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Star wars: a new hope for arms control in space

newscientist.com

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Re: Star wars: a new hope for arms control in space

#2
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space" -Douglas Adams

I'm not sure if I buy this "earth orbit will be dangerously crowded with debris" business there is a LOT of room up there, the volume of space we are discussing is bigger then the volume of earth, and even if there is a high density of debris most of it is small bits of metal at orbital velocities, which would likely cause similar danger to micrometeorites: which are an engineering problem we need to solve anyway (the whole pray it does not hit anything that goes boom and throw a patch over it fast plan is not acceptable)

Re: Star wars: a new hope for arms control in space

#3
post #2

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space" -Douglas Adams I'm not sure if I buy this "earth orbit will be dangerously crowded with debris" business there is a LOT of room up there, the volume of space we are discussing is bigger then the volume of earth, a…

The problem is that collisions between larger pieces of debris can generate smaller pieces, more collisions, etc ... the potential for a chain reaction should not be dismissed so lighly because the consequences of humanity not being able to get into space are pretty far-reaching.