once space is a battlefield, won't that largely salt the earth for economic uses? I watched the movie Gravity, so I know that it wouldn't take that much for however many trillion dollars of equipment is up there to be magically transmuted into an orbiting debris cloud
JumpCrisscross•2h ago
> I watched the movie Gravity
In case you're being serious, Gravity is a notoriously unrealistic illustration of orbital debris.
conartist6•2h ago
Is it unrealistic in depicting the idea that debris could cause a cascade which would create more debris?
m4rtink•1h ago
For one the timeframe was far too short - it takes time for stuff in orbit to go around so it can collide with stuff.
Not to mention having all those space stations in the same orbit about 200 meters apart.
JumpCrisscross•1h ago
> Is it unrealistic in depicting the idea that debris could cause a cascade which would create more debris?
Kessler cascades are real. Kessler cascades taking out wide ranges of orbits in a matter of hours is not.
The intuitive fix is to understand that the volume of space around Earth is enormous–LEO is about 200x more voluminous than commercial airspace. It's entirely possible to trash a single orbit. But that would take months to years to manifest. And in LEO, it would tend to only last years.
To my knowledge, there is no solution to efficiently denying orbits by purposely triggering Kessler cascades. If it's cheaper for a military to shoot down individual satellites rather than trigger self-replicating cascades, it's not going to happen accidentally.
(Exception: GEO. That's a single orbit. It's also high up, which means it clears very slowly. It would be entirely possible for us to screw up geostationary orbit for generations.)
generj•1h ago
Seems premature when the increase in the Space Force budget hasn’t happened yet.
conartist6•2h ago
JumpCrisscross•2h ago
In case you're being serious, Gravity is a notoriously unrealistic illustration of orbital debris.
conartist6•2h ago
m4rtink•1h ago
Not to mention having all those space stations in the same orbit about 200 meters apart.
JumpCrisscross•1h ago
Kessler cascades are real. Kessler cascades taking out wide ranges of orbits in a matter of hours is not.
The intuitive fix is to understand that the volume of space around Earth is enormous–LEO is about 200x more voluminous than commercial airspace. It's entirely possible to trash a single orbit. But that would take months to years to manifest. And in LEO, it would tend to only last years.
To my knowledge, there is no solution to efficiently denying orbits by purposely triggering Kessler cascades. If it's cheaper for a military to shoot down individual satellites rather than trigger self-replicating cascades, it's not going to happen accidentally.
(Exception: GEO. That's a single orbit. It's also high up, which means it clears very slowly. It would be entirely possible for us to screw up geostationary orbit for generations.)