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A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained "anomaly"
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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The more satellites are up there, the higher the chance one is obliterated by space junk or meteorites. The more obliterated satellites, the more space junk.
It's going to be a massacre.
If a cascading series of obliterations happens I could see us being trapped on Earth until some sort of technology is developed to navigate the debris field. Such idiocy allowing things like Starlink to begin with.
They're in such a low orbit that they're barely staying in space already. You could explode all Starlink satellites right now and all their debris would naturally fall back into the atmosphere and leave the orbit clean in just a few years at most.
Trapped on earth? Just where do you think we are going to go? Contrary to what you have been told, we are no where near colonizing mars. Or cloud cities on venus, which is more practicable it appears to me. Society will fall apart long before we get there, glances at clock...
I don't know if this is what the guy you're replying to meant, but I would also say that not being able to launch new satalites for things like GPS, internet, communications systems, telescopes, space missions, etc. would also qualify as trapping us on earth.
They're our eyes and ears in space, and we use them to work around needing to navigate the terrain on earth to communicate. It's always easier to bounce a signal off satellites than traverse ground terrain.
Those are in very low earth orbit, basically they can only take out themselves.
And the Ozone layer again, potentially.
https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-are-polluting-atmosphere
Yay... Didn't know that
Yes, but collisions can always accelerate parts and new debris, bringing them to a higher orbit.
But a more eccentric one, no collision is going to waive away orbital mechanics.
Starlink is space junk to start with.
It's hard to say that unequivocally; I have family members who's internet options are HughesNet, where they get data caps and speeds approaching a whopping 1mbps on a good day, 5g coverage that hardly works, or Starlink. Starlink has worked for them leeeaaaguesss better than any other option they have.
Doesn't change the issues with the company or Elon, though. It just sucks that they are the only currently viable solution.
Good. Let the motherfuckers burn. There is no benefit to working people to these satellites. I hope a cascade of space junk takes out every single one of these low orbit bullshit nazi internet satellites.
Problem is that this space junk hits normal satellites, too.
Okay but what are these normal satellites doing for us? Spying on foreigners so we can kill them for Israel? Or what? Navigation on our stupid fucking cars we shouldn't even be driving? Fuck them all burn them all down.
You don't like weather forecasts? Or analyzing ground quality and fertility? Not all satellites are evil.
That can be done from the ground, and they are cancelling all of that shit as we speak, in the US, and your shit western sycophant governments will be following suit unless you man up and take them.
It's not easier to that on the ground. Those analyses are done by large radars slapped on top of satellites. They can scan huge tracts of land in very quickly with very high precision. More precise than airborne systems. They work regardless of the weather. The same satellites can keep track of river flows, forest growths, volcanic and tectonic activity, floods, structures like bridges, whole bunch of things. They can be used for extremely accurate mapping. They are insanely useful tools.
While that may be the case, what makes you think the governments will allow those good uses to continue? Have you not seen the trajectory of our governments? They will only bring us bad things. And the private sector especially so. The government, the private sector, they are the enemy. This is not 1960. This is not 1960. Shiiiiiiiite, in clay davis' voice.
The actual name of this phenomenon is "the Kepler effect"
Its where the decades of space junk, grow to such a degree that they keep hitting other satellites and becomes the equivalent of a pinball machine with other satellites.
Its a big issue many have tried to solve
It's Kessler Syndrome, in case anyone wants to read up on it.