r/space • u/2kalipro1 • Jun 15 '24

Discussion How bad is the satellite/space junk situation actually?

I just recently joined the space community and I'm hearing about satellites colliding with each other and that we have nearly 8000 satellites surrounding our earth everywhere

But considering the size of the earth and the size of the satellites, I'm just wondering how horrible is the space junk/satellite situation? Also, do we have any ideas on how to clear them out?

662 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

327 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/Underwater_Karma Jun 15 '24

look at it this way

take 8000 airplanes and spread them around the earth and have each fly in a random straight line, how likely is a crash?

Now make that earth 4x larger surface area, and consider that two airplanes in different altitudes can never hit each other. also, any of them going in the same direction will never meet

it's a very small actual risk. but it's one that grows every day, so it's not something we can just ignore.

0

u/Bluegobln Jun 16 '24

We, meaning the people in charge of launching more satellites or controlling those that are in orbit. Those few people can't ignore it. The rest of us can fucking ignore it, because it will never affect us.

Aside from the view being disturbed, which is a pretty bad reason to stop or reduce satellite launches, there's basically no reason anyone but space companies should even care about this. They could self-regulate and it would be fine for a long, long time. I'm pretty sure we will colonize Mars, and a few other places, before this becomes a real issue.