Collisional cascading
Blood Knight alerted us to Kessler syndrome so I found When Elephants Fight in Space:
When spacecraft collide with other objects conducting routine space activity or are intentionally destroyed via anti-satellite tests, this creates orbital debris and risks creating a cascading chain reaction of collisions and debris propagation. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains that “collisions with orbital debris can pit or damage spacecraft in the best case scenario and cause catastrophic failures in the worst.” Collisional cascading, also known as the Kessler Syndrome, is a dangerous phenomenon because it renders orbits less accessible for all states to reap the scientific, technological, and economic benefits. For these reasons, NASA maintains that the top threat to spacecraft, satellites, and astronauts is orbital debris.
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According to the U.S. nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, orbital debris in LEO—orbits with an altitude of 2,000 kilometers or less—can travel “30 times faster than a commercial jet aircraft. At these speeds, pieces of debris larger than 1 cm (half an inch) can severely damage or destroy a satellite, and it is not possible to shield effectively against debris of this size.”
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Space history is a human story of customs and contradictions with its genesis in the influential 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It’s important to keep space history in mind when evaluating the environmental risks facing the international community and strategizing how to develop multilateral frameworks for cooperation. This is especially pivotal as more commercial actors are launching mega-constellation commercial satellites.
Ping! Like for instance…
Helping lead the call to action is Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, who is apprehensive of orbital slots becoming congested and disproportionately dominated by entrepreneurs.
In an interview at NewSpace Europe, Aschbacher took particular aim at SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, which is preparing to grow its Starlink satellite internet service up to $30 billion. “You have people like Elon Musk, just launching constellations and satellites and throwing Teslas up into orbit. We need to set common rules. Colonisation, or just doing things in a completely deregulated space, is a concern,” Aschbacher said.
This is a branch of Musk’s domineering reckless not giving a shit that I wasn’t aware of.
@Ophelia:
Yes, this is a serious issue, and yes there should be regulation, but — as usual — the accusation of “reckless not giving a shit” is just wrong. SpaceX do care about this issue a lot, particularly as any collision cascade would affect them as much as anyone.
SpaceX get critiqued here because they are the first movers, but there about 6 other consortiums planning similar constellations to SpaceX’s Starlink, including Jeff Bezos’s Amazon and the EU. So it’s not fair to suggest that Musk is doing something that responsible bodies such as the EU would not do, because yes they are.
Anyhow, if you really want to throw accusations of “reckless not giving a shit” then apply it to the Chinese for their 2007 anti-satellite-missile test.
Wiki: “A Chinese weather satellite … was destroyed by a kinetic kill vehicle traveling with a speed of 8 km/s (18,000 mph) in the opposite direction […]
“The … test created the largest field of space debris in history, with more than 3,000 pieces of trackable size (golf ball size and larger) officially catalogued in the immediate aftermath, and an estimated 150,000 debris particles.”
Now that is “reckless not giving a shit”. The USA had done the same, back in 1985, but after that everyone (save the Chinese) had realised that it was an utterly dumb thing to do.
India also performed such a test quite recently, I believe. That is truly scary recklessness.
Geez, this reminds me of something . . . an issue of reckless waste possibly fucking everything up . . . and we were endlessly warned about it . . . what could that be?
Maybe if I breathe into a paper sack long enough the answer will come to me . . .
Not to mention the impact on the environment at ground level these enterprises have, such as the manufacturing of the equipment and massive amounts of fuel and other resources expended. Who profits is the question I would pose.
@Der Durchwanderer:
True, and India should indeed be blamed for this, but at least they thought about it and deliberately did the test at a low altitude of 283 km. At that altitude there is enough atmospheric drag that the fragments’ orbits decay and they burn up (lasting from weeks to a few years at most).
From wiki: Indian test on 27 March 2019, “49 tracked pieces of debris remained in orbit as of 15 July 2019 […] As of March 2022, only one catalogued piece of debris [remained] This final piece decayed from orbit 14 June 2022.”
Also, that debris was not a threat to other satellites since, owing to the atmospheric drag, no other satellites are that low.
The Chinese test was at 865 km, which means the debris field will exist for centuries.
Likewise. But mind you, OB, Musk’s domineering reckless not giving a shit is a field of study choc-a-bloc with precedents and examples, and a full-time study in its own right..
Thanks for the shout out OB, unpleasant subject though it is…
Further concerns:
First and foremost, if we get enough debris up there we can’t leave this planet, period. Pooh pooh the idea of colonizing the stars all you want but that is very definite impenetrable barrier to conquering the stars in a way nothing else is.
Related, we can’t very well be building space bolas/elevators if we can’t keep satellites up which is yet another hindrance. You can’t very well set up an orbital solar energy array either, same reliance on tethered satellites.
There’s just a lot of shit we need to do and not be doing if we want to preserve human civilization and eventually post-human civilization, which is what long termism should be about. Dunno why the long termists are more concerned with AI than with stuff like Kessler syndrome and climate change. Shall someone wave a wand and magic the short term threats away so that the “real” threats are all there is?
Thank you for the alert!
Colonizing the stars? Is that on the table? I thought planets were difficult enough…
Any vaguely plausible method of getting to the stars presupposes lots of industry in this solar system but off-earth. So we definitely need some space traffic control to avoid Kessler syndrome.
I mean it more in a poetic/deep time sense (the United States isn’t going to be around to plant a flag on Alpha Centauri, hell, Homo Sapiens Sapiens almost certainly won’t)…
But yeah, if we don’t get our shit together we’re never going to get to put in the centuries long effort to build the infrastructure to leave this doomed blue marble. Sorting out climate change and making civilization sustainable for the hundreds or thousands of years we need while not also exhausting rare resources like fossil fuels (probably the rarest substances in the universe because they require dead organisms plus tectonics).
While I do think like this certainly, I’m also worried about starving to death in my 60s (due to the potential collapse of industrial agriculture), so I’m not exactly starry eyed though I do look up at the stars often enough.
Ah, metaphor, got it.
#1 Coel
I think I can believe you that SpaceX cares about debris, if I interpret “SpaceX” to mean “the majority of SpaceX’s staff”. However I don’t believe Elon himself gives a shit about that, his whole history points to unserious attitudes and dislike of regulation or restraint on his activities.
There are some 160 million pieces of cosmic waste circling Earth—all of which have human-made origin (New Scientist May 6 2023 p. 31).
Picture at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris#/media/File:Debris-GEO1280.jpg
@Holms:
Yep, his whole history of leading SpaceX to becoming the world’s dominant space company (most capable rockets, way in advance of anyone else’s, also with the best reliability record), and leading Tesla to producing the world’s best-selling electric vehicle (beating all the big, established companies to that), not to mention successful records with many other companies, does indeed show that he’s unserious and incompetent and can’t do anything right. Just about anyone could do way better; this is just obvious.
I don’t question his business sense, he jumped on burgeoning areas of technological development with excellent timing. I question his attitude. In some respects, he’s a child that chafes at the mere existence of rules and restraint.