Artificial space debris and Kessler syndrome.

A limitation for humankind.

Abstract

Space debris is an unuseful material which is nowadays moving in the space. This debris can be both natural and artificial, but we will focus this article on the artificial debris. This spacial artificial debris implies a series of problems. The main contribution of this text is to highlight the importance of one of these issues from a philosophical perspective. The specific issue to which we will refer is the Kessler Syndrome. The Kessler Syndrome presents a situation in which, without a reduction of artificial debris in the space and, specially, on Earth’s orbit, humans will see reduced their possibilities to keep exploring the universe. Our main hypothesis is that, if this Kessler Syndrome becomes a reality, human knowledge will be predictably self-limited due to the lack of current responsibility. This article presents, from a deductive methodology, a theoretical hypothesis from a coherent and plausible way. As a consequence, the results will be of a conceptual nature, and not experimentally or empirically proven.

Keywords

Debris; Evidence; Kessler Syndrome; Philosophy of Knowledge; Space Debris.