Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Junkyard planet trash distribution?

+0
−0

So, I've got a planet that's basically a junkyard. It's just one big junkyard. People from various space-faring societies dump all the crap there that they don't want to deal with. Derelict spaceships, obsolete tech, that sort of thing. And because the people doing this are lazy, what they basically do is just haul a big space barge close enough to the planet's gravity well, cut all the garbage loose, push it just over the edge of the well, and let it fall.

So my question is, assuming the trash isn't getting permanently trapped in orbit, and assuming both the trajectory and the exact point in space from which the garbage is released are both random, would the places the garbage falls be random too? Would there be an equal distribution over the entire planet's surface, or as the trash collects over thousands of years, would it start to pile up more in some places then others? Would it start to accumulate a whole lot around the equator, but barely any at all near the poles? Would things like mountain ranges or ocean currents influence this at all?

Update: Because everyone was asking, the reason there even is a junkyard planet is simply because humans are lazy. Various corporations and space governments figured out that they could just dump a ton of metal on a planet, and after about a hundred years, an eyeblink in space time, desperate folk would move there and begin setting up their own small-scale recycling operations, purifying the metal, lifting it back up out of the gravity well, and selling it to the companies again for a pittance. It takes a while but it's the cheapest and laziest possible way to recycle things on a massive scale.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/106401. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »