A disquieting little segment on RadioLab last year detailed the practical dangers of satellites and other objects in earth’s orbit colliding — the gist being that there’s around 20,000 objects large enough to track flying around constantly at incredible speeds, and teams of international monitors are constantly sending alerts to help avoid collisions. Day-to-day, they get the job done, but the scary thing is that there may be up to half a million other, smaller objects in orbit that are not large enough to track, and these objects can still wreak havoc (a fleck of paint colliding with a space station can crack multiple layers of windows at the speeds at which these things orbit, they say). So this all gives rise to a fear of cascading impacts denominated as the Kessler syndrome — wherein one collision causes an explosion that creates millions of tiny pieces of debris that causes ever more dangerous collisions until certain layers of orbit become practically overwhelmed with speeding debris, making it impossible to pilot a rocket out of orbit, or, for that matter, potentially take down the world’s satellite communications systems.
Which means, if you’re an enterprising writer looking for a new kind of villain for your next thriller, may I suggest the billionaire with access to rockets intent on sending a shipping container full of hammers into orbit and then opening the doors.
How fun!