[JumpCrisscross]

> closer to earth you are, less space there is

Humans are bad at intuiting exponents. There is roughly 200x more volume in LEO than there is between the ground and cruising altitude. Plane changes, moreover, take a lot of energy--you aren't going to get enough energy out of a collision to pollute nearby orbits.

[nicce]

> going to get enough energy out of a collision to pollute nearby orbits.

There is no infinite space. The problem is exactly defining the number objects when that "small" amount of energy is actually enough to cause problems.

[JumpCrisscross]

> There is no infinite space

Straw man.

> problem is exactly defining the number objects when that "small" amount of energy is actually enough to cause problems

The exercise, maybe. The problem? No. In LEO, which is where Starlink orbits, there is no known solution for causing a Kessler cascade that causes more than a few billion in damage. Space isn't infinite, but it's really big.

Again, a few hundred thousand planes land every day [1]. They operate in a volume less than 1% that of LEO. To approach the object densities where we start controlling an airspace, you'd need tens of millions of objects in LEO alone. We simply do not have--not have any roadmap to having--the sort of launch capacity required to keep 30 million objects in LEO at a time.

There are real problems with more Starlinks in space. Kessler cascades are not one of them.

[1] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/number-of...

[fc417fc802]

> Space isn't infinite, but it's really big.

Space isn't infinite in the same way that 64 bit integers aren't infinite. Both are infinite for typical usecases.