3 ms·
Interesting proposition regarding satellites. I have to wonder, though. What about: Debris from satellites breaking up, causing a very slow Kessler-type synd
by ericbarrett 6y ago
Interesting proposition regarding satellites. I have to wonder, though. What about:
Debris from satellites breaking up, causing a very slow Kessler-type syndrome—over these time scales there will certainly be millions of close encounters with random objects
Kinetic changes from similar gravity perturbations, leading to highly eccentric orbits which then decay into the atmosphere
Solar flares—I imagine in the next few hundred million years we'll get some doozies, with similar kinetic effects
Solar expansion—in about a billion years, the Sun will have expanded enough that liquid water can't exist on Earth's surface anymore. Won't that massively expand the atmosphere and drag satellites down a lot faster, even at geosynchronous orbits?
I can definitely see "millions," but "billions" feels hyperbolic.
- pixl97 6y agoI think that you thinking of near earth sats. There are many others like the solar observatory that are much farther out and are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in the gigayear range.
- ericbarrett 6y agoYou mean the SDO [0]? It's still in geostationary orbit. Which, of course, is much farther out than LEO, and orders of magnitude less affected by the Earth's atmo, but still interacts with it. Heck, even the Moon is probably affected by it [1]. Perhaps a solar orbit—I didn't consider that when I wrote my first comment. But the plates described in the article aren't going there, they're going to GEO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Dynamics_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Dynamics_Observatory [1] https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billions.html https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billi...