Pieces of orbiting space junk set for very close pass

[OldGreyFox]

@spitfire

anyway, just in case, got a sign on my front door “no space junk”.

[Omah]

@OldGreyFox

The surface of the earth is 196.9 million square miles…
Space begins at approximately 62 miles high…
Satellites (and space junk) orbit at between 300 - 600 miles for commercial and communication satellites, and between 600 - 1200 miles for military use…

Therefore if we extrapolate* by 100 (which would be very conservative) we arrive at 19,690,000,000 square miles…

If we divide that by the number of items classed as space junk (128 million)
We find that each single piece of space junk has approximately 153.828 square miles to fly around in.

Considering some pieces of space junk are less than 10 centimetres in diameter, I would suggest that you could spend a lifetime zooming around in space and never encountering one piece of space junk…

Lets get things in proportion shall we…

With all due respect to Omah, this is no reflection on you, and I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.
It just goes to show, by the reaction of some posters, just how much information like this can be so misleading.

It’s a wild guess but I “imagine” that NASA’s depiction of the distribution and movement of man-made objects orbiting Earth would not be considered “realistic” by anyone but the uninformed …

• AFAIK, “extrapolate” does not mean “multiply” …

[Omah]

@bakerman

Beautiful photo, Omah. Just imagine the enormous distances between each of those stars. Light years between each one.
It boggles the imagination.

Erm, it’s not a photo - those stars aren’t “real” and aren’t “to scale”" - the image is a “depiction” assembled from infrared radiation data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Pillars span about 5 light-years in length (that’s about 3.5 times the diameter of our solar system) …

[Vlad]

@Omah

It’s a wild guess but I “imagine” that NASA’s depiction of the distribution and movement of man-made objects orbiting Earth would not be considered “realistic” by anyone but the uninformed …

You are right, it’s a wild guess and that you imagine NASA’s depiction is not ‘realistic’

[OldGreyFox]

@Silver Tabby

Not content with littering own planet - we have to litter the sky as well!

@Tiffany

Seems we are a species of litter louts, all of us.

@Percy Vere

Then why is so much money being spent on developing systems to retrieve/remove this junk?

@Besoeker

I think space junk came from our planet in the first place.

@Omah

It’s a wild guess but I “imagine” that NASA’s depiction of the distribution and movement of man-made objects orbiting Earth would not be considered “realistic” by anyone but the uninformed .…

And posters on OFF Omah…
Very misleading, and I believe done on purpose Omah…

[Omah]

@OldGreyFox

And posters on OFF Omah…
Very misleading, and I believe done on purpose Omah…

Of course you believe … you have a very good imagination …

[Omah]

Here’s a sub-space “depiction”:

How Many Planes Are in the Sky? | California Academy of Sciences

Illustrating flights taken over two days in September 2013, this clip demonstrates the frequency of plane flights arriving at and departing from airports worldwide.

In case some OFF posters find the “depiction” misleading I should point out that “The scale is out of all proportion.”

[OldGreyFox]

@Omah

Of course you believe … [B]you have a very good imagination …

[/B]

Thanks for the complement Omah (I think…)

Mankind’s greatest achievements all started from imaginings…

Enjoyed the Air traffic clip Omah, I wonder what it must look like today? It certainly demonstrates why Europe and the USA has been hit the hardest by Covid…:surprised: