Small duck big world.

[jimmyg]

Kessler syndrome?

Most have not even heard it's a thing.

Should your kids?

Scam link below.



Watch "ISS Canadarm Hit by Space Debris - Are We Close to Kessler Syndrome?" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/VYBPz9UDHiM

[jimmyg]

The link is real btw.

Hope someone noticed.

[K-fab]

Pretty fascinating.
We lay out at night often, watching the stars and see quite a few satellites go over (saw the ISS a couple of weeks ago - got up at 4:45 to do so) and we both have an app called Planets that we use whilst staring upwards.
It’s surprising how many man made items show up on it.

Elon’s new internet setup has put a bunch up. We counted 50+ one night, all running in 7 distinct tracks. Made me think of slot cars.

[bdkw1]

All the Starlink sat's are really low orbit and have the capability to de-orbit at the end of life.

[darwinpayne2000]

Telstar 1 and 2, the first electronic satellites (earlier, they sent up ballon-type satellites that would reflect signals) are still orbiting the earth. They were not geo-synchronous, so I was surprised that they hadn't de-orbited and burned up years ago

No wonder they have a "space junk" problem if a satellite launched 60 years ago is still up there.

[bdkw1]

The problem isn't the big chunks, it's the small ones. No way to track all those. Time to develop force fields to protect the ships.

[K-fab]

Little itty bitty pieces cruising along at 15-18K mph (24-29K kph) - just not something you want to meet.

Here's a bit of perspective:
The .220 Swift remains the fastest commercial cartridge in the world with a published velocity of 4,665 ft/s (1,422 m/s) .884 miles per second (metric - if you can't figure out km/s you need help).

15,000 mph = 79,200,000 ft/sec
24,000 kph = 24,000,000 m/sec

Yeah, shit's boogying along.

I wonder if stuff vaporizes when it punches a hole in, say that panel?

The movies show stuff moving slow motion and such. Nah, blink, there's a hole here.

[jimmyg]

Normally the piece that impacted vaporizes (turns to hot gas/plasma) and the material it hits becomes a shotgun blast of new projectiles.

Closing speeds of these objects can be insanely fast. A grain of sand doing the damage of a 50cal type stuff. Just no way of protecting a craft against that.

[Kuma]

I would think a small fry terrorist country with some technology who does not benefit from the Tech from Space such as Iran or N Korea, would just need to launch a payload of ball bearings with a small charge in the middle and that would just about do it. although most of what we rely on for GPS, the tings the military relies on is pretty far out of reach for the time being.