kittenTakeover t1_j9owor1 wrote
Reply to comment by CrustalTrudger in What will be the environmental impact of de-orbiting 42,000 Starlink satellites every five years? (Explanation in post) by OvidPerl
This really sounds like one of those "what goes up must come down" moments. Presumably it would be through precipitation, which means it would end up in our water. The effect of this would depend on the metal concentration when spread out. Is there anything that would prevent this and keep the metal afloat? Seems like this should be a pretty simple chemistry question, but I guess I'm not an expert.
mfb- t1_j9p2k1z wrote
A really rough estimate: We have ~500,000 km^3 of global precipitation per year (1 meter averaged over the surface). If we put all of the 10,000 tonnes of aluminium into that, ignoring chemistry or what happens afterwards, we get an average of 20 ng/liter. For scale, the US EPA recommends no more than 0.05-0.20 mg/liter or 50,000 to 200,000 ng/liter for drinking water.
jedadkins t1_j9rqjvz wrote
Yea this really seems like a problem of scale, ~2.5m tonnes of aluminum needed to reach the lower bound is an insane amount. Maybe once we start actually commercializing space it could be an issue but by then we should have a better option then just crashing stuff to get it out of orbit
killercurvesahead t1_j9qauk6 wrote
At that rate whoever’s selling rocketship tickets and plots of land in their own Mars colony is gonna make bank.
Waitaminnit…
Imperator-Solis t1_j9r8n08 wrote
You might have misread, at that rate it won't reach limits for 2500 years
EBtwopoint3 t1_j9s3fam wrote
Not 2500 years, until the rate of satellite re-entry becomes 2500 times higher. That is a per year figure, not one that adds up.
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CrustalTrudger t1_j9oybjw wrote
The variables at play are (1) the mass of material added, (2) the level of the atmosphere to which the material is added, (3) the specific chemistry of the material added, and (4) the potential effects (e.g., change in albedo, etc) of those materials as a function of time and concentration. The type and magnitude of effect will scale with the mass and whatever the particular material does, but points 2 and 3 are also important as they control the residence time (i.e., the duration). We could consider something like sulfate aerosols that are injected into the atmosphere during things like large impacts or large volcanic eruptions. Residence time for these depend a lot on the level of the atmosphere the particles are in, e.g., Junium et al., 2022 consider residence times for sulfate related to the Chicxulub impact and highlight that particles injected into the troposphere might last a few days to weeks, whereas those in the stratosphere would linger for months to years. The specific chemistry also matters though, so behavior of one type of particle is not representative for all, i.e., if the particle in question readily reacts with something, the residence time might change. All of this is to highlight the uncertainty, i.e., without dedicated experiments we don't know exactly what the effect will be and it's not necessarily safe to just assume that it will be negligible.
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