5 ms·
What your describing is called Kessler Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome ... It is a very
by chris_va 8mo ago
What your describing is called Kessler Syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
... It is a very real possibility, but less of a problem below 550km altitude because the decay time is much shorter (and why all of these mega constellations tend to stay at lower altitude, even though ~1000km is generally better for a communications satellite).
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> It is a very real possibility It's really not. Not in the popularly-portrayed manner. Militaries have been researching how to intentionally cause such a cascade in even a limited orbit. To my knowledge, there isn't a solution.
- chris_va 8mo agoIt's a very real possibility, it's just a very slow exponential. If you have 100,000 satellites, and each collision produces 50,000 pieces of shrapnel with some distribution of altitudes and atmospheric drag, it's not that hard to do the math. The cinematic portrayal of cascading failure (ala the movie Gravity) is completely insane, but that doesn't mean this isn't a real problem on a 100 year timescale.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> If you have 100,000 satellites, and each collision produces 50,000 pieces of shrapnel with some distribution of altitudes and atmospheric drag, it's not that hard to do the math One, it is. And two, you need insane distributions to get over the energy requirements of plane changes. > on a 100 year timescale Irrelevant in LEO.