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There are very few reasons to ever want to bring space salvage back to Earth. Re-using space salvage in space, on the other hand, is much cheaper, possible, and potentially profitable. The first steps have already been taken by Orbital Recovery Corporation's CX-OLEV project, which will attach itself to dead or dying satellites. It will take over their orbit keeping functions to allow them to continue functioning. This is profitable because a company that paid $x00 million to build and launch their communications satellite with a 10 year lifespan then gets another 5 years or so out of it for a small additional payment (I'm guessing another 20-50 mil). That's another 5 years that satellite does not become space junk. At the end of its life, it can be deorbited, moved to a graveyard orbit, or moved somewhere else to be recycled by whatever improved orbital facilities we have 5 years from now.

This is an effective counterexample to your argument that imagination can never make orbital salvage a cheaper option than just launching more crap off the Earth. The only problem with my counterexample is that it has not yet been proven with an actual launch and salvage. However I don't think you can claim that it an impossible idea, and the economics of launching a small satellite to save a big one are reasonable.

It's a stepping stone. There's all these business models that you can do to make a profit, gain experience and drive down the price of space access which people are pursuing now. Everything from launching people's remains into space as a secondary payload (cheap to do, and LOTS of people will pay for it), to suborbital and orbital space tourism, to satellite constellation based radio, broadband access, and tracking. Then there's the guys at the top of the spectrum. Orbital Recovery are developing a space tug to interface with communications satellites and extend their revenue-producing lifetimes beyond original specifications. The space tug is a critical part of space infrastructure. If you want to build a space hotel at the ISS and drag it out to the L1 point (where Earth and Luna gravity meets) you'll need a space tug. Once you've got that in place you're half way to the moon. It's not conceivable to build massive landers in space, with enough equipment to extract oxygen from the luna soil (or that water they keep talking about) and boost it up. That reduces the amount of oxygen that needs to be brought up from earth which reduces the costs for your space tourists. Now that you've got a presence on the moon you can go prospecting. All those craters on the moon, each one created by a planet killer, most of them contain vast amounts of precious metals. Most notably the Platinum Group Metals. If you're on the moon anyways, you might as well pick them up, process em and send em back to earth where they can be used in fuel cells, jewelry and Carmack style monoprop rockets which are capable of single stage to orbit, reducing the costs of space access yet again. And so it goes and so it goes. It's not the Saturn V, flags and footprints space exploration of our parents generation, or the triple stage tractor factory military operations of Wernher van Braun, but eventually the commercialisation of space will result in enough people living and working in space that we can claim with a straight face that our society is interplanetary.

I recently read M o o n r u s h. The renouned commercial spaceflight author Dennis Wingo makes the argument that for a $20 billion investment humans could return to the Moon perminately, mine precious metals needed to kickstart the hydrogen economy and eventually turn a profit. That much investment includes all the launches and all the equipment needed. Of course, it won't happen with some angel investor handing over that much capital at once with some vague hope of a return on investment. No, the way it will happen is with small incremental missions with each returning an investment. Dennis Wingo's current project is Orbital Recovery. They're developing a space tug to station keep satellites when their fuel runs out to keep them operational beyond their designated decommission dates. The space tug that is developed as a result is an integral part of the return to the moon system. How long? Give it 20 years.

Hey, good plan for Karma! Post some entirely unrelated question as anonymous coward "Why was ... ORS conceived", then copy their faq answer and post it under your username! So original! Sadly, so effective.

Hey, good plan for Karma! Post some entirely unrelated question as anonymous coward "Why was ... ORS conceived", then copy their faq answer and post it under your username! So original! Sadly, so effective.

I know it takes millions of dollars to run the science behind Hubble, or any other space project. Apparently, it takes a whole team of rocket scientists just to keep the thing from crashing into Tucson or something.

But why can't NASA just give the telescope to Wingo's company and be done with it? Just give them the keys and be done with it. Sign something requiring that they drop it in the Pacific (or in the Sun, or something) when they're done.

If Orbital Recovery can make a go selling science time to astronomers, then let them try it. Or they can sell time to people looking for the Face on Mars. Or they can fly up the next Survivor crew with some duct tape and an oxygen tank to play "voted off the Hubble". Whatever the free market wants.

I'm not usually one to say the "free market" is better at making decisions, but NASA has gotten its investment back. Instead of plowing it into the seabed, give it away -- think of it as the new-frontier version of salvage rights.

that's cause the nimrods at NASA have a bad case of NIH (not invented here)

Orbital Recovery Corporation has proposed a solution, which I remember hearing would cost less than $300M

Boeing recently canceled their Delta IV program due to a lack of customers in the commercial satellite business.

You didn't read the article. Boeing has not cancelled the Delta IV. Their launcher is still being considered for the manned OSP program, and has plenty of orders from the US military. Boeing only stopped taking new commercial orders for the Delta IV. This isn't a sign that space is stagnant, they're just coming to terms with the fact that their expensive rocket can't compete in a marketplace that passed them up years ago.

Space is heating up. Right now all the launches are going to countries with better rockets, but there are some startups like SpaceX and Orbital Recovery which have a good chance of turning things around for the American space industry.

From http://www.orbitalrecovery.com/about_us.html:

The SLES also can be used to rescue spacecraft that have been placed in a wrong orbit by their launch vehicles, or which have become stranded in an incorrect orbital location during positioning maneuvers.

They don't say anything about what happens after the SLES has moved the misplaced spacecraft. I suppose it would really depend on the needs of the rescued craft -- ie, whether it has enough on board fuel to maintain and adjust its attitude, or whether the SLES needs to hang around to help it.

As for a business model, well, how many satellites need rescuing? I would think that they're right to focus on the predictable market of sats that run out of juice instead of relying on error (human or mechanical) to create opportunities for them. At least, in the short-term. Once they've got their birds flying and have some real world experience, maybe they'll start getting creative with them and send them on "Extended Missions" once the sat-moving job is done.

Wha? They're using them:

from http://www.orbitalrecovery.com/faq.html

Attitude control for the SLES and the telecommunications satellite to which it is mated is handled by ion thruster packs mounted on deployable booms. These booms are extended to provide sufficient thruster impulse for control of the SLES/telecom satellite combination.