If there are many satellites orbiting earth, how do space launches not bump into any of them?

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If there are many satellites orbiting earth, how do space launches not bump into any of them?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You have to think of geometry, and the equation for a volume of a sphere. V=4/3piR^2, and as you see every time you move further from Earth the radius of the sphere increases, and the volume or amount of space increases exponentially. So there is a lot more room in space than on the surface of Earth. There are over 7,000 satellites, smaller than planes and in a larger area. They move way faster, but relatively based on the space they’re not much different than the 7-9k planes flying around. So the likelihood of a rocket launch crashing into a plane is probably just as likely. We make planes avoid rocket launches, but we probably don’t have to, the chance they would collide is tiny (we still track them to be safe). Planes only collide because they share airports and all group up at the same tiny few locations. So the only reason planes hit is because they’re both told to go occupy the same spot of sky.

Space is deeper too, so the kilometers from Earth that satellites can exist in is deeper than Earth to space. Like all the planets can fit in between Earth and the Moon, and the Moon is a satellite. It was very very hard to hit the moon.

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