Maybe this should be in Nostupidquestions as I’m aware the moon exists. And I guess there may be an orbit zone where things tend to remain in orbit. But curious…
The full context question is: For man-made satellites, would they benefit by having a “Self destruct” button?
Sure it may add more debris but since an explosion would scatter debris in all directions, anything flung up or down would cause it to get out of this geostationary zone/band… And hopefully come crashing down to Earth, reducing overall debris? Compared to an abandoned satellite, remaining in orbit and breaking down due to relatively low energy collisions with surrounding debris.
Basically I’m trying to justify self destruct buttons. Thank you!
That image and your description helped a ton. So there isn’t a magic zone but more of a threshold after which things get easier to maintain.
Really should start playing Kerbal Space Program as someone before pointed out. You seem to have a great conceptual model of this. Thank you for engaging 🙂
Outer Wilds is much more user friendly imo. Also the fact that some planets/comets are so small you can basically run and jump at orbital speeds really helps you to conceptualize the interaction of forces.
I spent a whole cycle jumping from north pole to south pole with just my jetpack on this neat binary planet system. The gravity on them is so low you can jump off one planet, boost straight up, and fall all the way to the other planet without your ship. It’s really fun.
Not even a threshold, its a much more smooth transition, thats just the best picture I could find.
KSP will definitely help. Chuck your SATs into orbit, and you can see the orbits slowly decay away, almost imperceptibly. Its fun too :)