The biggest argument for the answer being “Yes” would seem to be their contributions to the Kessler Syndrome but I’m really not that up to speed on how severe or critical the situation currently is.
The biggest argument for the answer being “Yes” would seem to be their contributions to the Kessler Syndrome but I’m really not that up to speed on how severe or critical the situation currently is.
just randomly on the topic of Kessler syndrome. could we make a big sticky thing to just throw into orbit and like. Stick to everything. like a space lint roller or one of those slimes people use to clean car vents. Just turn it all back into one big garbage ball somehow. OR accelerate the process of forming rings somehow.
That’s basically like trying to pick up dust by swinging a lint roller through the air. It’ll take a lot of swinging to collect any reasonable amount that way.
big net
I’m not up to say on the math involved, but I’d guess things up there are moving too fast for that to work on a time scale that would be useful.
The short answer: no
The slightly longer answer: also no. Because orbits don’t work that way and space is really really big
There are companies who have plans for cleaning up space debris by grabbing it in various ways, but it’s not really feasible for more than super specific targets in very narrow edge cases
For most of the stuff currently in orbit, there’s not much danger regarding Kessler syndrome, as their orbits decay in a couple years to maybe decades in extreme cases
The bigger problem with current satellite constellations is the big amount of metal spreading into the upper atmosphere when they burn up (not a problem when a couple satellites do it, but problematic when hundreds do), as well as disturbing ground based telescopes
Ty! This the the longer answer I was really looking for. I figured it was probably a scale problem but it’s nice to have that confirmed.