Response to Adam Frank's 13.7 blog about commercialization of the space age:
Anyone want to take a crack at explaining why, when satellites collide with air molecules, we shouldn't be concerned that they are accelerating those molecules to more-than-escape velocity and thereby causing a slow erosion of the atmosphere.
No doubt some of those molecules will collide with other molecules in the thin air and be slowed. But some may not. They may continue at that high (35,000 m.p.h.) speed and be lost to interplanetary space permanently.
Is it OK, from a public policy perspective, to cause some erosion of the atmosphere, if the rate is slow enough? Who decides?
How could different designs of satellites reduce this effect?
A cure for what ails the planet: (end to extreme poverty AND an efficient & fair means for controlling humans' impact on the environment):
http://gaiabrain.blogspot.com
Biological Model for Politics and Economics:
http://gaiabrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/gaia-brain-integration-of-human-society.html
Of course, the molecules will slow, due to gravity. But the drop in the effect of the Earth's gravity with increasing distance is more rapid than the drop in speed.
ReplyDeleteIf the molecules are ionized, they will be deflected by Earth's magnetic field.