I saw the opening of *Gravity* and it was pretty terrifying, but to quote Billy Bob Thornton in *Armageddon*, it’s a big-ass sky.
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Simply that there are enough items in low Earth orbit that collision becomes a factor to consider when putting anything into orbit. That and an object the size of a grain of sand can be moving fast enough to poke a decent hole into something important before it gets pulverized into smaller dust.
A few years ago, China launched a rocket/missile at a satellite, blowing up the satellite and creating an even bigger cloud of really fast moving debris. Imaging floating bits of metal that are going really fast in a direction opposite to your satellite but in its flight path. It’s basically a bullet aimed at your satellite. You need to hope it hits a part that’s not crucial.
Imagine when a satellite gets hit. If it gets hit badly enough, then pieces of that satellite can fly off and create more flying debris, creating even more of a problem, and so on and so on and so on.
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