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IMO we need to stop putting satellites in orbits above ~800km altogether. No matter how careful you are there will always be accidents, and once a collision or
by modeless 2y ago
IMO we need to stop putting satellites in orbits above ~800km altogether. No matter how careful you are there will always be accidents, and once a collision or explosion occurs in high orbit the debris is essentially a permanent fixture of the solar system, lasting far longer than a human lifetime. There is no feasible method to clean up such collision debris for the foreseeable future. Even assuming SpaceX Starship is wildly successful and launching a thousand times more mass to orbit for dirt cheap, collision debris cleanup is still infeasible. The only realistic way of cleaning collision debris is the natural way, the atmosphere. But it only works on reasonable timeframes when you're below a certain altitude.
Luckily the reasons why we used to launch satellites into high orbit are mostly obsolete now. We did it for three reasons: firstly so the satellites would last longer because they are expensive, secondly to get higher land area coverage from fewer satellites again because satellites are expensive, and thirdly to make it possible to use stationary or slow-moving satellite dishes. Now that launching satellites is much cheaper and likely to get even more so, the first two reasons are obsolete. The third reason is made obsolete by modern phased array antennas that can be pointed without moving. So we don't need to take on the debris risk from high orbiting satellites anymore.
- bongodongobob 2y agoAssuming a 10m wide satellite, that's like grains of sand in a 470 foot orbit. I'm not going to calculate the odds right now but the chances of collision (assuming they're even capable of colliding in their orbits) has to be infinitesimally small. Your assertion that "accidents always happen" is doing all the legwork for your argument and it's so unlikely it may as well be false.
- modeless 2y agoNo need to calculate odds, we have data. There have been hundreds of collision and explosion events creating debris in orbit. Many if not most of them have been unintentional accidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing...
- bongodongobob 2y agoIn that list there's 1 intentional collision and 1 accidental.
- modeless 2y agoIt's far from a comprehensive list. Many of the causes are listed as "unknown" as well. This page lists 9 unintentional collision events: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision and it's clearly not comprehensive either since it doesn't contain some from the other list. And collisions are not the only kind of accident creating debris clouds. The page cites 250 debris creation events as of 2015, there have been more since, and most of them were not intentional. Ultimately it doesn't matter what specific kind of unintentional accident created debris. All that matters is how long it will pollute orbit.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThose are events that created debris, not events caused by debris.
- modeless 2y agoThat's right, illustrating my point that accidents creating debris are common and not realistically completely avoidable. Which is why we need to avoid putting satellites in orbits where any created debris will inevitably pollute space for millennia.
- TheDudeMan 2y agoFrustrating that the charts do not show the elevation. I bet they are all LEO.
- AcerbicZero 2y ago[flagged]