Space Debris: 1957 - 2015

[inceptional]

Look at what we've done. :-(

Thankfully, this isn't to actual scale.

[twjolson]

One of those is my lost car keys, I just know it.

[PeteKowalsky]

Interesting video. Now, try and make one to scale ... I'm reasonably sure not every piece of space junk is 100-200 MILES in diameter, which is about what we see in this animation.

Let's imagine the earth is a 220mm bowling ball. Now imagine each piece of space debris is a 1/4mm speck of fine sand. Now, put that bowling ball in the middle of a 2 meter kiddie pool, filled with swirling water. Now, take about 2/3 of a cubic centimeter (less than a 1/2 teaspoon) of sand and drop it in the water. Now we're closer in scale. One problem: At this scale where each piece of space debris = 1/4mm, the bowling ball would have to be over 1km in diameter to be CLOSE to the scale of reality.

Don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't want to get hit by *anything* going 27000 kph -- that would be a bad day, no matter how small.

This video needs more explanation as was stated numerous times -- it seems to imply that we're shielded in an impenetrable shell of junk, which just does *NOT* correspond to reality.

[stash.]

Arrghhh they're the size of land-continents, everyone duck & cover

[Espalet]

hi, is there any problem i put this video in one of my videos for my channel?

[RainAngel]

hell that is cool.

Of course in reality the satellites are too small to see from that distance

[Zeldaschampion]

Well in defense, you could say we now have a protective layer of junk around the planet.

[josephrosario]

Do you have an animation that shows the debris to scale?

[shadanahmad]

Very powerfull illustration to play with audience mind, not even close to accurate . The problem is not people exploring space but people's ignorance and tendency to believe anything which tells an interesting story without analyzing truth and evidence .

[dLimboStick]

Holy shit! Those satellite are as big as a small country!! How did they get up there in space?

[MrSwallows]

No wonder aliens doesn't want to visit our planet. They saw Earth; had a quick glimpse; and they were like "heh, a trash planet...NEXT!"

[iedoc]

just a note, not to say there isn't a problem with space debris, but the video is a little misleading. look at how the size of most of the objects are the size of states. in reality the objects are so small the chances of being hit by something is extremely little. when galaxies collide, the chance that even two stars in both galaxies collide is zero because of the amount of space between stars. I'm mentioning that because its similar to the space debris surrounding the earth. a lot of space, relatively very small objects. of course small objects can add up, so it is understandable how this could be a problem, I'm just saying the video makes it look like its more of a problem than it is. cool video though!

[ivanklimovich]

That is a good example of how visualisations SHOULDN'T be done. If you like it then good luck with bar charts starting somewhere close to infinity.

If there is a data source available I'm happy to make the proper version of this viz...

[hanneszeuner]

What is the outter border that you see in 2015?

[odalislorenzo]

2019 seeing this and wondering how full is it know

[MrGibbonacci]

Do Satillites/space debris orbit as far out from the Earth as in the video? Some of the stuff is 2-3 times the width of the Earth out which is a surprise to me.

[growamitt]

A young person has invented a way to remove plastics from the oceans. Can we not come up with something similar for near-earth orbit? This is a mess!

[farahliyana_s]

can i use this video for educational purposes?

[sO_RoNerY]

I'm surprised we can't see them but galaxies. I was just about to say, at night, when we look up, we're not looking at the bright galaxies but junk?

[leeannel]

What we need is a space magnet, but I dunno if the space junk is ferrous I could imagine Fe not being a problem in space due to no oxygen to make Feo2