[Sci-fi] Plausible scenarios for the evacuation of Earth at TL10-11

[AlexanderHowl]

Aerostats are just very large lightly armored targets though. The average orbital colony needs 10 metric tons of armor per square meter (100 grams per square centimeter, around 5 inches of steel) just to deal with the cosmic radiation, which just conveniently makes it immune to small arms fire. Even if an orbital colony gets a few large holes in it, it only very slowly suffers atmospheric loss, it does not necessarily suffer orbital decay. If an aerostat suffers large holes, it starts dropping pretty quickly.