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Space Debris: Is It a Crisis?
- genedan 2y agoFor anyone looking for a good anime, I would recommend Planetes which is about a crew that protects the Earth from space debris.
- mettamage 2y agoIt's 8.25 on myanimelist.net Nice!
- I_Nidhi 2y agoI'm not usually into historical fiction, so I skipped it, but I've been sleeping on something great, haven't I?
- sl-1 2y agoBest space-themed Anime I have seen
- bestouff 2y agoWas going to say that. I loved that anime.
- voidUpdate 2y agoI started watching that, but I got a little turned off it when it immediately started yelling about s*xual harassment. Maybe I'll give it another go someday
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoYou are allowed to say sex on this site, there's no rules against it and we're all adults (who aren't fooled by replacing a letter with an asterisk either).
- voidUpdate 2y agoI mean, I couldn't guarantee that we're all adults here... and it was more to make me feel better. Just because I'm allowed to do something doesn't mean I want to
- SecretDreams 2y agoJust need to watch that one cowboy Bebop episode where they visit original earth.
- aziaziazi 2y agoI think you meant to share that link: https://youtu.be/yIsPbysinKw https://youtu.be/yIsPbysinKw
- defrost 2y agoCheers for that. I actually intended to share: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debris_Is_it_a_Crisis https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debr... which is the European Space Agency page link that wraps their 8 minute space debris documentary. I didn't notice the URL is modified on click through to the generic ESA "space debris" catchall page :/ Youtube hosts the same content .. but lacks the gravitas of the ESA creator host page. HN allows me to edit the submission title but not the submitted URL.
- Towaway69 2y agoClimate crisis, trade crisis, space crisis … time for a crisis crisis.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoReminds me of the Everything Bubble during the panny-D.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoThe greatest one is the meta-crisis of mans permanent disability to handle his technological archievments and come to reasonable terms with the limitations imposed by what is essence a mental wheel chair. Instead we have either the total idealisation, of a utopist - all will be good, all obstacles can be overcome, just more of the same approaches, disasters be damned. The education will fix it. 6 billion, in remedial school, forever. The other is basically naturalism, snuggling to your emotions is the only thing left, fall back to natural behaviour, no matter how disastrous the consequences and disjunct the circumstances. Ignore all those societies who walked down that road into disaster. There is almost nobody out in the open in the middle ground. Cataloguing the disabilities, the side-effects and what we still can and cant do, planning moderate dreams and longterm projects that are realistic, even with the roof of the planet coming down.
- siffin 2y agoSurely we must rid ourselves from a story with any finality, as it stands, we reach for something, but we've no idea what. For most people, a better life is a life where their children are healthy, nourished, well-educated and living in peace (technology be damned). More importantly, for most people, a better life for themselves is one of extremely little, basic food, peace, community, movement. All those children grow up to find what makes them happy is less, not more. We all know it. It's the intangibles, not the material. It's the people, our pets, the sun shining and a bird singing. The end isn't worth the means, maybe instead of looking for some quant to see it all, we could just see ourselves and move forward slowly with what we know to be good and true, without falling on our face trying to punch a baby.
- 2y ago
- cies 2y agoI heard StarLink satellites eventually re-enter the atmosphere when they are not orbit-stable. Thus this technology is bad for life on earth when it is lauched into space and again when decommissioned. Here an article on that: https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/are-starlinks-satellites-depleting-the-ozone https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/are-starlinks-satellites-... Quite a crazy example of how costs are externalized, while profits are accumulated at the top.
- mgoetzke 2y agoWhy is it bad ? Like compared to lets say a car or any number of industrial products ?
- notahacker 2y agoSatellites comprised mainly of aluminium burn up in the upper atmosphere. This likely reduces the ozone layer, as that's where the chemical reactions take place, unlike industrial activity on the ground. A certain amount of aluminium gets injected into the upper atmosphere by meteorites without any human activity involved, but the quantities burned up by modern satellite constellations will significantly exceed that. Nothing different about Starlink satellites compared with anyone else's operating in LEO, but they do operate more than anyone else.
- perihelions 2y agoThere's considerably more aluminum oxides in the stratosphere from solid rocket motors than satellite reentires, and that's been going on since the 1970's. The 135 Space Shuttle launches burned 160 tons of aluminum powder, per launch, in their SRB's. (22 kilotons in total?) An Ariane 6 launch burns 55 or 110 tons (2 or 4 boosters). The largest satellite payloads are 20 tons in a launch. (Al2O3 isn't even the highest-impact ozone depletor within the space industry; that's chlorine. Also from solid rocket fuel).
- notahacker 2y agoYes, I agree launches also contribute and increase frequency is also a plausible risk factor (and is significant increases in launch frequency themselves driven by megaconstellations, though I don't think the Falcon 9 is as problematic as the Shuttle was) Main difference is that the satellites lose most of their mass in the relevant zone, whereas launches pass through it as quickly as possible. Satellites are small, but Starlink's deorbiting cycle is expected to reach 2 tonnes per day.
- fredzel 2y agoKessler syndrome is one of the things that give me that dread feelings, one of the things vast majority of people can do nothing about, yet it can derail any dreams of extra terrestial endavours before we even reach that point.
- ta1243 2y agoKessler is mainly a problem for things in continuous orbit, not for things leaving earth and heading to GEO and beyond.
- apt-apt-apt-apt 2y agoI will solve this for you so you can worry about other things like the obsolescence of humanity and killer drones/bots. In 200 years, we will have tamed the ability to generate energy efficiently and have relatively intelligent drones. These drones in swarms can track space debris, match their horizontal speed and push them out to outer space. Space debris will not be an issue. Maybe they can also take little bubbles of greenhouse gases and drop them out into space too.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoPeople imagine Kessler as one of those things that happens instantaneously. It's much more likely to happen over several decades. There's a good chance that we'll be able to stop it while it occurs through one of the very expensive mitigation measures that have been proposed.
