Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on August 20, 2025

Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by progbits on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:24AM (#44959191)

No it won't but if it did would take just few hours for china to shoot a bunch of them down and with how tightly packed their orbits are the debree would take care of the rest.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by audunw on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:54AM (#44959345)

I’m not so sure debris would help take down other satellites in that orbit. The orbit is very low so much of the debris that ends up with a deviation in its orbit will fall down. Even if it doesn’t there’s still air resistance up there which may cause more of the debris to deorbit before jt has time to hit other satellites.

And I doubt China would want to make LEO impossible to move through anyway. It’d affect China badly as well

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by senectus1 on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:45AM (#44959301)

potentially very dangerous for everyone if they did that. could make it impossible for even them to make a launch. Kessler Syndrome is nothing to toy with.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by baq on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @05:08AM (#44960116)

space is huge and the orbit is low. I'm not so sure debris would be as effective as on higher orbits.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by Helmut10001 on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:16AM (#44959146)

Starlink are very low orbit. Easy to bring down.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by perihelions on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:36AM (#44959259)

Very expensive to take down 10-100k at once. No one today has that many antisat-capable missiles stockpiled.

Relevant, Chinese domestic media reporting on China's own perspective:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3178939/chin... ("China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists" (2022))

> "Researchers call for development of anti-satellite capabilities including ability to track, monitor and disable each craft / The Starlink platform with its thousands of satellites is believed to be indestructible"

"Easy to bring down" vs. "believed to be indestructible"—some tension there!

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by ceejayoz on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:39AM (#44959617)

EMP?

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by perihelions on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @04:57AM (#44960044)

If you're talking about nuclear weapons, their major effect on satellites (Starfish Prime as the reference point) isn't EMP effects, but ionizing radiation—creating a persistent radiation belt of MeV electrons. (A physical process that took months to disable some satellites). Beyond that I don't know much.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by lazide on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @08:55AM (#44961517)

At the point anyone is using nukes in LEO, things have gotten really out of control already.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by Zacharias030 on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:26AM (#44959200)

how though?

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by 4gotunameagain on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:28AM (#44959212)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

Every major power has polluted near Earth space as a show of power.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by cyberax on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:48AM (#44959316)

One missile for one satellite? This gets expensive really fast.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by therein on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:52AM (#44959339)

They follow well defined orbits and propellant limited. You could easily cover their trajectory with some shrapnel and attack it one lane at a time.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by perihelions on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:03AM (#44959401)

Not feasible. That would entail putting shrapnel into orbit (unlike extant anti-sat weapons which are short-range suborbital), which would mean a full orbital launch for every satellite target orbit. There's hundreds[0] of Starlink orbital groups already, so that'd require hundreds of independent orbital launches in a short timescale—far beyond China's launch capabilities today.

[0] https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/planes.html

(On general principles, you could argue you'd need 1:1 launch vehicle parity (number, not payload) to defeat a satellite constellation this way. For each satellite launch, you'd need one corresponding anti-satellite launch into that same, newly-defined orbit).

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by rtkwe on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:39PM (#44965541)

If you make a dense-ish cloud that cuts across the Starlink orbits you'd eventually intersect them all if you could make the artificial debris field last It wouldn't require that many different counter orbiting fields to cover most of the orbits.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by wkat4242 on Thursday August 21, 2025 @08:32PM (#44979842)

Yes but there's so many starlinks that you're going to get lots and lots of collateral damage to sats from allies and enemies alike. It's going to be a huge footgun.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by rtkwe on Friday August 22, 2025 @10:24AM (#44985084)

Not much else uses those orbits right now. Other comms satellites and surveillance birds are all higher up. The debris would in theory also clear pretty quickly and should be fairly contained so the cascade of additional damage might be relatively small too. Hard to know that without a huge simulation budget to see how high the shattered satellite bits might get tossed.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by LargoLasskhyfv on Friday August 22, 2025 @12:24AM (#44980985)

Have you ever heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford ?

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by kortilla on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:32AM (#44959578)

Tiny propellant burns turn into thousands of kilometer changes quickly.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by cyberax on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:34PM (#44965484)

For your shrapnel to hit the satellite, it needs to be at the same height and inclination. Otherwise, your shrapnel will likely miss the targets.

Starlink satellites are pretty low and experience a lot of drag, with square-cube law working against you. Your shrapnel's orbit will likely decay pretty rapidly.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by andrewinardeer on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:15AM (#44959141)

Entirely speculation.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by NitpickLawyer on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:17AM (#44959153)

Of course it is entirely speculation. But there are previous datapoints you can look at (i.e. iran).

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by andrewinardeer on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:02PM (#44965109)

Elon doesn't sell cars or Powerwalls in Iran.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by esseph on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @06:32AM (#44960595)

Very easy to jam.

Also, fairly easy to find from the air.

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Re:Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on Aug... by maxglute on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @06:35AM (#44960605)

Depends on if Elon wants to be sanctioned by PRC or not.

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