←back to thread

109 points cratermoon | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.636s | source
Show context
mapt ◴[] No.42198516[source]
The current trajectory is that SpaceX proved the commercial and military viability of an LEO megaconstellation, repeatedly lowering their target altitudes and raising their satellite count because of debris and cell size concerns...

And now the rest of the world is trying to catch up in a sort of arms race, and not taking any care about debris concerns. The most tempting orbits are the ones in upper LEO that permit them to launch fewer satellites.

SpaceX are going to end up well under 500km (orbital lifespan: a decade) before things are finished, and they switched to very low orbit staging with SEP spiral out to reach final orbit a ways back.

China's newest constellation Thousand Sails is at an altitude of 800km (orbital lifespan: thousands of years), with a thousand satellites in the works over the next year or so and 14,000 planned, and they're launching them using chemical upper stages designed to explode into a thousand pieces at the target altitude. This is sufficient for Kessler Syndrome all on its own, without counting interactions with anything else up there. A catastropic debris cascade at 800km percolates down to lower altitudes over time and impacts.

We need viable treaties limiting development beyond 400 or 500km and we need them ten years ago.

I don't know how to sell the urgency of this predicament. You can have as many satellites as you want, a million uncoordinated bodies, at 400km because direct collision potential scales with (satellite count / orbital lifespan) ^2 . At 1000km, satellites decay so slowly we are already too crowded; we have already overused the space. We are speed-running the end of the space age and we are doing it to save a small number of dollars and to avoid a small amount of diplomacy.

This is not something we get a do-over on. There is no practical way to collect ton-scale debris at present, no way to track kilogram-scale debris, no practical way to shield pressure vessels against gram-scale debris, and even milligram-scale debris can hit with the force of a bullet. After collisions start occurring at a rapid clip, the mass of potential impactors quickly forms a long tailed lognormal distribution that denies us space for centuries.

replies(12): >>42198566 #>>42198775 #>>42198922 #>>42199151 #>>42199177 #>>42199520 #>>42201406 #>>42201836 #>>42201926 #>>42201995 #>>42203453 #>>42203465 #
ryankshaw ◴[] No.42199151[source]
Is Kessler syndrome the Great Filter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)?

As in, is it the thing that makes it so no one else has broken out of their planet to come visit us?

I could totally see it being the case that as soon as a civilization gets good enough at putting stuff into space, they start putting a lot of stuff into space and then things start crashing into each other to the point that they can’t ever launch any more things into space and become stuck. Trapped by the artifacts of their own progress

replies(3): >>42199282 #>>42201135 #>>42201410 #
kmeisthax ◴[] No.42201410[source]
No. The space junk at a given orbit makes it unviable to put more satellites in that orbit, but launching beyond that orbit is still viable.
replies(1): >>42202700 #
1. throwaway888889 ◴[] No.42202700[source]
How can you get past that orbit if there is all this junk destroying your rockets????
replies(3): >>42202798 #>>42203116 #>>42203195 #
2. Retric ◴[] No.42202798[source]
Ideally a satellite is in a given orbit for years. If junk is destroying it in weeks or even months you’ve got a massive issue.

However a rocket is spending in a seconds in that same orbit. Thus a rocket passing through may only have say 1:10,000 odds of a collision on its way to mars while satellites are getting shredded.

3. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.42203116[source]
It really depends on how much junk actually is there and in what orbits; especially at 500 km up, space is big. The surface area of the earth is 510.100.000 square kilometers, at 500 kilometers the 'surface area' is a multiple of that (I can't math), surely there's enough gaps or lower-density areas at that height even if there was a catastrophic Kessler Syndrome event.
replies(1): >>42203216 #
4. the8472 ◴[] No.42203195[source]
integrate risk over time. if you have a high target orbit outside the "kessler belt" then you don't spend much time going through it. though this requires a fairly direct orbital insertion. slow orbit raising would have a higher risk, but even that would still be lower than for any satellite intended to operate for years and decades in an affected orbit.
5. aargh_aargh ◴[] No.42203216[source]
The surface area at 500 km is 1.16 of the Earth surface area.