- sebg 2y agoYou might enjoy https://whatsin.space/ https://whatsin.space/ Which describes itself as "What's in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL"
- aeinbu 2y agoWhen we are locked in by the Kessler Syndrome, are the extra terresterial aliens then also locked out from trying to «visit» us? ;)
- szundi 2y ago[dead]
- mystified5016 2y agoSerious answer to an unserious question: probably not! If you're travelling between stars, you do actually need star trek sci-fi shields. The relative velocity turns interstellar dust into bullets that would obliterate an unshielded ship. Assuming those shields can operate in proximity to a planet, they could simply shove their way through the debris cloud. Alternately, an interstellar ship probably has a lot of power to throw around and likely a lot of time they're willing to spend. It's not unreasonable to think that a starship would be equipped to deal with some amount of orbital debris. Probably point defense lasers or something. Maybe a tractor beam.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoOne question I’ve been wondering about (and please hear me out because this is an honest question and I know nothing about this area.) SpaceX’s Starship is being built based on the (business) principle that extremely low cost-to-orbit will be a good business, because it will unlock a huge market for launches. Some tiny fraction of these launches will probably go beyond Earth’s orbit. A much larger fraction (eg Starlink) will be aimed at low orbits where Kessler Syndrome can be avoided (unless there are major accidents.) But at least some of that new mass is going to wind up in higher orbits where Kessler syndrome is already a risk, and this new mass will obviously increase the risk of a disaster. And so far I’m only talking about Starship and SpaceX, not its competitors. My question is: is there a world where Starship is a viable economic project — meaning its investment pays back at the rate SpaceX is betting on — but where it does not also dramatically increase the risk of disaster? And what exactly does the model of “successful Starship / no Kessler syndrome” look like in terms of future launches? Has anyone modeled this?
- sneak 2y agoI would imagine the incentives being aligned (SX can’t make full economic and cultural Starship ROI if there is a planetsized wall of debris they can’t fly through) means that there will be multiple independent overlapping checks both private and government for each launch mission to ensure that it doesn’t become worse. SpaceX stands to lose just as much as the rest of us if they fuck this up, possibly more.
- threeseed 2y ago> SpaceX stands to lose just as much as the rest of us if they fuck this up, possibly more No it will go bankrupt and be forgotten. While we leave future generations with a problem that may not be economically or technically solvable and ruin space for ever.
- bell-cot 2y agoI'd bet there is a very wide gray zone between the current situation, and a "planetsized wall of debris", which badly damaged SpaceX's bottom line. And, in much of that gray zone, SpaceX could be the very profitable leader in a booming market for launching all the replacement satellites, heavier collision-"resistant" satellites, and debris-sweeping satellites.
- pandemic_region 2y agoIs this problem solvable by something similar to https://theoceancleanup.com/ https://theoceancleanup.com/ ? The search space is much larger, granted, but once you figure out a way to efficiently spot a piece of debris, you could use a <insert name of magical device here> to bump the debris towards outer space?
- ivan_gammel 2y agoIt's probably easier and better to push it down or try to evaporate it with laser from a comfortable distance.
- threeseed 2y agoThe problem is solvable by stopping people like Musk from putting 42,000 satellites in space. Especially when the problem he is solving i.e. global access to internet is already solved just not to the level we would want it. So as a society we have to ask what is more important: watching Netflix on a yacht or having the ability to someday explore the universe.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoOr we could just make a rule that all large constellations have to be put into an orbit under 500 miles where Kessler isn't really an issue and we could have our cake and eat it too.
- notahacker 2y agoGenerally the material goes the other way nowadays. In Low Earth Orbit debris even deorbits itself within a few years (or few decades for the higher reaches) through natural orbital decline taking it into the atmosphere where it burns up. There are startups and research programmes working on Active Debris Removal using everything from nets to lasers to destroy or divert debris (as well as larger tugs to remove whole satellites). It's just an expensive problem to solve, and if Kessler Syndrome were to occur, you wouldn't necessarily want to pause space launches to wait for orbits to be cleared, especially not if you'd just lost critical satellites...
- 2y ago
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- asix66 2y agoSteve Wozniak's startup, Privateer[0], was originally created to clean up space junk, but it seems now their “mission” is to develop better tracking of objects in space, and to use this data to help avert disastrous collisions. On the site is a fun interactive object tracker. [0] https://www.privateer.com/ https://www.privateer.com/
- dtgriscom 2y agoInteresting: they got Omega to sponsor the time display.
- marsokod 2y agoThat's the thing we need. If your satellite is operating and in Low Earth Orbit, it is extremely easy to avoid a collision, even without any propulsion system. If you are aware of the risk of collision a couple of days in advance, just changing your satellite orientation for a couple of orbit will retire the risk of collision. You may want to perform in-orbit servicing, but that is more about increasing the longevity of your assets in orbit or increasing their capabilities via refueling/upgrading/repairing.
- dang 2y agoIt looks like this points to a landing page which includes a video with the same title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRR5f68g3_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRR5f68g3_Q. Is that what was being submitted here?
- perihelions 2y agoI believe OP intended to link to this page, which is a text article and a self-hosted (esa.int) video, https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debris_Is_it_a_Crisis https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debr... ("Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?") The page is borked in a way that makes it tricky to find its canonical link. They've separately mirrored their documentary on YT, which is here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIsPbysinKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIsPbysinKw