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A comment on SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for safety's sake. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for s... by ben_w on Friday January 23, 2026 @05:19AM (#46730716)
If that's the only risk, sure. But there's modelling and observation that suggest the required number of ASAT weapons to cause a Kessler cascade is currently zero, i.e. we're already in the early stages of one.

Because physics of orbital dynamics is less dramatic than shown in film, lowering orbits of satelites is an effective way to mitigate this.

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Re:SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for s... by JumpCrisscross on Friday January 23, 2026 @08:05AM (#46732010)
> there is a pretty good chance

Source?

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Re:SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for s... by ben_w on Friday January 23, 2026 @03:38PM (#46737568)
You're quoting something I didn't write; but to the point that we may already be in the early stages of a cascade, here's the modelling behind it:

https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...

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Re:SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for s... by JumpCrisscross on Friday January 23, 2026 @04:29PM (#46738185)
This paper is brought up elsewhere in this thread and responded to. TL; DR It raises interesting modelling strategies, and develops on cool numerical methods from Kessler (2001), but it's far off from "pretty good chance."
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