“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude.”
“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude.”
Right, that’s exactly what I said.
A “Great Filter” is something that stops every civilization from ever expanding off its home world. Kessler Syndrome does not in any way fit this. It’s a temporary inconvenience that isn’t even guaranteed to happen.
I often wonder if environmental degradation could be the end of the line for humans, and if it might even be Great Filter material. Have other civilizations discovered the usefulness of fossil fuels, only to be ignorant, then apathetic, about their major downsides?
Why would one assume that every civilization is going to have access to fossil fuels in the first place? Earth has coal and oil because of a specific sequence of events that don’t necessarily follow.
Also, the severity of climate change that we’re facing is in no plausible way “end of the line” for humans. It could be disruptive to our current civilization but it’s not going to end us. One could even easily hypothesize alien planets where induced global warming would be an enormous benefit to a civilization living on it. Just a few tens of thousands of years ago major regions of Earth were covered with ice caps, if our civilization had arisen back then a case could be made that accelerating their melting would be beneficial in the long run.
This isn’t really Great Filter material.
I wasn’t trying to refute what you said, I was trying to expand on your “it doesn’t prevent you from launching through them.” by explaining the downsides of going through it.
It’s not as simple as just going through it, there are real implications for those years.
It actually is that simple, though. The amount of time that a launcher spends in one of those Kessler Syndrome zones while it passes through to a higher orbit would be measured in minutes. You can likely just ignore it and write off the one-in-a-million times your launcher hits something as just the cost of doing business.
Kessler Syndrome is a problem for satellites that want to orbit within those zones long term, as in spending years in there.
I think the odds would depend on how big the debris field is, but for non human cargo that might be acceptable, but I have a feeling that might not be the case with people on board, in which case they would need armor.
Edit: for non human cargo it could even be an option. Armored + X payload weight for $100/kg. Unarmored $60/kg + Y payload weight. (Made up numbers)