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Transforming Orbit Into A Wasteland
I found an article (Yes, the article is now 404) in the CNN Space section this morning, talking about a recent report at a UN Conference on space. The author of the reporter alleges that programs like Star Wars and the like would basically turn LEO ? into a "wasteland" for satellites for decades or even centuries. And the wonderful part is that NASA's Off ice for Orbital Debris will close in October, due to budget cuts, despite 10s of thousands of already existing debris. Yah. Have fun with space tourism!Update: 04/23 19:14 GMT by H : It appears that the CNN article was pulled - I can't seem to find it - but Space.com had another report on the subject. And Space.com has also the updated story that CNN was linking to - and the update may be why it was pulled, because it appears that the Office for Space Debris may have some salvation yet.
a swarm of orbiting bolts around your planet to protect it against an alien invasion.
..and on your left you can thousands of chunks of space debris hurtling towards us. The smaller chunks burst into beautiful firework displays as they hit the windows of our touring craft.. the larger chunks? Well, lets just say thats why we had you sign all those forms before you took this tour.
air and light and time and space
If someone launched several nukes at the US, and the US (lacking an interceptor system) launched a retaliatory strike, would we give a damn about the condition of low earth orbit?
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"The author of the reporter alleges that programs like Star Wars and the like would basically turn LEO into a 'wasteland' for satellites for decades or even centuries."
The article actually said that if other countries responded to programs like Star Wars by dumping tiny bits of space junk (gravel, marbles, or the like) to destroy satelites, causeing more space junk and destroying more satelites, etc, etc then the result would be a LEO wasteland. Putting a satellite in orbit doesn't necessarily increase space debris. Attacking satellites in orbit, on the other hand, does.
-- Adam
That office being NORAD, located in Cheyenne mountain. So yeah, that one's covered budgetarily, methinks. You think they're going to pay for a door that big and let the thing close?
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
There are also a number of reports of the shuttle having to maneuver away from debris, such as here, its worth noting that the warning came from "U.S. Space Command", i.e. NORAD, not NASA's orbital debris office.
So some NASA PHB may think that NORAD's tracking is sufficient, and the money is better spent keeping the billion dollar dinosaur shuttle program flying...
you allready managed to /. yourself ;)
It's a sad truth I have recently come to realize: Manned Space exploration as a major human endeavor is basically dead.
The left has no interest in it, since space exploration has no apparent humanitarian value. The right has no interest (outside of defense) since it's a money pit. And the private sector has no interest in it since there's no obvious way to make a profit from it.
If access to orbit somehow became cheap enough to be afforable to those who operate under different motivations and priorities, this might change, but given current aerospace and cultural trends I dont see that happening anytime soon.
How long does it take for LEO orbits to degrade?
Eventually, would'nt this junk just fall into the atmosphere and burn up?
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Your assumption is incorrect. A piece of dirt the size of a grain of sand could cripple the shuttle or any other orbiting body. Bullets (ok, small ones) are right around the 1 cubic centimeter range, and they kill people travelling only around 700 miles an hour. These pieces of debris are travelling in excess of 15000 miles per hour; they'll punch a hole through lots of things. Heat shielding, windows, astronauts...
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
To the AeroGel solution? create a gigantic (1KM square) "sponge" to sweep up the crap and then deorbit into a nice fireball?
I remember hearing about that back in 1996-1997 on Beyond2000 on Discovery... a show that was the best they ever made and cancelled... Oh boy more fish/animal/cop shows.... yay...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Great idea! Why don't you (notice I said "you" and not "the Government" because I see you are a libertarian) just write a nifty lil' number-cruncher that runs behind a screen saver and tracks a finite set of space junk particles. If you aren't a coder, could you at least provide the $$$ or the organization skillz to make this a sourceforge project (imagine: spacejunk.sourceforge.net)? The server could run on some *n?x O/S so we won't lose all of our satellites every time someone gets a BSOD, but the particle matrix could be distributed to Win clients for greater coverage. Do you live in Europe? Maybe it could be 100% metric so we could avoid the rare problems that seem to plague NASA in the rightist media.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
"Putting a satellite in orbit doesn't necessarily increase space debris"
actually it does, the article at space.com says
"Small junk, some of it created by rocket explosions, can rip holes in a spacecraft or disable a satellite by causing electrical shorts that result from clouds of superheated gas, called plasma, that are sometimes generated in an impact."
so just the process of putting a satellite in orbit creates junk travelling at 22,000 mph
From the FAQ on the NASA Site:
8). Does the U.S. Space Shuttle have to dodge orbital debris?
Whenever a Space Shuttle is in orbit, the U.S. Space Command regularly examines the trajectories of orbital debris to identify possible close encounters. If another object is projected to come within a few kilometers of the Space Shuttle, the Space Shuttle will normally maneuver away from the object, even though the chances of a collision are only approximately 1 in 100,000. This occurs infrequently, about once every year or two.
This seems to me to be a pretty small problem in the greater scheme of things, and if the Space Shuttle only has to dodge once or twice a year, we're doing pretty good so far.
Of course, the point raised by NASA is just that we're doing ok provided that we continue to be aware of space junk and create our rockets and spacecraft and satellites in such manners as to reduce and/or prevent space debris. If the office closes, likely they'll keep someone at a radar somewhere to prevent the Shuttle and ISS and such from whacking a random chunk of hardware.
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Stop being paranoid. You are far more likely to be run over by a stampeding elephant outside your house than you currently are of being struck by space debris (assuming you were in space).
If you could collect all of the crap floating around in in orbit it probably wouldn't even fill a small landfill. You drive around in a car don't you? Rush hour traffic is a tad more congested than orbit is or will be in the distant future.
Those are great scary little pictures that they put up showing all the garbage forming a ring around the Earth. Of course those dots are probably 1000000 times larger than they are in real life, but they do a good job of scaring people.
Naturally these things need to be tracked but only for determining new orbits that need to be taken. By the time a cleanup is really needed technology will be able to present a viable solution. I don't see the point in spending millions/billions a year trying to solve it now and it certainly isn't worth losing sleep over.
WRT Global Thermonuclear War, the only way to win is not to play.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Three points here.
1. I was chairing an AAAS conference in Washington on Moving Industry Into Space, in January of 1982, and only 2 of the 5 speakers had shown up at 10 minutes before the start of the 3 hour session. The third was delayed in transit and the forth cancelled because both transponders had failed the night before on the communications satellite that was his business. The fifth turned out to be speaking at a conference in Europe and had not even told me he would not be coming.
Sitting in the second row was someone I had never met but thought I recognized. I introduced mself, confirmed that he was whom I though he was, explained the situation and asked if he would speak. He agreed and gave a 15 minute adlib on the need for and value of a garbage collection business to clean up Low Earth Orbit. His name was Dr. Isaac Asimov. So, this is not a new issue.
2. Years ago I studied the opportunities for space commecialization and came to the conclusion that Communications Satellites (given to us by Arthur C. Clarke, no patent applied for) and LEO Tourism were the only two that were practical in the forseeable future.
Power transmission and manufacturing of pharmaceutical, etc have been talked about and even tried, but, much as I'd like to see them happen, they don't seem practical. Communications and Tourism still seem to be the only things with commerial potential for LEO.
If NASA stops tracking the garbage, FUD will keep most people from considering a trip to LEO, even when the costs come down somewhat.
3. NASA has never wanted competition. When they submitted the original tender for the original (post Skylab) Space Station, one of the firm provisions was that all items had to be transported via their Space Shuttle. Space is theirs and theirs alone. All others are NOT WELCOME.
Twenty years ago I submitted a proposal to them that would give them a space station with 25,000 cubic foot of 'shirtsleeve living room', using only 2 Shuttle Launches. The "artist's sketch" (actually, an acrylic) still hangs on my wall and is dated 1982. I'm not expecting a call any time soon. When I tried to pay NASA to launch a "proof of concept", I was told, "We are not ready yet. Maybe some time in the future."
I read the article this morning as well, and it was bunk.
Let's say that missiles are inbound to the US. Right now, LEO would be fine, and the US would be toast. So let's say that the US builds a strategic ABM system - mostly if not completely land-based on the interceptor side - which can take out a warhead immediately prior to deorbit. Now let's say that the incoming missiles have countermeasures, so that they are spreading even more junk around. Well, the best possible result is that the ABM system is still capable of taking out the incoming warheads, preventing major US cities from becoming piles of radioactive debris. But LEO is now junked up? So what? It's preferable that we have to figure out how to clean up LEO - or even that we lose the use of LEO - than that we lose even one city. Moreover, that debris is on a path to deorbit quickly, so there is not even a likelihood of cluttering up LEO for a long period of time.
Now let's take the other scenario presented: someone decides to deny LEO by spreading large amounts of gravel or similar in order to take out a space-based weapons platform. Any nation capable of doing that is also somewhat dependent on LEO and would thus be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. On top of that, if the intent is to take out a space-based defense in order to let the missiles through, wouldn't you want to do that in such a way that you didn't prevent the missiles from getting through? (Gravel sufficient to make LEO a "wasteland" is also sufficient to block practical use of ICBMs and probably also IRBMs, MRBMs and SLBMs.)
Bunk, I tell you. Total bunk.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
> ... the military ... thought this through ... I'm sure they'll find a solution
Don't be so sure. All the military cares about is padding their budget and a fat private sector job after they "retire".
Read about how they faked the results of the missile defense tests.
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Wait. If Westford Needles put up that much debris in 1961 (wasn't it '63?), then doesn't that argue against the threat of a debris cloud cutting off access to space? After all, we've been operating plenty of spacecraft in LEO all these years while the Westford junk has been up there.
...using lunar power to create neutrino oscillations to destroy the junk... see, /. has all the answers...
"Hello, ladies and gentlemen. We've now entered Low Earth Orbit, and our pilot, Roberto, is just adjusting the horizontal lift for your comfort. You may soon order drinks from the steward once the pilot has given the proper signal. Outside your window on your left you'll see the- OH MY GOD!! NOOOOOOO!"
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
So was this article pulled because it pointed out that anyone with the ability to launch a big enough rocket could potentially eliminate a large portion of the US military's advantage?
Just get an idea of the rough trajectory of LEO spy satellites, shoot up a rocket at the right moment, and blow up a modest charge to spray BB's into a wide swath of space.
Figure if you could launch just 1 million BB's and spread them out with a velocity of maybe just 60km/hr - creating a sphere 2km across in one minute, with a surface area of 12MsqMeter, you've got 1 BB for every 12sq meters, and if the satellite goes through both sides of the sphere and has a profile of just 4sq meters, you've got a 2/3 chance of holing it, maybe a 1/3 chance of severe damage via internal spray of debris over sensitive components.
And if you're a bit more sophisticated, you could launch those BB's into orbit. It might take days or weeks - but with that much new debris added to the same rough orbital altitude as a spy-sat, the chances of an encounter are pretty good.
Yep, I'd be worried about Iraq getting this bright idea - except after they analyzed their last war and the sort of tricks that the Yugoslavians played on us, I'd bet they've already come up with it.
I'd also hope the US is busily launching hardened spy satellites with enough internal armor and redundancy to take a couple of hits.
It'll probably mean the end of Commercial use of Space if they really go at it - the insurance rates for launches will be too high. Another good thing brought to you by the fine foreign entanglement folks in Washington. I sure wouldn't want to be on the sitting station - I mean space duck - I mean space station if/when Bush decides to go into Iraq.
The reason the office was closed is that their previous attempts to clean up had failed.
Their plan involved using nanoships to blast the debris away. Unfortunately whenever they shot them, they broke into two smaller pieces. NASA claims that difficult controls and the offices inability to use hyperspace to evade debris were two of the main reasons for failure.
And who's to say the gravel launch couldn't be disguised as a legitimate satellite launch. The deception wouldn't be apparent until too late. Only one missile has to make it up to disable the entire system, so such fraud is readily possible, where it is implausible with a full on attack.
Actually, it looks like one of the cannisters that failed to deploy in the 60s did either deploy or get hit by something and pop open more than 20 years later.
It'd be interesting to ask the LDEF and the Shuttle people if they've found any West Ford needles (or evidence of them) stuck in any of their gear...
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I wonder if you could make a solar-powered robot satellite that heads towards each piece of junk and snags it. It would vaporize the junk and feed it to an ion engine that propels it towards the next junk item. Kind of like Mr. Fusion without the fusion.
I have no idea whether the minimal velocity changes between bits of junk would be too much to be powered by the junk itself. It would certainly require careful orbital plotting to work.
... at least under the terms you mention.
If access to orbit somehow became cheap enough to be afforable to those who operate under different motivations and priorities,
Who had you in mind? NGOs or political or religious groups perhaps? People who put ideology first, often beyond well-being? Hmmm.... seems to me I might be fairly happy leaving space in the hands of on-going governments (who have some interest in not allowing too many destructive shenanigans to go on) and business (for whom a profit motive and public outcry are powerful controls).
I'm not looking forward to the day that space becomes so accessible that any splinter group with an oddball ideology can get there. Something tells me our currently not terribly stable world will then become significantly less stable. And safe.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
The recent space.com article says,
NASA estimates there are 4 million pounds of junk orbiting Earth. More than half the impacting debris is manmade
This implies that 40% or so of the debris in orbit is of natural origin.
Which would mean that Earth has hundreds or thousands of tiny natural satellites (moons) that they never taught me about in school.
Is this just simple misreporting? Or does Earth have little moons that went undiscovered until NASA started tracking space debris?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Whereas I don't entirely disagree with your point, I will say: 1) The only nuclear weapons ever delivered against a hostile nation were by plane. 2) That was a long time ago.
You say it is quite easy to destroy a satellite interceptor system. That makes a number of assumptions such as their inability to defend themselves versus countermeasures, our inability to identify countermeasures launches and undertake alternate measures of our own, and the inability of said satellites to manouver. Also, it assumes we don't have a whacking lot of them up there, thus making degrading the system possible but not eliminating it. Right now, any and all opinion on how easy or hard this is all falls under the category speculation. No one has deployed an interceptor system and no one has demonstrated countermeasures to such a system. So we're all just shooting the breeze.
As for the ease of deploying nuclear attacks other than ICBMs, I think you will find current developments in point, zone, and theatre defense will make plane and low-level missile attacks less effectual. And suitcase nukes, despite how allegedly easy they are to deploy, have NEVER been detonated in a population center or upon a military target to my knowledge. Perhaps this isn't as easy as you think?
Not saying the money couldn't be spent elsewhere, nor that this isn't likely to be Pork Barrel city, but almost everything about space warfare is conjectural at this point. Only time and tactical deployment of some of these systems will truly prove the point.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
It seems that having high powered lasers in space would be great for a space-junk cleanup. Turn the beam to wide angle, fire it up, and incinerate or knock down (heat up one side of an item, let it outgass on that side and it may go down) the little bits... voila, clean space.
And the military would justify this by calling it weapons testing.
- AZ
...is this: Yes a bullet moving 15000 mph could do some damage (to the limit of the materials in the bullet). But isn't the shuttle (in the same orbit) moving at the same (or near same) speed, ergo no real differential?
If so, isn't the danger window then only entering or leaving orbit, or changing orbit because of the delta vee between currently orbiting debris and the shuttle?
Or am I missing something fundamental about how these debris are a menace?
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Your assumption that space travel will be a huge industry assumes:
1) There is any economic or political or military benefit to a manned presence
2) The problems (risks) of space travel are overcome
In both cases, you are talking about non-trivial cases.
If UberCorps can't even find a way to make wireless or broadband pay off, then space is so far from being viable economically that it isn't funny. And as for tourism.... if a trip to orbit eats up a day or two, subjects me to multiple gravities of acceleration and has me vomiting in zero-G, plus exposes me to other health risks and other risks to life and limb (not all of us are astronaut material boys and girls!), then am I real likely to want to shell out $20K or more (assuming super cheap space transport) for it? I mean people other than us few Star Wars junkies?
I don't think most of us will see affordable space tourism or economic exploitation of space within our lifetimes. I'd imagine the former is at least 40-75 years away, and the latter at least as long in any kind of large scale fasion.
