> I'd say there's around 10 orders of magnitude between the momentum of a rifle bullet and the momentum of a communications satellite at escape velocity.
That's quite an overestimation.
Let's be generous and say a rifle bullet is 50 gram (0.05 kg) and fires at 1.1 km/s, and a communication satellite weighs 5 metric tonne (5000 kg) and escape velocity is 11 km/s. We have 5 orders of magnitude difference in mass and 1 in velocity. As momentum is m*v, total difference is 6 orders of magnitude. Kinetic energy is 1/2*m*v^2, so that gives 7 orders of magnitude difference.*
That's quite an overestimation.
Let's be generous and say a rifle bullet is 50 gram (0.05 kg) and fires at 1.1 km/s, and a communication satellite weighs 5 metric tonne (5000 kg) and escape velocity is 11 km/s. We have 5 orders of magnitude difference in mass and 1 in velocity. As momentum is m*v, total difference is 6 orders of magnitude. Kinetic energy is 1/2*m*v^2, so that gives 7 orders of magnitude difference.*