[WastingMyTime89]

> Your point about "legitimacy" is right on. In data visualization the goal is finding the most useful (least misleading) transform of the data, not raw fidelity.

I made no point about legitimacy. The fact remains. It is a real time visualisation. It’s interesting to consider what’s currently flying above. It’s not a collision estimation tool.

> Bingo. The "scariness" comes from (where else?) the collision probability, and our estimate thereof.

There is nothing scary about the probability of collision however. Even when you take the very large safety margin the monitoring organisations like to take probability is very low.

[schiffern]

>It’s not a collision estimation tool.

Agreed, but then why did you say it gets less "scary" when you realize the size is exaggerated here?

What else could you be scared of, if you're not (implicitly) using the visualization to estimate collision probability?

Some sort of thalassephobia for giant space objects, perhaps?

>probability is very low

Now keep rolling those dice every day for hundreds or thousands of years. Thousands of dice, for thousands of objects.

People are historically bad at imagining that (just like we're bad at large distances), which is why compressing the duration is misleading.

Risk = probability * cost. The cost of collisions (both the immediate cost and the long-term cost from additional debris generation) is very high.

>There is nothing scary about the probability of collision

If you watch the video I linked earlier, it explains how we're already past the "tipping point." Even if all launches cease (spoiler: they won't), the debris problem would continue to get worse.

Maybe that isn't a scary situation to you, but it is to me.

[WastingMyTime89]

> It’s not a collision estimation tool.

It’s a comment about how full it is, not about how likely things are to collide and a reply to a previous comment.

> Now keep rolling those dice every day for hundreds of years. Thousands of dice, for thousands of objects.

Still low.

Orbits between 700km and 800km are mostly lost after the past two decade antisatellites tests. Lower orbits clean fast especially the ones used by the recent large satellites fleet and space above 800km is mostly empty apart from the band with large USSR boosters which is easy to avoid.

Risk is not very high. It is managed adequately and the legislation is properly anticipating current developments.

It’s important to remember that space is extremely large and we are talking about thousands of things. Having too much debris clustered in a small range of altitude makes it not economically viable to operate there but it doesn’t prevent us from going through at all.

[schiffern]

>It’s a comment about how full it is

Why is that "scary," though?

It's not like "running out of room" is a plausible risk. Kessler Syndrome limits you long before that.

>Risk is not very high. It is managed adequately and the legislation is properly anticipating current developments

See my edit to parent, and watch the video (especially the future simulations). The situation is far from "managed adequately" IMO.

This has been fun, and I sense we're starting to go in circles (no pun intended). My upvotes, for being such a good sport. Cheers!

[tshaddox]

> Why is that "scary," though? It's not like "running out of room" is a plausible risk. Kessler Syndrome limits you long before that.

Seems like we’re going in circles here. Kessler syndrome is about collisions. But one can be concerned about the fullness of a medium without the risk of collisions being the primary concern. This is the case for everyday things like road traffic, restaurant lines, etc.

[schiffern]

>Seems like we’re going in circles here.

That's what I said...

>This is the case for everyday things like road traffic, restaurant lines, etc.

Bad analogy. The "fullness" of space behaves in a way that's precisely unlike those 'common sense' scenarios.

Collisions are the limiting factor in this domain. If you're not considering collisions, you're not accurately capturing the idea of "fullness."