Star
light, star bright, crunch..
Its all about satellites, we have quite a lot of them now, all whizzing about up there on carefully charted orbits so that they waft safely past each other. Usually.
Trouble is that its not just satellites up there, there is junk too, there are bits of used rocket, bits of broken satellite and of course the frequent barrage of meteorites.
This is made all the more dangerous by the speed involved, thousands of mph. That makes even a fleck of paint as deadly as a bullet from Clint Eastwards legendary 45.
So when something hits a satellite it makes a big hole, and this results in a shower of lethal high speed debris, multiplying the threat. Kessler noted that once the satellites get to a certain density there can be a catastrophic domino effect taking out hundreds of satellites in a very short time.
That would be bad enough, but the debris would carry on flying about, making an impenetrable deadly shell, effectively stopping any more satellite launches, no more space missions at all in fact.
You might not think that is so bad, but it means no more GPS, no sat nav, no cheap international phone calls, no satellite TV stations. Data communications used by big industry would stop, sections of the internet would slow or stop, commerce would be severely hit. As would everyone that relies on satellite navigation systems, aircraft, shipping, emergency services and of course the military, with the potential to profoundly effect world politics.
But its humanity that would suffer the most, with a sudden limitation on our ability to gather information about the universe we live in, and of course it would mean that as a species we would be locked on to the Earth, denied the chance of spreading into the solar system, like a giant prison cell.
So why are so many hundreds of satellites needed? A lot of it is duplication, competing companies selling communications and media. And with so many countries now firing stuff up there its getting increasingly difficult to regulate, over 18000 objects in low earth orbit are being tracked, but only 5% of these are working satellites.
So what do we need to do? Well we have to add to the scientific communities voice in convincing government all round the world to wake up to this threat, to regulate and limit the number of launches and to find ways of neutralising the existing debris.
Other wise its just a matter of time before you hear about Kessler's work in the headlines.
Ralph
Hosier