this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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In general, these things are zipping around the earth at 17,000 mph. There's 5,504 of them. Space is already dangerous with all of the space garbage in orbit. If these were to collide it could easily make getting things into orbit due to the debris and the chain reaction if the debris caused more debris from impact even more dangerous. Space garbage really is something we don't have a solution for.
This is a pretty ignorant take and borderline disinformation. Yes they travel fast. Yes there are a lot of them. No they don't pose any risk of blocking space travel even if they all exploded because they're not in a stable orbit where they can just stay up there forever. They're low enough that they're facing a constant pull back into earth.
Just for others, they'd all burn up in the atmosphere in a few years.
So it may disrupt things temporarily but not long term.