> So would somebody care to do some fagpacket maths on how many nails Porky Kim will need to scatter to stand a modest chance of destroying say 4 satellites within six months?
Hmm. Although the frozen peas are appealing, suppose we go for iron filings with an average size of 1mm x 0.2mm x 0.2mm.
Iron has a density of 7870 kg/m^3, so I reckon 10kg will contain 31.8 million of these particles. (Of course, it may be easier just to blow up the whole rocket when it reaches orbit, but that may give you a much smaller number of larger particles)
Let's say these 31.8 million particles expand to a 10km cube. That gives one particle every 31480 m^3, or one for every cube of side 31.5m.
Now let's say there's an incoming satellite. The satellite is passing through at a particular (x,y) path within this 10km square cross-section A, and all the particles have a random (x,y) position within the same cross-section. The z position doesn't matter. The cross-section of the satellite is a.
The probability that it doesn't hit any particle is ((A-a)/A)^N
For a small satellite with cross-sectional area 1 m^2, we have A = 10000^2, a =1, N = 31,800,000
I reckon the probability of *not* hitting at least one of those particles is 0.73. And that's every time it meets the cloud (i.e. about once every 45 minutes)
Assuming that an iron filing particle is more potent than a fleck of paint, I'd say destruction of everything is assured.