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Comment by hourislate | Hacker News Reader

On one of Joe Rogans Podcasts, Neil Degrasse Tyson had said that there is a very good chance we will trap ourselves on Earth before we can become a true space faring civilization.

Sad when you think about it.

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I study orbital debris for a living - I'd like to assure you that you don't need to feel too worried about that. Orbital debris is generally consolidated in very thin altitude bands. Rockets on an escape trajectory spend very little time in these shells, only in passing. Compare that to satellites with lifetimes of 15 years.

Niel's statement is analog to saying "The LHC could create a black hole that kills us all". Yeah... I guess on some theoretical level it's possible... but it's extremely unlikely. Same concept applies here. I'm quite disappointed in him saying "There's a very good chance", because that is far from true.

Here is the clip from when they start speaking about the space junk. My memory did not quite remember the exact words Neil used so what I wrote was not entirely accurate. Apologies.

https://youtu.be/PhHtBqsGAoA?t=6285

He wouldn't get invited to speak if he didn't make pompous grand statements though.

I expect the trap will be political/economic rather than technical: We'll have ways to fix it, but you won't get enough groups to come together and pay for it.

Trap ourselves because there would too much junk to be able to get up there to clean it?

The 'trap' is that the accumulation of space junk will interfere with attempts to launch space ships and/or disrupt orbiting satellites to the extent that we can no longer see from space telescopes, hence we are trapped on Earth :-(

If the stakes are high enough, you will find people willing to risk the launches. Missions will just be unable to use very polluted orbits and there will need to be planning around that. You would need a ton of debris to make every launch site and mission type in the world useless.

You would need a ton of debris...

The point of Kessler syndrome is that it's an exponential growth in number of objects.

Seems kind of unlikely. Even LEO is a big place.

Orbits intersect.

Oh, it's an annoyance. But the idea we'd be "trapped" here... nah.

Great news for the rest of the Galaxy.

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