Mastodawn

Prof. Sam Lawler Oct 13, 2023

Not worried enough about corporate over-development of orbit yet? New article: companies have now filed asking for a total of ONE MILLION satellites: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi4639

Non-paywalled version here: https://www.outerspaceinstitute.ca/docs/One%20million%20(paper)%20satellites%20-%20Accepted%20Version%20.pdf

There is no way we can have anywhere near one million satellites in orbit without going into full Kessler Syndrome and destroying everything in orbit - making satellite science, communication, and interplanetary exploration impossible for decades.

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hanscees Oct 15, 2023

@sundogplanets learned something today

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Kessler syndrome - Wikipedia

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Virginicus

@hanscees @sundogplanets one of our physics-department colloquium speakers back in the 1980s told us that one day Earth would have rings like Saturn. Didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime.