I missed reading Starlink's latest conjunction report when it came out a bit over a month ago.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@Amgine If they wanted Kessler Syndrome they could have very easily done it already.

[davecb@hachyderm.io]

@sundogplanets Are we better off if a (smaller?) cascade happens early, and starlink needs to deorbit as many of its satellites as it can?

[action_jay@thecanadian.social]

@sundogplanets I feel like there's gonna be a day where they just abandon it all for whatever asinine reason and it rains space junk all over, all at once, with no accountability

[quizzicus@mastodon.online]

@sundogplanets So a modern Ted Kaczynski could simply DDoS space-track.org?

[startswithabang@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets Bah, science in its infancy is one of the most promising, and frustrating (for its lack of definitive answers), types all at once!

[rin3d@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets I dont see any reason to freak out about it. They are low orbit sats with natural fallback of 5 years, spacex could go bust and all the sats left and it'd all be gone in a few years.
They all are designed to full burn up before risk to ground and no evidence of them failing to fully burn after hundreds of burns.

The real shit you should worry about is high orbit sats that are 20 years old and actually able to cause Kessler syndrome.

[amgine@mamot.fr]

@sundogplanets

But not with plausible deniability.

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@sundogplanets
I'm actually looking forward to the Kessler Cascade thing. Yeah, it might make GPS a bit hard for a while, but it might shut some of the nonces up,

[jaztrophysicist@social.sciences.re]

@sundogplanets @startswithabang oh yes as if the one single thing the climate still needed in this era was a good trashing of the ozone layer by catalytic metals.

[zhksh@sigmoid.social]

@sundogplanets i have worked for ESA and heard multiple stories about them trying to get *someone" at Starlink on the phone because of imminent collisions and missing agreements on who takes evasive action (settled now). Pretty wild

[zhksh@sigmoid.social]

@LeDiva @sundogplanets lots of efforts at ESA

[swordgeek@mstdn.ca]

@sundogplanets Collisions at all will be terrible, but at what point do we reach critical mass for a runaway chain reaction?

[michael_w_busch@mastodon.online]

@swordgeek

If active avoidance fails, collisions would start happening in low orbit within a few days.

@sundogplanets and company have done the math: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

[brkloeckner@piaille.fr]

@Rin3d @sundogplanets Do you understand that the person you answer is a specialist of the topic, and if I remember correctly has been investigating actual debris from Starlink satellites that fell on the ground (see https://thenarwhal.ca/space-junk-falling-50th-parallel/, even with a photo of her with space debris)?
I cannot be sure you are a man, but your message looks like a strong contender for the worst mansplaining of the year.

[davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social]

@falken @sundogplanets

Starlinks keep falling on my head,
But that doesn't mean that I will soon be turning dead

[autolycos@beige.party]

@sundogplanets

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@swordgeek Oh we're beyond the limit. Some parts of orbit are already in Kessler Syndrome, but the early stages are slow.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@BrKloeckner Thank you.

[missgayle@urbanists.social]

@sundogplanets

Small meteors hit the earth all the time, iirc? Now imagine a not-so-tiny one sideswiping the atmosphere and taking out a whole swathe of satellites, sending them careening in every direction...

On the upside, gps tracking of people's cars and phones will no longer be possible.

[brkloeckner@piaille.fr]

@sundogplanets You're welcome. Sorry you have to put up with that, I assumed you should not also have to carry the weight of letting such people know it is not ok.