Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

Nuvendil said:

SecondWar said:

I would presume try would try to launch them at a place out of range of Ukrainian attacks, but obviously Ukraine will work on extending their range. Also they will likely try to target areas where the rockets and satellites are being assembled.

But does Russia even have the resources spare to devote to something like that?

Russia launches their rockets at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan and the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast in Russia's far east.  Both launch sites are very, vary far outside Ukraine's strike capabilities unfortunately.

As for whether they have the resources for this, I would say probably not.  What makes Starlink and all recent efforts at space industrialization and large scale space infrastructure build out possible is reusable rockets like Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and the recently introduced New Glenn. 

But while the West has those mentioned plus Starship, Neutron, and others coming online in the relative near future, Russia only has single use medium and heavy lift rockets.  They're good at building them at a reasonable price, but the efficiency gains and savingd from reusability cannot be replicated with single use rockets at medium lift and larger.  

So this is likely to be an exceedingly expensive and potentially wasted effort altogether.

To add to this, Ukraine can hardly attack Baikonur as it's in Kazakhstan.

About the news - YAWN - that's ultra-old news. As in, Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, had a fleet of satellites for this already; they're called Strela, and they are in their 3M version currently, which started in 2005, so not exactly super modern. For reference, the first Strela generation is from 1964...