When other debris hits them or parts of them break off, some fragments will have lower mass and slightly different trajectory and therefore may change into higher orbit.
Not really. They may go into a higher orbit temporarily, but they would be highly elliptical, repeatedly dipping into the atmosphere and bleeding speed
Those pieces would still have their original low periapsis and deorbit pretty quick. Kessler syndrome isn’t about very low orbits where drag is significant
The real problem with those satellites is the immense amount of pollution that is released in the atmosphere due to them burning up. It could bring back our ozone hole problem.
Lol, wait until Elon and everyone else sets off the Kessler Syndrome. There won’t be shit up in the sky after that.
Nono, there’ll be tons of shit, but not the usable kind.
Starlink satellites are too low to pose that problem. They’re designed to deorbit in 5 years, anyway. Broken ones would probably do so even sooner
When other debris hits them or parts of them break off, some fragments will have lower mass and slightly different trajectory and therefore may change into higher orbit.
Not really. They may go into a higher orbit temporarily, but they would be highly elliptical, repeatedly dipping into the atmosphere and bleeding speed
Those pieces would still have their original low periapsis and deorbit pretty quick. Kessler syndrome isn’t about very low orbits where drag is significant
And simply due to physics, those will be the exception and not the rule, and so not enough to cause Kessler Syndrome.
The real problem with those satellites is the immense amount of pollution that is released in the atmosphere due to them burning up. It could bring back our ozone hole problem.
What are they releasing when they burn up that would cause that much pollution?
It’s the burning aluminum that will be the problem if it turns out to be more than theoretical…
Luckily a lot of the cheap startup stuff is going to LEO, so the real junk that dies early or never makes contact should do the same.