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New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

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Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#41

Post by chrisnight »

leptons wrote: post #23
mapt wrote: post #8

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…

>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 nu…

Having satellites orbiting the planet is more beneficial than just solving the first-world problem of “knowing where you are” or “having Internet”.

NASA has done a large amount of work to use satellite data to forecast and then work to improve agricultural yields covering the entire planet. It definitely isn’t necessary, but to dismiss the improvement that has been made is crazy, and I’d hardly call “feeding people around the world” a first-world luxury given by space travel.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#42

Post by titzer »

sfink wrote: post #22
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the poster means to change its trajectory.

By adding energy (and momentum)? That seems unlikely to work. I guess you could try to shoot at things headed towards you over the horizon, to slow things down? I was assuming it was to vaporize things to make the re-condensed remnants small and dispersed enough to be less of a problem. Though that seems like a tough problem if you have to stay trained on an orbiting bolt for any length of time, as the atmosphere wob…

Well the targeting angle could be low to the horizon, aiming into oncoming debris, reducing its orbital velocity, so that it deorbits faster. The vertical component of the vector would be minimized. A low angle reduces laser efficiency due to more atmospheric interference, but oblique enough it would work. Nearly all man-made satellites (and space junk) orbit in the direction of Earth's rotation because of launch boost, which makes this easier.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#43

Post by 0x1ceb00da »

ljsprague wrote: post #32
ryankshaw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

I would guess that it would still be possible to send things beyond earth's orbit with only a low probability of collision with debris but perhaps I'm wrong.

Every launch failure will result in more debris and even lower probability of a successful future launch.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#44

Post by benchmarkist »

akira2501 wrote: post #36
benchmarkist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> so you can greatly simplify your sentence You didn't need to use "greatly" here because the suggestion you're offering without being asked is not particularly great or meaningful. > I think that would greatly aid in your online communications. I communicate online just fine, thank you, I'm also happy to be an individual and to allow that individuality to be expressed through my communications. Thanks again for the…

I would recommend you take your own advice.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#45

Post by akira2501 »

benchmarkist wrote: post #44
akira2501 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so you can greatly simplify your sentence You didn't need to use "greatly" here because the suggestion you're offering without being asked is not particularly great or meaningful. > I think that would greatly aid in your online communications. I communicate online just fine, thank you, I'm also happy to be an individual and to allow that individuality to be expressed through my communications. Thanks again for the…

I would recommend you take your own advice.

You are unwilling to adhere to your own standard? Interesting. What happened? Was it that someone else used this technique against you in the past to make you feel small? And now you've stored in some kind of quiver of ready to use insulting behavior to avoid any sort of confrontation or perceived failure? Then because of this you're made awkward and uncomfortable when it doesn't play out the same way as before?

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#46

Post by benchmarkist »

akira2501 wrote: post #45
benchmarkist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend you take your own advice.

You are unwilling to adhere to your own standard? Interesting. What happened? Was it that someone else used this technique against you in the past to make you feel small? And now you've stored in some kind of quiver of ready to use insulting behavior to avoid any sort of confrontation or perceived failure? Then because of this you're made awkward and uncomfortable when it doesn't play out the same way as before?

In psychology that's called projection. I highly recommend looking into it.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#47

Post by Dylan16807 »

benchmarkist wrote: post #31
akira2501 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

"True" here is not a boolean, it's the truth of the matter.

The claim is that coordination is decreasing. Calling that "false" might mean coordination is steady. Calling it the "opposite of true" means that coordination is increasing.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#48

Post by mapt »

perihelions wrote: post #30
mapt wrote: post #8

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…

Why would any of the US' adversaries agree to that? We have SpaceX, and they do not; lowering the altitude of megaconstellations is asymmetrically far more costly for them then it is for us. Stopping China's (highly strategic, military) satellite constellations isn't a "small amount of diplomacy". It's an impossibility. (It's even their declared planning that deliberate Kessler cascades are on the table [0]—to try to…

Invite them in. Launch their satellites for them, at 400km. Give them cash or territory. Give away the farm. How doesn't matter. What matters is that we start coexisting at 300-500km, and we mutually taboo launching large amounts to altitudes much higher than that.

There is no stable Mutually Assured Destruction Nash equilibrium here, if either of us does this thing it causes dramatic harm to both.

Not regarding that as a worthwhile goal is "mineshaft gap" thinking - a zero-sum mentality entirely ignoring our collective advantage in order to pursue competitive advantage.

It is perfectly feasible to run a Chinese constellation alongside Starlink sharing the same space, orbitally. Very low orbits are self cleaning.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#49

Post by mapt »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
to11mtm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Low" is tough to say until someone does some proper sort of 'true mapping' of space debris in the range somehow. Protection would require a lot of complexity and cost due to the need for shielding and the delta-v to move it up there.

> until someone does some proper sort of 'true mapping' of space debris in the range somehow You look at which satellites poofed and then figure out the maximum extent their debris could have drifted.

That works a little bit when we're talking about one satellite poofing in a year based on a collision with another satellite, and not at all when we're talking about thousands of events a year, many of which are satellite-debris collisions too small to track (you only get one orbital vector), or between pieces of debris.

Every collision generates hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of debris, only the largest of which are trackable.

Re: New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome [video]

#50

Post by benchmarkist »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #47
benchmarkist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"True" here is not a boolean, it's the truth of the matter. The claim is that coordination is decreasing. Calling that "false" might mean coordination is steady. Calling it the "opposite of true" means that coordination is increasing .

That's a possible interpretation but the verbosity of the original statement hinders understanding the actual intent which is I why I recommended simplifying and removing unnecessary redundancies.
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