[mapt]

A recent paper came out calculating that it would take two days of lights out at SpaceX headquarters for the whole constellation to shred itself, it was already so reliant on avoidance maneuvers.

SpaceX immediately responded by lowering its target orbits by 70km, the maximum it could legally do without renegotiating formally.

When a high orbit develops Kessler Syndrome, the billions of pieces of debris rain down on lower orbits and cause cascading collisions there, and they keep doing it for centuries.

Not understanding how any of this works, the scientists not being capable of convincing the politicos, or the leaders not being able to escape their local maxima of public stances to recognize a real threat, is a massive, civilizational level hubris. This is pass/fail - the math does not care about our level of understanding or maturity.

[NetMageSCW]

Incorrect. It was two days for one collision to occur. Most of the debris would then decay in a few weeks.

Stop trying to make Kessler Syndrome a thing. It was never a thing, it won’t be a thing, it will never be a thing.

[mapt]

If COVID taught us anything, it's that logarithmic growth functions don't get no respect. They are so alien to so much of the population that you can't get real phenomena taken seriously, no matter how many grains of rice you pile on chessboards.

Every collision increases the chance of additional collisions.

"Weeks"? SpaceX is aiming to be within the guideline of 25 years for the intact spacecraft, with solar panels unfurled. The want at minimum five years of business operations out of it. Half a spacecraft is still going to be decades (if not centuries if they lose the panels), and small chunks of spacecraft years.