Poorly placed comment when the parent was discussing things like cubesats. Tiny satellites like these are probably better in the long-run for orbital debris due to a number of reasons. Firstly, by virtue of being smaller, atmospheric drag is greater and their decay is faster given a certain orbit. Second, they're more disposable than the larger sats, meaning lower orbit more economical when weighed against the capital cost of the mass-produced device itself.
The real problem for debris is higher orbits that don't decay after a reasonable service life. Those just accumulate forever.
On that subject, you would have a point for things like SpaceX's recent idea of putting up internet satellites, because those would be slated for orbits higher than more LEO missions, and would involve a large number of heavy objects there effectively on a permanent basis.
Roughly speaking, mass (which needs to be decelerated by the drag) is proportional to the cube of the size but drag force is proportional to square of the size; so yes, atmospheric drag affects small satellites more.
I don’t see how. You miss with cubesats it still ends up being a complete fucking disaster.
The point is that this all has to be done correctly and carefully. I see a very cavalier attitude about it because of SV startup culture and the expectation that getting things wrong is okay in the name of progress.
I’ll admit I was more directly thinking about stupid publicity stunts like Tesla Roadsters in space, but the gravity of the situation doesn’t really change because a mistake is slightly less of a disaster than an apocalyptic one.
The roadster is not orbiting the Earth. You lack understanding of the topic and thus fall victim to fear mongering by clickbait articles. Right now, with little done to protect from debris the chances of Kessler syndrome actually happening are tiny. Also most of the new constellations that are coming up in the following years will be in LEO where atmospheric drag is enough to get them down and burn in the atmosphere on their own within months of them malfunctioning. The problem is in higher orbits in which the amount of space is multiple orders of magnitude bigger and the number of satellites is much smaller as well. Also those higher orbits have little financial incentive for the new space age companies.
If I am not mistaken the roadster is not orbiting the earth it is in solar orbit near or past Mars. It's not endangering earth's access to space in anyway.
The real problem for debris is higher orbits that don't decay after a reasonable service life. Those just accumulate forever.
On that subject, you would have a point for things like SpaceX's recent idea of putting up internet satellites, because those would be slated for orbits higher than more LEO missions, and would involve a large number of heavy objects there effectively on a permanent basis.