We need less people thinking like military people in the world. Too many toy soldier fantasies result in leaders like George Bush jr fulfilling their fathers dreams.

Armchair soldiers who have watched to many movies, the world is full of them.

A China-US conflict means dozens of nuclear weapons dropped on populous cities across the world in a matter of hours.

How anyone seriously entertains this idea is unreal.

Total war means nukes. There will be sore losers.

If countries start firing nukes then I would be surprised if there were any winners.

Yes, the humans.

I'd have thought carbon based life in general might be worse off ...

I hope that countries have the protocols in place for prioritized satellite communication.

I imagine within hours of a total war, space will become a highly militarized battlefield with kinetic and laser weapons knocking just about everything down as fast as it is put up.

Telecom satellites would be getting shot down in the first week, too.

Which would prevent any chance of restoring them or any space travel at all for many generations until we work out how to clear out billions of bits of rubbish flying around faster than bullets.

Elon's new constellation must be making for some fun plannig for those people. 60 new targets now, several hundred more new targets real soon now. I wonder if SpaceX and Blue Origin are launching payloads they're designed to shoot down their own payloads?

I assume sending up a comsat is more expensive than sending up explosive to destroy it.

Possibly. It's not like the military-industrial complex is known for it's cost-effective solutions though...

Given the manoeuvring requirements for the orbiting explosives, and the requirement to launch them with enough plausible deniability for it not to be obvious "there's a bunch of commercial satellite killers!" - I wonder if they could build and launch 60 of them for less than SpaceX paid to get the first 60 Starlink birds in orbit?

Actually I guess... it is sufficient to send up mines (lots of them) and wait for the satellites to hit them.

Nevertheless, this is such a terrible idea, I hope this is not the future.

Space (even low earth orbit) is BIG.

Very very big...

Yeah, but the satellites are not too maneuverable. The trajectory is mostly mechanical.

I understand that the US/NOAA only grants satellite licenses if you agree to allow the US to preempt your use of the Satellite.