If there are many satellites orbiting earth, how do space launches not bump into any of them?
In: 2066
Go run outside in a straight line for about 10 minutes. Just keep running. How many people will you literally bump into during your little run? Sure, you can put on a blindfold to make it interesting. Yes, it is more likely to bump into people in Times Square than the middle of Kansas. But Times Square is TINY. Remember going for that “really long and boring” drive last year? There were far more open fields and forests than cities. All those areas are places you could easily run around with a blindfold for 10 minutes without being anywhere near another person. Let alone actually bump into that person.
You imagined the difficulty you would have bumping into just 1 person out of 8 billion who are (nearly) all stuck on some pieces of land. The oceans are more than 2.5 times the size of all of that land that holds all of those people. So imagine how much harder it would be to bump into a person if there was no ocean and people could spread out even more!
You are 1 of 8 BILLION people on this planet. There are about 0.25 billion pieces of space stuff in orbit. People are FAR larger than 10 cm (3.9 in) and there are barely 0.0034 billion pieces of space stuff larger than 10 cm (3.9 in) in orbit. Also, those 8 billion people aren’t really at different altitudes, but the space junk is scattered at many different altitudes.
Humans are able to track the most dangerous space debris, so it is more like looking through a dirty window than a blindfold. Yes, it is possible for a collision. No, I’m not worried about a rocket hitting any of them during the 10 minutes it takes to get to orbit.
For more reading: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
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