But it is nice to sit around and daydream about it, just like the guys in the 50s who predicted we'd be living on moon cities by 2000.... and about as likely....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
We can't even directly see other planets outside the solar system. The ability to see if there is crud floating around the planet which is approximately the size of a bolt would lead us to believe that we could probably see macroscopic man-made items on the surface first (similar to the Great Wall of China) before this stuff could be deteced (unless it cast some unique form of energy we could detect at very great distences. Most metals do not do this).
Also, as the previous poster pointed out, you have to distinguish between generic and natural debris
- Sig
Che: "Couldn't you just launch a bunch of huge super powerful magnets into orbit to suck up all that debris? I mean, wouldn't a magnet have a really powerful effect on all those little metal bits in a vacuum?"
Che's roommate: "dude, are you posting on slashdot stoned again?"
That's one of the most useful explanations of the danger I've seen yet. Kind of like the old Hot Wheels Criss-Cross-Crash track. Things moving in the same difference at the same speed are no threat, but junk crossing fast on an oblique course can really ruin your day. Merci buckets for the good post!
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
They're probably talking about small (i.e. a few centimeters) asteroids which were caught by the earth's gravity well.
So nothing exciting to see here, especially since the current orbiting asteroids will burn up in a few years and more come in every minute. Any celestial body has a lot of junk flying around it.
If CNN didn't think they had the rights to put those lunatic plans in public maybe there's a real threat in them.
My proposal for a 500 g science project in the spare space of the next Adriane Rocket is to fill it with grovel.
The theory is that a missile defense system would (depending on the number of incoming warheads, it'd have to be less than 20 or so) stop most or all of the missiles, thus eliminating the need for a launch on warning response. This would keep a small exchange from escalating to a massive one.
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That system worked until MIRV came along.
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When it rains, the sky isn't even *close* to being 100% filled up with water (or we'd drown, obviously), nor half, nor a quarter. But step out into the rain for a few moments, and you will get wet.
If you fire an Uzi in random horizontal directions on a crowded city square, the bullets take up an insanely small amount of space. I'd still be worried about getting hit, though.
The only difference I can see here is a matter of scale. While the odds that any bit of junk will hit anything are much smaller, you simply don't want to take those chances. And doubling the amount of junk in space pretty much doubles your chances of getting your satelite/spaceship hit.
On the otherer hand, if they launch a few pounds of gravel into space before the nuclear attack
Two points, 1) It's much more complex than simply launching gravel. 2) I would imagine that a space based weapon designed to shoot down missles would have a pretty obvious defense against a missile full of gravel.
And who, in this modern world, is truly liable to launch "a few" nukes at the US??
China, North Korea and Iran. It is depresingly easy to imagine a war between North and South Korea or between China and Tiawan where we face the real possiblity of a nuclear attack against the mainland US (China has implied EXACTLY that threat "Americans care more about Los Angeles than they do Tai Pei." - Lt. Gen. Xiong Guang Kai). You should perhaps take China of the list though because though they only have "a few" ICBM's capable of hitting us now they are already working to change that to "a lot". North Korea and Iran on the other hand will probably never have the capablity to have a very large number of nukes or ICBM's to deliver them so they would remain liable to launch "a few".
Countries less likely to attack us but capable of it (in the future) are Pakistan and India. Like N. Korea and Iran they are countries that are unlikely to ever have huge arsenals of ICBM's capable of reaching us but are likely in the future to have "a few". I can't come up with a scenario where India is a threat but Pakistan is not the most stable country and a takeover by radical islamists is not very far-fetched.
All that being said it is impossible to predict what the next several decades hold. History has not stopped: there will still be wars, revolutions, coups, dictators even the occasional insane demogogue. We don't really know who is "liable" to launch a few nukes at us but the list of who *could* keeps getting longer.
Weapons are needed in space so it can be better used.
Until recently, only a few governments controlled the trickle into space. Private companies are now able to launch rockets, and even more will gain access as various launch technologies are completed.
Military agencies want to protect their country. The military will want the ability to protect against malicious use of space. Space-oriented weapons are needed before governments will reduce restrictions on private access to space.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that that's the case... I think that a couple of million pounds a day falls to the earth as space dust/micrometeors, etc. Thing is that a lot of the man-made stuff is likely to be on the larger end of the scale... Even something like a dropped wrench is likely larger than much of the space dust that hits the earth daily.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.