eli5: Why is the Kessler effect so dangerous? Won’t the space junk eventually fall out of orbit or drift off into space?

Question

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.

In: 14

Answer 1

You are right, eventually all of those object’s orbits will decay and come back to earth. The problem is that the rate of increase of number of objects will become enormous as more and more objects collide, creating more and more objects, until our navigable space is no longer sustainable. And what is there will take generations for them to naturally decay and burn up. One burns up, but we create 100 or 1000 more.

It’s a real problem, and until we come to grips with it and create technologies that can start to capture and eliminate the threat, it will continue to get worse. And China and Russia do an occasional test kinetic attack on a satellite and create thousands more.