What If We Trashed Earth's Orbit With Space Junk?

WHAT IF

Litter, litter, everywhere.

Transcript

00:00 With every rocket we launch into the Earth's orbit,

00:08 we're trapping ourselves on our own planet.

00:12 How could sending rockets into space

00:14 put an end to space exploration?

00:16 And how dangerous would it be to get stuck here,

00:19 with all the space debris floating above our heads?

00:22 This is WHAT IF,

00:24 and here's what would happen

00:25 if we trashed Earth's orbit with space junk.

00:30 Almost everything that we've launched into space

00:32 ends up either falling down

00:34 and burning up in the atmosphere,

00:36 or getting caught in the Earth's lower orbit

00:38 for thousands of years.

00:40 The Earth's lower orbit is surrounded

00:42 by just 200 kg (1,000 lb)

00:43 of small, rocky debris in the form of meteoroids.

00:47 But it's also got a belt

00:49 of about 3 million kg (1,000,000 lb)

00:51 of space junk.

00:54 20,000 pieces of debris as large as a softball,

00:58 500,000 pieces larger than a marble,

01:01 and many millions of pieces of debris

01:03 too small to track

01:04 are orbiting the Earth.

01:07 What makes these floating parts of old satellites

01:09 and spent rocket bodies so dangerous?

01:12 It's the speed they move at.

01:15 This junk is hurtling through space

01:17 at a speed of 8 km/s (1.8 mi/s).

01:20 At that speed,

01:21 one small bolt

01:22 is enough to shatter a working satellite

01:24 into hundreds of pieces.

01:27 But it's what comes next

01:29 that could hold off our dreams

01:30 of building moon bases,

01:32 colonizing Mars,

01:33 and any space exploration whatsoever.

01:36 The more junk we leave uncontrolled

01:38 in the Earth's lower orbit,

01:40 the harder it is not to get hit by it.

01:44 Things are running into each other.

01:46 Fragments of debris are colliding and breaking up,

01:48 multiplying the number of items

01:50 flying through the space junkyard.

01:52 And they're hitting working spacecraft too.

01:56 One day, they could hit enough satellites

01:58 to initiate an unstoppable,

02:00 destructive chain reaction,

02:02 the Kessler syndrome.

02:04 The cascade of collisions

02:05 would make our lower orbit

02:07 so congested with man-made debris

02:09 that eventually,

02:10 there would be no active spacecraft left.

02:13 Everything in the Earth's orbit

02:14 would be turned into a deadly wall

02:16 of celestial scrap.

02:18 Near-Earth space would become unusable.

02:21 No rockets could be safely launched

02:22 until we cleaned up the orbit.

02:24 We'd have to put our space missions on pause,

02:27 and we'd be trapped on the planet

02:28 for generations.

02:31 What would it be like down here?

02:34 Well, the debris belt wouldn't rain down on Earth

02:36 and cause massive destruction.

02:38 Space rubbish would disintegrate in the atmosphere

02:41 before it reached our planet's surface.

02:43 But the collisions would produce a lot of dust.

02:46 That dust, illuminated by sunlight,

02:49 would cause an ever-present twilight on the planet.

02:52 With this kind of light pollution,

02:54 you'd forget what nights used to look like.

02:57 What's even more unpleasant,

02:58 all of our satellite networks would go down.

03:01 There'd be no satellite communications,

03:04 no GPS navigation,

03:05 no weather data,

03:06 and no way to do any science in the Earth's orbit.

03:09 You'd have to go back to paper maps

03:11 and get your cash out.

03:14 Welcome to the 1970s.

03:16 On a positive note,

03:17 science has already come up with a few ideas

03:19 for cleaning up our lower-orbit mess.

03:22 They're looking at capturing the space debris with a net,

03:25 or a harpoon,

03:27 or vaporizing the small bits of junk with lasers.

03:31 Whatever action we deploy,

03:33 we should act quick if we want to launch humanity

03:35 on far space missions,

03:37 and finally colonize that red planet.

03:39 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.

03:43 ♪ ♪

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