3 ms·
Think about it in terms of cars. Imagine spread out 3k cars around the surface of the earth. Each car will be thousands of Km away from each other. For example
by usaphp 7y ago
Think about it in terms of cars. Imagine spread out 3k cars around the surface of the earth. Each car will be thousands of Km away from each other. For example New York has 5 million registered cars. And they manage to use only a fraction of available land dedicated to roads. So I don’t think 3k is anything for a orbit around earth, which is also much bigger than the surface of the earth itself
Edit: I am not saying a collision would not cause the effect that OP referred to. I am saying that 3K satellites in Earth's orbit will be very far apart, so the odds of them colliding in the first place is incredibly low.
- originalvichy 7y agoIt’s not 3000 completely self-container items. It’s 3000 satellites with hundreds and hundreds of parts inside, each of which can splinter into thousands of pieces. I hope you know about how dangerous space debris is for space exploration. Each of those tiny pieces move faster than bullets around the Earth.
- cmroanirgo 7y agoSandra Bullock in Gravity would disagree: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/ (SPOILER: The debris from one satellite wiped out all the others, including the ISS) ;-)
- nsilvestri 7y agoBut satellite collisions can, and indeed already have, happened: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision