Comment on US issues first ever fine for space junk to Dish Network
turmacar@lemmy.world 11 months agoThere are ~20,000 objects in orbit large enough to be tracked as hazards. Personally unclear if that includes active satellites, but that’s ‘only’ another ~10,000.
There are ~100,000 airline flights a day worldwide.
How crowded does the sky look with planes?
Yes space junk is a thing to be concerned about / regulate. But at the scales involved it’s basically negligible. We’re orders of magnitude away from any kind of cascade or locking ourselves out of orbit or any other doomsday scenario.
gr0nr@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Planes can also move out of the way of other planes, and have air traffic controllers directing them. Space junk doesn’t do that, and while I agree that space junk isn’t “crowding” space at this point in time. It does appear to be ever growing and it is just a matter of time before an important satellite is taken down due to neglecting this ever growing space junk problem.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Satellites do. They also are required to have plans to be raised to a graveyard orbit or to be de-orbited. This one failed to reach it’s graveyard orbit is the issue. It can be an issue if it gets out of hand, but it really isn’t for a long time. Space is big. By the time it is an issue, we’ll probably trivially be able to handle the cleanup (or we’re in another dark age).
zephyreks@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Space junk is highly deterministic, though. No atmosphere to fuck with.