Futur-ish

003: The Space Trash Apocalypse You Haven’t Been Thinking About


Listen Later

If the apocalypse was around the corner, would you want to know? Well good news for you, we may already be in it, but because it's hard to pin things down or look beyond the present it's hard to really know for sure. 

In the 1960s, states were sending things into space with reckless abandon and now it might be coming back round to bite them. Almost literally. And it doesn't help that billionaires are now rolling the dice with a bet on global communications infrastructure. So what exactly is going on? And, is it even actually going on? And does it mean anything other than resigned acceptance of inevitable collapse at the hubristic hands of billionaires?


Links:

  • Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt, Journal of Geophysical Research: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JA083iA06p02637
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Futur-ishBy Futur-ish

  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5

5

2 ratings


More shows like Futur-ish

View all
Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,717 Listeners

How to Be Awesome at Your Job by How to be Awesome at Your Job

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

1,028 Listeners

SmartLess by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett

SmartLess

58,891 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,539 Listeners

Big Small Talk by LiSTNR

Big Small Talk

38 Listeners