If you've ever watched the film Gravity or looked into the Kessler effect you'll likely be aware that small pieces of space debris can be a huge problem for other objects up in Earth's orbit.
It's getting awfully crowded up there, highlighted in September last year when the International Space Station (ISS) was forced to use its thrusters to move out the way in order to avoid a piece of space junk.
But what would it take to actually take down the ISS? That's a problem scientists of Reddit have been trying to solve after someone's kid asked them a question they couldn't answer.
"Would an orbiting Cheeto Puff destroy the International Space Station if the two of them directly collided?" Reddit user funisallmynames asked in the Space community, sparking a big debate on the topic. "My 7yo daughter asked me, and I had no clue. I said probably."
Thankfully there are no Cheetos, Quavers, or Ruffles currently flying through space (that we know of), so the space snack is entirely hypothetical until some careless astronaut falls out of an airlock while eating a big bag of Flamin' Hot Limon Crunchy. Nevertheless, it's fun to speculate on hypothetical scenarios.
See.
Many Redditors believed that the Cheeto would do substantial damage to the ISS, given the energy involved.
"It would not be destroyed, but depending on where and how fast it hits, it could punch a palm-sized hole into the station's hull," zekromNLR wrote.
"It would be a serious emergency, but by either isolating the hit module, or getting everyone into the Soyuz or Dragon I would expect all personnel on the ISS who weren't directly hit by the cone of Cheeto and hull debris coming from the impact point (which very likely would lethally injure you if it hit you) to make it out alive."
Isolating modules is something that has come up in real life, like in August last year when a leak occurred on the ISS. Astronauts crowded into the Russian section of the space station while NASA attempted to locate the leak, which was eventually found by floating tea leaves.
A small leak like this sounds dramatic, but at no point were the inhabitants of the ISS in the kind of danger that Redditors suspected would be caused by a Cheeto.
"I get 150 kilo Joules impact energy at 10km/s impact velocity assuming the Cheeto weights 3 grams. I believe that would be equivalent to 30 grams of TNT, or 1/6 of a stick of dynamite," user VolvoRacerNumber5 wrote. "Not sure the station would get destroyed, but it seems pretty risky to me!"
However, this is based on the object being some indestructible solid object, rather than a flimsy corn puff. Some suggested that the Cheeto would be frozen solid, but as others pointed out, the temperature on the outside of the ISS actually fluctuates between 121°C (250°F) when it passes through daylight and -157°C (-250°F) when it's in Earth's shade.
"Even at impact velocities of 15km/s, I would expect the Cheeto puff would simply be vaporized on contact with the ISS," Letter_13, who claims to be an aerospace engineer, wrote. "Depending on where it hit, it may leave a dent, though more than likely it would just leave a bit of an orange stain (if that)."
The Redditor, in what appears to be the consensus view, explained that the low density of the Cheeto means it would crumple, taking a lot of the force out of the impact, just as the front and rear of a car are designed to do.
Providing even more reasons not to fear the Cheeto, since the corn snack contains plenty of oil, it would likely boil off the vacuum of space, significantly reducing its mass and density.
"It's very possible that by the time the Cheeto impacts the ISS, it could very well be just a Cheeto-puff shaped particulate cloud of corn and cheese particles, as the boiling of the oil may generate enough kinetic action within the puff to break it apart before the impact," Letter_13 concluded.
