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!
Hmm, it looks like you need a bit over a kilometer per second to escape Earth from GEO. I guess that’s not impossible with high explosives. I don’t think any shrapnel would make it back to earth, though, since they’d have to lose most of the 3 km/s
Losing ~1.4 km/s at GEO would put a fragment into geostationary transfer orbit, with one side of the elliptical orbit at geostationary altitude and the other side at low orbit altitude where it would experience increased drag.
Ah, okay. So not quite most then. My bad; orbital mechanics takes some getting used to even at this elementary level.
Also, I just noticed, relevant username.