The Shattering

The Shattering (2080s). The first war in orbit lasts eleven days. An exchange of anti-satellite strikes between the US and China, in a Swarm Years crisis neither side can afterwards fully explain, sets off a debris cascade through the megaconstellations: fragments break satellites, and their wreckage breaks more. Within two years low orbit is a debris belt. Launches thread narrow, shifting gaps, and insurance for anything in orbit disappears. Fragments below about 600 km fall back within decades; those between 800 and 1,500 km would stay for centuries. Launches from Earth become rare, costly and mostly robotic; supply runs to the first Mars towns are among the casualties, one reason they are stranded when the US fractures. What is already in space, from the Belt's first mines to the Moon's bases, carries on, until the Sweep clears the sky (see The Sweep, in Reaching outward).