[marktwain]

it occurs that this target in the sky would be vulnerable to asymmetric warfare in which relatively cheap rockets could disable immensely expensive space farms.

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My suspicion is the above analysis has it exactly backward. Musk has and is perfecting the ability to lift mass to orbit cheaply. No other country/company is even close. The targets are thus relatively inexpensive and difficult to take out; the means of taking them out is expensive (one shot rockets able to get to a 500 mile to 2000 mile orbits, where the targets are tens of miles apart.

We are talking about hundreds of thousands to a million satellites, which make the system extremely redundant and difficult to destroy. Destroy a hundred thousand and the system becomes marginally slower.

Meanwhile, the launch sites of the missiles are known with precision, and subject to retaliation with some ease, with considerable ease of a “rods from god” capability is used.

The Musk/USA/SpaceX economic advantage in lift to orbit cost is about 10X now, and is likely to get to 100x in a few years.

[1FreeAmerican]

It would be like poking an ice pick through a spider web.

I would think land based data centers would be more vulnerable to missile attacks.