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Timing is absolutely a huge qualification to Kessler syndrome. If the cloud of debris is gone in 5 years, that's a hurdle to some careers and a (hopefully) tem
by LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Timing is absolutely a huge qualification to Kessler syndrome.
If the cloud of debris is gone in 5 years, that's a hurdle to some careers and a (hopefully) temporary shutdown for some businesses. Covid has taught us that the modern economy has traded a lot of robustness for profit and efficiency, and those would certainly be significant losses of billions or trillions of dollars, but it would be a small fraction of GDP, we would hopefully learn from the mistake, and we would still be a spacefaring species.
If Kessler syndrome occurred among geostationary satellites, that could potentially be a problem for millions of years. That's six orders of magnitude different and definitely needs qualification.
- yread 6y agoBut there is a lot more space in geostationary orbits and lot less stuff so the risk of chain of collisions is lower
- duskwuff 6y agoThere is far less space in geostationary orbit, because the locus of GEO is a one-dimensional ring above the equator.
- fogof 6y agoIt's true that there is less GEO real estate in this sense. But to kick off Kessler syndrome, you need two objects in different orbital planes so that they collide at very high speed. It wouldn't be possible for two defunct GEO satellites to collide, because two nearby GEO satellites are moving in the same direction at the same speed.
- yread 6y agobut aren't the satellites in GEO stationary relative to one another? And if by chance they all get destroyed in collision the debris would mostly also stay in that ring so we could still launch rockets and have satellites in other orbits that don't cross it.