Really? I havent seen that math. For that to be true, the number of collisions would have to be rising faster than the rate at which we put stuff up there. Natural sources would cause a steady increase (more stuff launched, more exposed to natural impacts) whereas not-natural junk impacts should increase at a rate higher than exposure (compound increased exposure with increased risk from more objects). All i have seen are studies saying that the number of impacts is increasing, not that they are accellerating faster than launch rates.
No math is involved, only common sense : there's a certain amount of natural space debris surrounding planet earth. This amount has reached a steady state over the past few millions or billions of years.
Over the past few decades we've started launching stuff into orbit. Some of that stuff explodes.
Hence, there is now more debris surrounding planet earth.
Whether or not the amount of extra space debris has already caused an increase in collisions is a different matter, for which some statistics would be required. But that wasn't the point I was making.
In fact, it's quite the opposite of the point I was making : something has hit the ISS, and whether it's man-made or natural is (AFAIK) not specified at this time.
> there's a certain amount of natural space debris surrounding planet earth. This amount has reached a steady state over the past few millions or billions of years.
For what it is worth, I would question this assumption. Why would the amount of natural space debris around earth be at a steady state? Meteor showers [1] are one example of how the amount of space debris is not at a steady state.
Something hits the ISS almost every day. This collision gets noticed because the hole it left is larger than average, but if you look close enough the ISS is covered in tiny impact damages.
