Critical Mass?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7885051.stm
Space is big. Really big. But not big enough: two satillites collided (one active, one defunct). Not only were they destroyed, but they added a cloud of new projectiles to track (I remember a quote trying to explain the shere magnitude of momentum by saying something loosely along the lines of 'at the speeds things are going in orbit, if you get hit by a spec of paint going in the opposite direction, it carries the same impact as being hit by a volkswagon going 60')
The satillite age may well only last until we have enough things in orbit to achieve critical mass (where each new debris field creates more collissions). Then we'll have a period where the expectation will be that a satillite will only last a random length of time before something hits it. At first the risk and thus the cost will be low, so it won't really change much. Eventually the odds may be bad enough that human space travel will be considered too great a risk (where will that point be? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1000? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? ) Eventually, after a few innovations of buffering and shielding against glancing blows, the cost of armoring satillites may make them completely uneconomical.
Space is big. Really big. But not big enough: two satillites collided (one active, one defunct). Not only were they destroyed, but they added a cloud of new projectiles to track (I remember a quote trying to explain the shere magnitude of momentum by saying something loosely along the lines of 'at the speeds things are going in orbit, if you get hit by a spec of paint going in the opposite direction, it carries the same impact as being hit by a volkswagon going 60')
The satillite age may well only last until we have enough things in orbit to achieve critical mass (where each new debris field creates more collissions). Then we'll have a period where the expectation will be that a satillite will only last a random length of time before something hits it. At first the risk and thus the cost will be low, so it won't really change much. Eventually the odds may be bad enough that human space travel will be considered too great a risk (where will that point be? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1000? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? ) Eventually, after a few innovations of buffering and shielding against glancing blows, the cost of armoring satillites may make them completely uneconomical.