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Space is big. We would have to put tens of millions of satellites up there to have any impact on our ability to leave Earth and even then the collision risk wou
by api 3y ago
Space is big. We would have to put tens of millions of satellites up there to have any impact on our ability to leave Earth and even then the collision risk would be low.
It's sort of like the asteroid belt. You picture this belt of rocks, but in reality the distance between the rocks is so vast that it would take days, weeks, or months to travel between them even with powerful rockets.
All these new-generation communication satellites are intentionally placed in low somewhat unstable orbits too. This is done for two reasons. One is to minimize latency. You want them as low as they can possibly be to minimize distance between them and the ground. The other reason is so they will naturally deorbit after a while (when they are long past their design life). So even if the ability to intentionally deorbit them at EOL fails they will still not stay up there forever.
They do have a negative impact on terrestrial astronomy though. Astronomers using ground based telescopes need to ignore satellite tracks or remove them with post-processing.
- imchillyb 3y ago> Estimates predict that there could already be over 100 trillion pieces of old satellites orbiting the planet that are untracked. This presents a major risk to other satellites. Hundreds of collision avoidance maneuvers are performed by satellites each year to avoid clashes that would not only cause damage to operational satellites or even destroy them, to would also generate even more space junk. > https://www.space.com/nasa-scientists-space-junk-treaty https://www.space.com/nasa-scientists-space-junk-treaty Your dismissive attitude towards space debris is the polar opposite of leading scientists. NASA and other space agencies have been lobbying to make politicians understand the immediate and long term dangers of orbital debris.
- api 3y agoI wasn't arguing that orbital debris didn't matter, but my understanding (which could be wrong) was that these very low orbit satellites are not major contributors because they're low and deorbit.
- NKosmatos 3y agoThe issue with space debris from satellites is well known and thank you for raising your voice, but some people don’t like being told the scientific truth. There is also the issue with astronomical observations being affected. I’m not against satellite constellations, just wishing for a way to have them more organized and for having stricter rules on cleanup and deorbit. I guess that’s why my original comment got downvoted :-(
- timbit42 3y agoHow much of an impact will sending up 30,000 satellites have on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
- usefulcat 3y agoAt a guess, not even a rounding error?
- bryanlarsen 3y agoAbout the same as 300,000 people crossing the Pacific by jetliner assuming 50 satellites per Falcon9 launch.
- api 3y agoAll global aviation is less than 3% of global CO2 emissions. Rocket launches are a very small fraction of aviation. The vast bulk of manmade CO2 emission is from coal burning for electricity, construction, and fossil fuel powered ground transport. The rest is a long tail. Aviation is small. It doesn't make sense to focus that much on the long tail yet when huge improvements in CO2 emissions can more easily be achieved by focusing on phasing out coal for power generation, oil for cars, etc. Closing just a few coal burning power plants has a lot more impact than trying to stop people from flying.
- stevenhuang 3y agoMarginal.