in orbit to reproduce SDI.
Wouldn't "large, low-earth orbit constellation" be a less hysterical title?
So what happens when you intercept and blow up an ICBM in the atmosphere? Not good things, I think.
Sorry but no: there is no way to win a nuclear war. Nuclear wars as a concept exists with a simple patter: if some attacker is strong enough to overpower me I'll commit suicide bringing with me the rest of the humanity. Nukes are not attack weapons but last-resort killers.
This is obvious but I don't see it discussed or mentioned that often, so far.
Massively decreasing the per mass cost of delivering any kind of cargo has huge and complex implications.
Massively decreasing the per mass cost of delivering cargo across oceans was a big deal.
Massively decreasing the per mass cost of delivering cargo across continents by rail/road was a big deal.
Massively decreasing the per mass cost of delivering cargo by air was a big deal.
"Big deal" here means all kinds of things, but let's talk about war.
Every one of the above mentioned steps caused radical changes in how wars were fought.
What have we seen over the past few years, even prior to 2022, in terms of drones? Massively decreasing the cost of precisely delivering small explosives over short ranges, with drones in this case, has been a game changer.
Even without a fully functional and reusable Starship system, SpaceX has greatly decreased the cost, cadence and reliability of delivering cargo into space. I understand the price they charge for individual launches is only 'somewhat' below the competition. That incremental but rather sudden decrease has already opened up a lot of doors.
A fully reusable Starship system drops that cost by at least another order of magnitude.
We are on the cusp of another revolution in warfare, and it's happening far, far more quickly than any of the other previous revolutions.
Imagine hundreds of thousands of smart kinetic munitions in many LEO orbital inclinations. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment a 20kg tungsten kinetic munition in LEO would deliver about 11 tons of TNT to the ground. Each SpaceX fully reusable launch to LEO could deliver about 2,000 of these. I didn't look it up, but I believe SpaceX has done about 150 Starlink launches so far. If each of these had delivered 2,000 kinetic munitions, there would already be 300,000 up there.
As far as I know, there's absolutely no defense against this kind of munition. In LEO they're moving at about 8km/s, and just before sea level impact they're moving around 3.5km/s. At best there could be a few minutes of warning.
Any entity that controls such a constellation would have what is effectively absolute and permanent air supremacy while risking no 'friendly' human life.
As far as command/control/tracking/sensing? Very low $/kg to LEO fixes that too. See Starlink and Star Shield, right now.
Nobody can predict how this will go, except that it will definitely 'go' in unexpected directions.
Can you actually "win" a nuclear war? I thought we all understood that as foolish. Yet presently the governments of the West think such a thing is possible, otherwise they would not be poking the bear like they are.
>either side shortens the time to launch nukes (by pre-launching / staging them in orbit or otherwise).
Assuming he means, "shorten the time to deliver the nuke," I'm guessing he is mistaken here: having the nuke in orbit lengthens the time needed to deliver the nuke, not shorten it.