4 ms·
What I don't get is that not only the surface in question is enormous (even more vast than the oceans), but also in 3d (think tens of thousands of layers of oce
by cm2187 8y ago
What I don't get is that not only the surface in question is enormous (even more vast than the oceans), but also in 3d (think tens of thousands of layers of ocean surface). How can a few dozen 10cm debris be such a big deal? They may be deadly if a collision occur but how likely is such a collision?
- knolan 8y agoSo a volume? These are several hundred objects travelling with enough momentum to do catastrophic damage to launch vehicles and other orbiting equipment. They’re not icebergs floating on the ocean, they’re bullets whizzing through that volume at incredible velocities. Would you get on a plane if every airport runway doubled as an active shooting range?
- cm2187 8y agoA runway is a tiny place. My point is that we are talking about an immense amount of space.
- knolan 8y agoThrough which we have to send all our launches. The debris field is growing and this and other tests are contributing to it. The debris isn’t likely to be homogeneous over this volume either. Our launch sites are tiny spaces designed to reduce launch cost by getting a boost from the earths rotation or to select particular orbits. That these narrow corridors may be polluted with debris from satellites launched into very similar orbits is frightening in the extreme.
- drewrobb 8y agoOne aspect you miss in your analogy is that when you include the time dimension, the probability of a collision is proportional to swept volume (and thus speed), rather than static volume. So while the space is really large, really fast objects can have substantially large swept volumes.