11–20 of 162 posts
I would think newer sats will have collision avoidance capabilities and older ones will just crash. Maybe even clean up sats will be developed to collection them
There is no incentive large enough for cleanup (it's expensive, nobody can/wants to pay, and there are a lot of objects)
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 t…
> upper stages designed to explode into a thousand pieces at the target altitude By this do you mean at the 800km altitude?
Suffice it to say this is not sustainable for megaconstellations in thousand years orbits. The responsible thing to do with that kind of scale involves reliable, redundant, prompt de-orbit of upper stages, and ideally for high-thrust, high-mass, high-engineering-margin-of-error atmospheric upper stages never to make it that far into the mission.
There might be a cool storyline where we have to use enormous ground based lasers to clean up and start again. Could even look a bit like the iconic Gibraltar WW2 search lights photographs.
As long as it is militarily and commercially viable then the number of satellites will continue increasing, regardless of what academics have to say about collision rates. As per usual this is a coordination problem and in case people have not noticed nations are becoming less coordinated and more insular.
And what is your yardstick for measuring this? As far as I can tell this is the opposite of true. It's a popular national news meme but I don't believe it's been measured in any reliable way.
There might be a cool storyline where we have to use enormous ground based lasers to clean up and start again. Could even look a bit like the iconic Gibraltar WW2 search lights photographs.
What would zapping a satellite with a laser achieve? I suppose if you get it hot enough to melt everything, without anything flying off, then it would turn into a spherical drop of molten scrap... but then what?
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 t…
In other words, welcome various "death stars" to keep order against malicious Kessler style attacks, etc.
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 t…
One way is for the the US to be more politically stable again (some how). Every country with an army will want its own star link now for trust reasons.
Because this thing is happening right now, it's happening fast, and it's happening without any effort to fight against the trend.
If your answer is "let's revisit this in 2050", then it isn't an answer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way is for the the US to be more politically stable again (some how). Every country with an army will want its own star link now for trust reasons.
For how long? Because this thing is happening right now, it's happening fast, and it's happening without any effort to fight against the trend. If your answer is "let's revisit this in 2050", then it isn't an answer.