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Sh36fjk374fjc t1_j24qnhz wrote

We keep throwing stuff up into orbit. Isn’t it all going to start running into each other.

Edit: two replies so far, one says yes, one says no with a cute analogy about the chemist’s. I say work it out amongst yourselves and get back to us.

Edit: You can keep downvoting. Doesn’t change the fact that stuff is already colliding up there.

Edit: I get downvoted and the guy who called everyone an idiot gets upvoted. What a time to be alive.

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hawklost t1_j24tvfk wrote

There are about 12.3 thousand satellites orbiting in space

Now, if you were to take 12 thousand people and have them run around the US, would you be worried they would hit each other?

Since most might try to counter. Yes, the satellites are moving quicker, but at the same time, they are in orbits at different levels too.

So imagine that everyone is in a huge building, the biggest you have ever seen. Now imagine that that building has 100 copies of it physically (orbital distance of space). Now put those 12k people in any of the 100 buildings randomly and tell them to walk or run around, but I'd they see another, to intentionally avoid them.

That is what space is like

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Frozenthia t1_j26xe85 wrote

That changes when those people can break into a thousand pieces and travel at thousands of miles per hour.

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hawklost t1_j274rdr wrote

I assume you didn't bother reading the post afterwards explaining that extra piece for the person.

Secondly, the reason I am using a building size multiplied by 100 is for the idea of someone walking around AS IF they were moving such speeds, but Also that you need to take into account different orbits, which is effectively hundreds of different 'buildings' in the example I gave (Would have chosen floors, but people don't experience super large single story buildings so wouldn't get the vastness as easily). So the 'thousands of miles per hour' part is already there.

To give you context Otherwise. The US alone has 100,000 flights a day. The US is approximately 6.1% of the world by landmass. Planes can travel up to 500 or so mph. while satellites go at 17,000 mph. There are about 12.5k satellites over earth. Satellites also go above the earth by about an extra 10-20% (important because amount of space grows). So to give an idea without using people as an analogy.

To give you an idea, the likelihood of 2 planes crashing in mid-air in the US is far more likely than 2 satellites crashing in orbit. Even when you take speeds into consideration.

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Frozenthia t1_j2by5pg wrote

The biggest thing is that you don't need to just worry about other satellites, and the second is that the orbital material can exist at any altitude that satellites are orbiting at.

In terms of debris that can cause Kessler syndrome, 100k is a miniscule number. At the speed of a satellite, it does not take much to do serious damage and destruction. Your planes only have to worry about 100k planes, while satellites have to worry about motes of dust. If planes had to worry about that as well, we'd have serious issues flying at 500mph.

And United States Space Surveillance Network has identified this:

36500 space debris objects greater than 10 cm

1000000 space debris objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm

130 million space debris objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm

A single satellite being destroyed can be enough to turn 1 satellite into thousands, perhaps even tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of individual debris that can then annihilate the rest at the same orbital level over time.

The change in momentum can be enough to cause concern.

This is such a very deeply important topic that it really does require a lot of protection, planning, redundancies, etc. SpaceX just doesn't seem like it has done enough to address this. There's a reason that NASA has moved more slowly and beat private companies to Mars, and it's because every single detail - every single detail of material science, chemistry, thermodynamics, physics, etc, has been meticulously vetted to the letter.

Falsely believing as a private company that "Wow, they're all foolish, this was easy, all we had to do was shove some satellites at this other altitude" and not putting enough merit in Kessler syndrome is a very big mistake.

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Sh36fjk374fjc t1_j24ujwo wrote

Interesting points! Idk though, this NASA dude mentioned above thought it was quite possible.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Edit: “On average one satellite is destroyed by collision with space junk each year.[22][24] As of 2009 there had been four collisions between catalogued objects, including a collision between two satellites in 2009.[4].”

Sounds like it is more than just a probability but a reality.

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hawklost t1_j24vbht wrote

Yes it is possible. Although the fear is less two satellites crashing into each other and more the fear that a satellite will break up and create thousands of little pieces that could crash into More satellites.

To take the analogy I used before farther.

Now imagine two people Do run into each other, either because one wasn't paying attention or by malicious design. Now picture 1000 hyperactive kids being produced off of that collision. They aren't going to pay attention and will just run around bouncing off the walls, jumping between buildings as they want.

Yes, some will leave the buildings altogether, but many will be around due to orbital dynamics (not getting into that here). So now each person walking around has to watch for other people, And screaming children who don't pay attention (literally can't they aren't self driving).

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Surur t1_j24sxnx wrote

The thing about Space, it's big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

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Sh36fjk374fjc t1_j24tv9j wrote

Yeah but we’re not putting earth satellites by mars, they’re orbiting earth (by definition) so the area involved is much smaller than “Space.”

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Surur t1_j24vvyb wrote

So there are 1.5 million cellphone towers in the world, and that is just on land.

An orbital shell 500km up has a surface area of 593 million km2.

So if SpaceX managed to get 40,000 satellites in orbit, that would be one satellite every 15,000 square km. That is one satellite for the same surface area as Connecticut or 10 for Illinois.

That is a lot of Space between each satellite.

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Drdontlittle t1_j24woms wrote

Starlink was designed from the start with this in mind. They are at a considerable lower orbit with much greater air resistance. These satellites need active station keeping and will de orbit in a year or so without it.

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NuttyFanboy t1_j24s964 wrote

Possibly. That's why there are regulations in place to either deorbit decommissioned satellites, or use the remaining fuel to move them into stable graveyard orbits. It's a real concern.

And then there's something called the Kessler syndrome.

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DukeOfGeek t1_j24vn4w wrote

Starlink at least is low orbit and decays and falls out after a few years so it can't really add to the Kessler effect. BUT....Space X is going to make it way cheaper to put stuff in any orbit, so peoples concerns about the growing tonnage in orbit isn't misplaced.

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NotShey t1_j277jfu wrote

>peoples concerns about the growing tonnage in orbit isn't misplaced.

Yes. Yes it is. People have no sense of scale.

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Own-Oil-7097 t1_j24u9wx wrote

Reddit is a forum for discussion open to everyone, not an expert panel Q&A event.

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Sh36fjk374fjc t1_j24vdcy wrote

Is someone feeling excluded from the discussion?

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Own-Oil-7097 t1_j24x0d6 wrote

What an odd thing to say

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Sh36fjk374fjc t1_j250d1e wrote

I literally have no idea what you’re getting at or what point you’re making. A lot of nuance is lost by text. If you have a criticism or point come out with it.

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KickBassColonyDrop t1_j24y1j2 wrote

Space is so massive that if you were to take the orbital diameter of Earth/Moon and deconstruct all the resources within, and turn into a mini Dyson sphere with an internal atmosphere, the internal surface area of this shell, would be large enough to support 100 trillion trillion people each with space equivalent of a small farm and still have enough space left to question "what do we do with the rest?“

By the same token, surface area of Earth's orbital plane is so huge, that the probability of a satellite collision is crazy low. It only goes up when you have state actors firing ASATs at existing hardware and creating hyper velocity debris fields.

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Lecturnoiter t1_j255i0c wrote

Yes it will. All these idiots don't understand that people live in a few specific places on the planet and that's where most of the satellites are focused. We also can only put them so high or so low in orbit, it's complicated and there's not a lot of usable space available.

There are procedures to de-orbit old satellites but even small collisions create debris clouds that can last for hundreds of years. We get a bunch of those going and we can't safely launch any more. The parties involved are usually pretty careful but it only takes a handful of people making a handful of mistakes to ruin space for everyone.

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NotShey t1_j277reg wrote

>small collisions create debris clouds that can last for hundreds of years.

All of these satellites are at extremely low altitudes. There is measurably dense atmosphere in these orbits. Without active station keeping they will deorbit due to air resistance in about a year.

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