2y ago

India shifted launch of its Chandrayaan-3 moon lander to avoid space objects

The delay was only 4 seconds. This time. But with 30,000 trackable objects in orbit and more every day, this is going to become commonplace and the delays are going to be worse.

9 comments

I understand the sentiment but a 4 second delay is hardly a story.
- It’s four seconds this time. With more and more debris building up over time, this problem is only going to get worse.
- A 4 second delay can mean losing a launch window.
  
  4 seconds? Usually launch windows are in hours and days right? Unless you have barely any fuel margin and you're trying to hit a very very specific orbit I can't imagine 4 seconds being a huge issue. But I'm no orbital dynamicist
"30000 trackable objects in orbit" is nothing. Somebody doesn't quite understand the scale.
Why is it "going to get worse"? A 4-second delay might need to be done for launches more frequently, but I don't see why the delays would get longer than that - debris moves out of the way at the same speed regardless of how much of it there is. This doesn't seem like a big deal. If a 4-second delay risks killing your mission then you probably should have designed the mission with more leeway in its launch window to begin with. There are a huge number of technical issues that could easily cause a 4-second delay.
Of course, that doesn't result in a headline that draws clicks.
Edit: I just read the article. "It's going to get worse" doesn't appear anywhere in it. You just made that up.
- Do you think there will be less things in orbit in the future or more? Because it's less 'made that up' and more 'inferred based on what happens in reality.'
  
  As I said, "more things in orbit" does not imply longer delays. It would mean that launches would have to delay 4 seconds more frequently, not that they would need to delay longer than 4 seconds.
  If a 4 second delay is a problem then your mission is badly designed from the start since there are very many reasons you might encounter a 4 second delay.

9 comments