I looked at the paper they’re talking about (which has not yet been peer reviewed), and I couldn’t find any past peer reviewed research from the author. The paper also doesn’t really explain any of its arguments past referencing sometimes unrelated stuff that “sounds scientific,” so I suspect it will be rejected from any reasonable journal. One example is the statement that the Van Allen belts protect earth, they are just belts of captured particles that could have been harmful to earth. There have been proposals to eliminate them to protect satellites (see https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1095699.pdf). Also I don’t like how they keep using their quoted van allen belt mass of 180 mg to make other numbers seem very large, what makes the Van Allen belts relevant is their electrons have a lot of energy (moving at >0.2 c), whereas the particulate from reentry is much lower energy. The paper doesn’t explain how lots of low energy particulate is related to a tiny amount of captured high energy radiation, so mass comparisons between them (“a billion times heavier”) don’t make sense.
This will be a problem for everyone, which sucks. If I have to die a fiery death, at least I'll die knowing the super rich won't make it off planet because of all the space junk. As a plus we might not need a BBQ if it gets hot enough.....^eat ^^the ^^^rich
Can't get rich to go smaller....surprise.....
Edit:
Really? Eh, you guys have no sense of humour. Is this a legitimate serious issue? Fuck yes it is. Is there anything any one of us can actually do about it? Eat the rich
I think you're getting downvoted because usually we come to this community for space-related news, and not hear about politics stuff for five minutes, jest or not.
The issue feels a lot like climate change. Pollution that affects us on a global scale that will make some people immensely rich and it's up to the cooperation of countries to research, mitigate, and control it
Not sure what this means. Most satelites make everyone a little bit richer (weather, GPS, communication satelites).
it’s up to the cooperation of countries to research, mitigate, and control it
I would argue that companies SpaceX have a lot to lose from space debris. If space becomes inaccessible, they can't do any business.
They do a lot to mitigate space debris (especially with Starlink), and this is rational because too much space debris threatens their mission.
I think a lot of people believe the science in this article to be problematic. Another poster went into several reasons. It's heavy on persuasive language, shy of facts, and many of the facts are suspect, and it hasn't been accepted by any publications so it hasn't gotten any peer review. It's possible it hasn't gotten any publication because the apparently quality is so low.
It might be that people see your comment as accepting the validity of the claims which suspiciously have no peer review, and are then jumping the gun by associating it to things which ARE well scientifically established like climate change.
It's kinda leaping to an ethical and political discussion when there are a lot of outstanding questions about the science. And this is /c/science.
I can't speak for others. I didn't downvote you. But, your comment wasn't really... Science?
I can see that. I didn't mention the lack of evidence problem because the author did that in spades. I guess that's what I get for just firing off a comment!
