Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Snooze
It's a representation. Of course it couldn't be 1:1 scale. If it's any consolation there are even more kilometers between them.
"The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a theoretical scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions."
Wikipedia
"More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, or “space junk,” are tracked by the Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network (SSN) sensors. Much more debris -- too small to be tracked, but large enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions -- exists in the near-Earth space environment. Since both the debris and spacecraft are traveling at extremely high speeds (approximately 15,700 mph in low Earth orbit), an impact of even a tiny piece of orbital debris with a spacecraft could create big problems."
NASA |
I didn't say you couldn't hit anything I said they are not the dense cloud that the depiction makes them look.
27,000 pieces? Spread through many different altitudes? There are 8 billion people on just the surface of the earth and it wouldn't appear that dense.
Some day there will be money to be made in gathering it all up and they will all disappear.