alt Hacker NewsThere is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.
Replies
TheJoeMan • yesterday at 4:14 PM
At present, I don't believe there are industry standards / codes mandating minimization of reflectivity. My understanding is that SpaceX has engineered for this from their own internal requirements and "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback). As we anticipate a major scale-up of LEO in the future, it follows that "cost pressures" may (mal)incentivize players to skip this concern.
➕ show 1 reply
Isn't that kinda how we got the plastic pollution problem in the ocean?
At first, the ocean seems immense. So much so that dumping plastic and toxic chemicals makes no difference.
But then we humans are great at scaling things it seems, such that at some point ocean plastic pollution became a real problem.
I know that space is much much bigger than our oceans, but I wouldn't underestimate the ability of mankind to scale launches to the point where debris becomes a problem.