Hypervelocity

Exactly 10 years ago, on 10th February 2009, a highly unlikely hypervelocity collision between 2 artificial satellites had occured for the first time. The collision sent thousands of small fragments into orbit that lingered for years, bringing the question of dangers of orbital debris to the public.

This is a little one day doodle-simulation that is an attempt to recreate that event. Find a nice lookout, speed up the simulation and enjoy the hopelessness of debris enveloping the Earth.

Lines are the only "graphics"

Technical details:

It simulates 2000 debris. It's possible to raise the number but line drawing is actually the bottleneck. The simulation uses Kepler equations, the only forces calculated are Earth's gravity and atmospheric drag. The spreading of debris after collision uses Box-Muller distribution.

Changelog:

002:

• Added [ and ] for changing debris size
• Camera moves in FixedUpdate now to prevent jittering
• Help text hidden by default - press F1 to show it

I've removed the web gl version as it was running out of memory. You will need to use the standalone version :(