Comment by kmeisthax
3 days ago
No. The space junk at a given orbit makes it unviable to put more satellites in that orbit, but launching beyond that orbit is still viable.
3 days ago
No. The space junk at a given orbit makes it unviable to put more satellites in that orbit, but launching beyond that orbit is still viable.
How can you get past that orbit if there is all this junk destroying your rockets????
Ideally a satellite is in a given orbit for years. If junk is destroying it in weeks or even months you’ve got a massive issue.
However a rocket is spending in a seconds in that same orbit. Thus a rocket passing through may only have say 1:10,000 odds of a collision on its way to mars while satellites are getting shredded.
Thanks for the explanation.
So you don’t think the 1:10k odds compounded over every space launch are enough to be a problem?
I was thinking that maybe as you get to a scale where you have things coming and going all the time, and each time they have to pass through the debris layer, and if they have bad luck they become part of that debris, that eventually you get to a point where even just passing through that layer is untenable. But you don’t think that is likely even for a society sending out interplanetary vessels every day?
1 reply →
Yes exactly ... This is a cloud of junk that stops anything getting out....
integrate risk over time. if you have a high target orbit outside the "kessler belt" then you don't spend much time going through it. though this requires a fairly direct orbital insertion. slow orbit raising would have a higher risk, but even that would still be lower than for any satellite intended to operate for years and decades in an affected orbit.
It really depends on how much junk actually is there and in what orbits; especially at 500 km up, space is big. The surface area of the earth is 510.100.000 square kilometers, at 500 kilometers the 'surface area' is a multiple of that (I can't math), surely there's enough gaps or lower-density areas at that height even if there was a catastrophic Kessler Syndrome event.
The surface area at 500 km is 1.16 of the Earth surface area.