DAT Mass! (Of Space Junk)

             Just when I thought that life in outer space was nice and dandy I've begun to hear about some sort of space junk. So I thought to myself, couldn't be too bad... I mean all we had to do was just clean up after ourselves or companies had to take the responsibility for it. I mean even the international space station MIR (Peace/World in Russian) was sent to the bottom of the ocean somewhere back in 2000's (I guess someone had a tough Russian mom that taught them to clean up after themselves too!).

              So now I'm thinking to myself, if space junk is in space, then it has to orbit and it has to go really fast to do so, while being pretty massive.... so if it were to somehow find a way to hit a satellite or a space rocket, it'd be pretty GG (Good Game - which for your newbs means game over, or just go google GG meaning) for that satellite or the rocket... And what do you know, there IS plenty of junk out there on all kinds of orbit. And with Chinese testing their anti-satellite weaponry in 2007+ added a wee bit more debris from already polluted orbits by the USSR, US and other previous space exploring nations' testing/experimenting. (Video below).

So I've read multiple articles and I can't seem to find a definite number for a critical mass of junk that would have to orbit Earth to create a space exploration Apocalypse, but seems like it has already been mildly reached. Because all the junk already in orbits WILL create more debris, it's just a matter of time. Since collision of 2 separate junk masses WILL break up into more pieces upon a collision at high speeds in orbit. Therefore I'd assume that it has been reached, however, may be not as menacing at the moment as it will be in a couple decades. But by that time nobody cares, because they'll just leave it to their grandchildren to deal with, just like with our current situation with global warming. GREAT...


The speeds of satellites could be calculated as:





Therefore for an orbit (From the center of Earth) 6.47 x 10⁶ m, will yield a speed of 7.85 KILOMETERS/S!!!! With G (6.673 x 10^-11 N m²/kg²) and Mass of Earth (5.98 x 10²⁴ kg) as constants, we see that speeds in orbit are pretty effin' huge the lower the orbit, the more HUGEr the speeds get! So imagine hitting a Russian made wrench (We saw what those things can repair with ease, thanks to Armageddon with Bruce Willis) while on your trip to space this summer.