zlacker

>>ajyoon+(OP)
> Kessler syndrome: a cascading explosion of debris crippling our access to space

I'm taking the parts of this write-up I don't have expertise with a grain of salt after seeig this.

Kessler cascades are real. Particularly at high altitudes. They're less of a problem in LEO. And in no case can they "[cripple] our access to space." (At current technology levels. To cripple access to space you need to vaporise material fractions of the Earth's crust into orbit.)

>>JumpCr+W41
Yep. I'm no fan of Elon - exactly the opposite, in fact - but this is just someone trying to look smart and eco-friendly by doing the simplest, least ambitious, most obvious and surface-level analysis.

The sentence you mention was indeed a give away, but there are many others. Worst case scenario, nothing works and Elon burns a bunch of money, part of which goes into jobs and research. Best case scenario, we actually move away from technologies from the 50's and end up with daily, cheap earth-to-low-orbit (ideally something better than that - how about the moon?), no more whining about energy costs, and laser communication IRL. That's just the obvious stuff.

Being "realistic" and "having a budget" is what companies like Google do. That's all good, but we have enough of those already.