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Isn't the Kessler effect partly about creating further junk from a cascade of collisions? Even if the "junk" were to re-enter the atmosphere eventually, how lon
by gexla 7y ago
Isn't the Kessler effect partly about creating further junk from a cascade of collisions? Even if the "junk" were to re-enter the atmosphere eventually, how long would that take? How long would access to space be cut off before the junk were to clear?
- djaychela 7y agoI'm not an expert (and expect to be corrected on details here), but I think it depends on the orbit altitude - if it's low enough to suffer significant atmospheric drag, then it'll de-orbit fairly quickly. But if they're at high altitude (geostationary and geosynchronous orbits spring to mind - around 22000-26000 miles), then that's much less likely, although there's a much bigger area to cover at that altitude. But given the damage that even a tiny particle can cause at those velocities, I think it's a real concern with such mass launches.
- Tuna-Fish 7y agoThe smaller any given piece of debris is, the greater it's surface area:mass ratio is, and therefore the faster it deorbits due to drag. Project Kuiper and Starlink both put the very large, thousands-of-satellites constellations low enough that trash gets cleared quickly enough that even a set of multiple catastrophic collisions is very unlikely to threaten most of the network, and even if they all just blow up, the pieces will fall down shortly and clear the orbit for reuse. For Starlink, drag is actually so high that they are using the solar array as a sail for attitude control.