[Mountain_Skies]

Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO. At least on Earth data centers in theory can be hidden and physically hardened. In orbit, even a crude rocket able to reach that plane can become a weapon of mass satellite destruction. Even if those orbits clear out in four or five years, by then whatever ugliness is going on down on the surface of Earth will likely have resolved one way or the other. Starlink is a great military asset for a superpower pushing around smaller states in ways that aren't an existential threat to them. In a real conflict, it's a fragile target beyond the strike capacities of much of the developing world but easily destroyed by any moderate level industrial nation.

[philipkglass]

Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO.

South Africa built nuclear weapons in the 1980s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...

But it never had an orbital launch capability.

Pakistan doesn't have a domestic orbital launch capability but it does have nuclear weapons.

Surprisingly, the United Kingdom doesn't have a domestic orbital launch capability at present though it has had ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons for many decades.

At present, I would say that building a basic implosion-assembled atomic bomb is easier than building a rocket system that reach low Earth orbit. It's a lot easier to build a bomb now than it was in the 1940s. The main thing that prevents wider nuclear weapon proliferation is treaties and inspections, not inherent technical difficulties.

[blibble]

presumably the UK could figure out how to remove the top of a trident missile and replace it with a load of ball bearings

[zajio1am]

You do not need orbital capability to hit an orbital target. Just suborbital missile that reaches target's orbital altitude.

[proggy]

Satellites. Are. Fragile. People really don’t seem to intuitively understand this. Earth based assets are orders of magnitude more difficult to attack simply by virtue of being able to be placed inside of fortified structures anchored to, or inside of, the ground. The cost to deploy hardened buildings at scale is peanuts compared to orbiting constellations.

[reactordev]

They also fail to realize how devastating an attack a BB canister grenade would be in LEO. Nothing would stay in orbit. Eventually everything would collide and come down.

[IcyWindows]

LEO is big, really big. Even at the smaller radius of ground level, large volcanos, forest fires, etc. Don't affect the whole earth.

[bethekidyouwant]

No?

[nvader]

Isn't the eventual plan to park these data centers out by the Lagrange points?