Originally Posted by
OldGreyFox
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The surface of the earth is 196.9 million square miles.....
Space begins at approximately 62 miles high.....
Satellites (and space junk) orbit at between 300 - 600 miles for commercial and communication satellites, and between 600 - 1200 miles for military use....
Therefore if we extrapolate* by 100 (which would be very conservative) we arrive at 19,690,000,000 square miles....
If we divide that by the number of items classed as space junk (128 million)
We find that each single piece of space junk has approximately 153.828 square miles to fly around in.
Considering some pieces of space junk are less than 10 centimetres in diameter, I would suggest that you could spend a lifetime zooming around in space and never encountering one piece of space junk....
Lets get things in proportion shall we.....
With all due respect to Omah, this is no reflection on you, and I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.
It just goes to show, by the reaction of some posters, just how much information like this can be so misleading.