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Also, Kessler syndrome doesn't keep you from leaving the planet, just from having satellites. When passing through a debris shell, as opposed to staying in it f
by FeepingCreature 5y ago
Also, Kessler syndrome doesn't keep you from leaving the planet, just from having satellites. When passing through a debris shell, as opposed to staying in it for years, the collision risk is very small.
- labster 5y agoHow deep are those debris shells anyway? If we had a collision cascade in LEO, would geosynchronous orbits be generally safe? They’re pretty far apart, but I don’t know for sure.
- didgeoridoo 5y agoI have no intuition for this, as it is not modeled in KSP :) I’m trying to imagine a collision cascade that would generate debris with a significantly higher apoapsis than the original satellites… perhaps a head-on collision between prograde and retrograde orbits that ends up “squirting” some debris at extreme velocity in the normal/antinormal direction? Alternately, an object on a highly elliptical orbit (probably already space junk) near its periapsis with max kinetic energy hitting a satellite prograde?