This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the
hazards of "space junk" in Earth orbit. As always, there may have been
minor wording variations from this script as I presented the report
live on air.
- - -
Yeah, so it's interesting to consider a bit of history. It was back in
1945, more than 10 years before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the
first orbiting satellite, that science and science fiction author
Arthur C. Clarke first discussed the idea of geosynchronous
satellites, a concept he's generally credited with originating. And he
postulated that you could cover the entire Earth for communications
with just three satellites strategically located 120 degrees apart at
around 22,000 miles altitude, now called geosynchronous or Clarke
orbit.
Of course we ended up with somewhat more satellites than that. The
geosynchronous orbit is now stuffed to the gills, and increasingly
we're surrounded with low orbit satellites like the approaching 10,000
Starlink communications satellites. And of course satellites are used
for all sorts of stuff -- not just civilian communications but also a
wide variety of civilian and military photography of course, and
increasingly plans for space weapons, like the predicted to be
enormously expensive Golden Dome Missile Defense system that the
administration is planning. By the way, this appears in many ways to
basically be a retread of President Ronald Reagan's ultimately doomed
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was popularly called "Star
Wars" at the time, and there's actually painfully few reasons to
assume that Golden Dome will fare any better than SDI did against
well-equipped adversaries, but that's a different technical
discussion.
Anyway, as the number of satellites and other equipment that every
space-capable nation shoots into space continues to rapidly increase,
all sorts of problems that have actually long been predicted are
actually starting to happen now. Enormous amounts of what amounts to
space junk is up there, often no longer functional, but still creating
hazards to other equipment and human travelers in orbit. Remember,
just a tiny bit of debris moving at the speeds present in orbit are
potentially very dangerous.
And there are other kinds of problems on the list. Ground-based
astronomers trying to do serious science are increasingly finding
their view of the heavens obscured especially by the low orbit
satellites that are present in such enormous numbers, especially when
they reflect light to the ground. And then there's the problem of
space junk that makes the return trip by deorbiting and rather than
fully burning up in the atmosphere, hits the ground with a variety of
potentially serious impacts -- no pun intended of course. In fact, one
or two Starlink satellites reportedly reenter the atmosphere every day
now, and while they usually do burn up harmlessly, as the numbers
continue to increase, the potential deorbiting risks of course also
increase.
What's really alarming many experts is that there are signs that we
may actually be in the early stages of the so-called "Kessler
Syndrome". This is named for a former NASA scientist who introduced
the concept in a 1978 paper. The idea is that you eventually reach a
point where there's so much space debris that you create a cascade of
collisions that cause even more debris, and more collisions, and you
end up with the Earth surrounded by what amounts to a "space cloud" of
dangerous junk that puts serious constraints on future operations in
orbit.
If there ever was a technological situation that called for
international cooperation, this has to be one of the main contenders.
If Earth orbit continues to become overloaded with communication
satellites, space weapons, and the massive amount of space junk that
is an outgrowth of our tech, sooner or later there will be some sort
of major disaster either in orbit or on the ground, that perhaps could
have been prevented if we didn't treat Earth orbit as supposedly
unlimited.
This isn't science fiction, but it's a kind of space monster
nonetheless. One thing's for sure, Arthur C. Clarke would certainly
not have been pleased.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
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Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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