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Comment by NetMageSCW | Hacker News Reader

Stop trying to make Kessler syndrome a thing - it was never a thing, it isn’t a thing, it will never be a thing.

It is just pearl clutching by those too afraid of modern life. Gravity wasn’t a documentary.

Back in the day, "Kessler syndrome" was a fairly good way to articulate the fears of many scientists - whose delicate one-off "flagship" scientific research satellites had huge costs and lead times, if things started going wrong up there.

And overall, today's space powers are much more careful about not making messes in orbit.

Hey! I think I saw you on Ars. Or maybe someone there copied and pasted this?

I mean it might be a thing in 100 years but we're not even close now

Which means that we need to act responsibly and plan ahead now so that it is not a thing 100 years hence.

if we knew with certainty a doomsday meteor was heading towards earth 100 years from now we still couldn't plan for it, this is not how our species works

a new hot take spotted : newtonian physics isn't a thing.

let's see how well the freeways work once we stop cleaning up after the accidents.

I see you haven’t read the paper. How long do you think Kessler syndrome is projected to take? How long do you think natural clearing of debris at Starlink’s altitudes is?

Freeways are not 3 dimensional and they don't have an automatic cleanup that cleans up things within a pretty short time. Also area we are talking about is fucking gigantic. Also accidents are going to be very rare as sats deorbit themselves end of live and even if they break and can't move anymore, other sats that can still move can evade them.

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