4 ms·
Lots of comments about what a shield would need to look like to protect against this. That’s not the way to think about this in the very near future. The space
by eagerpace 2y ago
Lots of comments about what a shield would need to look like to protect against this. That’s not the way to think about this in the very near future. The space station and nearly everything in space up until now, is designed with very small mass and tolerances because it’s so expensive to get there in the first place.
As the cost of mass to orbit lowers by orders of magnitude in, likely, the next decade, we can begin seeing spacecraft that are far more durable, redundant and agile. They will have ample propellant to move out of the way and they will have life support systems and failure modes designed to withstand and allow for the repair of small impacts.
- maxerickson 2y agoOne wonders if we will then have lots of big robust space junk.
- relativ575 2y agoPerhaps. We'll also have big robust space junk removers
- joshstrange 2y agoI always like to bring up the anime Planetes [0] when this is mentioned. I enjoyed the show overall but the core concept (space debris removal) was/is the main pull for me. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoHow much shielding exactly is needed to defend one item moving at 17,500mph vs another moving towards it at 17,500. I agree propellant will become increasingly valuable but durable against impact seems almost fleeting of a goal
- Aeolun 2y agoKind of curious that at those high speeds bigger might be better, since the impact is spread over a larger area, and energy scales only linearly with mass.
- dTal 2y agoThis seems fallacious to me. Energy scales linearly with mass, so an object that is twice as big, is twice as bad. It probably isn't even twice the area, unless it's a flat sheet hitting broadside on - but even if it were, that's still at best the same as getting hit twice. Or are you saying that gluing two small pieces of debris together render them less harmful?
- consumer451 2y agoWhipple shields are effective and require less mass than one would imagine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield
- bagels 2y agoIss has whipple shields on parts of it, lightweight compared to something like plate armor, to protect against very small debris.
- ygra 2y agoAs far as I understood it, plate armor would help very little against things moving at orbital speeds. Either it penetrates or it creates spalling on the other side. Either option isn't particularly nice.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]