A missile intercept for explosions or a kinetic destruction the relative velocity will be measured in kilometers per second.
A little nudge doesn't do much, it's still a satellite in a substantially similar orbit. Any sort of nudge requires intercept, go up there and match its velocity so you can grab it and push. And still you have to push on it a whole lot to make a meaningful difference. Spin it up? You'd have to do enough to exhaust it's fuel it uses to orient itself.
You're sort of saying if you can chuck an apple hitting a car on the highway, surely you can tow it away to get it off the road. They're significantly different problems.
An apple at highway speeds can break the windshield and make the car undriveable. People throwing things from highway overpasses is a serious (and deadly) problem.
>A missile intercept for explosions or a kinetic destruction the relative velocity will be measured in kilometers per second.
The satellite will also be going kilometers per second. You have to almost match the orbital velocity to have a chance of hitting it anyway.
To the contrary, for the 1 satellite missile strike we have public information on, not only did it not catch up to the orbital velocity for intercept, it hit it head on (going the other direction) adding to the relative velocity. A satellite with an ~8 km/s orbital velocity was struck head on by a missile adding to that by ~2 km/s for a total just under 10 km/s.
It is indeed not that hard to intercept something in orbit. Because the orbits don't change and can be predicted to high precision months in the future.
A little nudge doesn't do much, it's still a satellite in a substantially similar orbit. Any sort of nudge requires intercept, go up there and match its velocity so you can grab it and push. And still you have to push on it a whole lot to make a meaningful difference. Spin it up? You'd have to do enough to exhaust it's fuel it uses to orient itself.
You're sort of saying if you can chuck an apple hitting a car on the highway, surely you can tow it away to get it off the road. They're significantly different problems.