Creon Levit
Space Debris and The Kessler Syndrome: A Possible Future Trapped on Earth
More than one hundred million pieces of human-made space debris currently orbit our planet, most moving at more than 10,000 mph. Every year their number increases, creating a progressively more dangerous environment for working spacecraft. In order to operate in space, we track most of this debris through a patchwork of private efforts and government defense networks. Creon will discuss the history of space debris, the way the debris is currently tracked, and how we might work to reduce it before we see a cascading effect of ballistic interactions that could render low orbit all but unusable.
This talk is part of our more intimate Conversations at The Interval series that we host at our bar & cafe in Fort Mason. Note that while Long Now Members do hear about tickets first, they do not get free tickets to this series. Our talks tend to sell out quickly due to our limited capacity.
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The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.