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More on Orbital Space Debris
wvanhuffel writes "This is a call for /.'s to put their thinking caps on. The US Airforce, NASA and other agencies are looking for ideas to find and eliminate threats from space debris to craft (space, in the use of).
Personally I like the idea of "robots to serve as roving garbage scowls" - my question is "How do they identify 'garbage'?" - Would the ISS qualify?" I don't know what happened to the laser broom.
"No, bad robot, the earth is not debris."
Send Jade up there and get her to open her mouth.
Roadkill is yummy.
Yes it's time for slashdotters to put their thinking caps on. I'm sure our geek aura will penetrate a problem that has had the best minds of the world's space agencies stumped for decades.
I await with glee the hoards of posts suggesting enormous ballistic inflatable penguins and fleets of linux powered robotic red swingline staplers. But what about prevention in the future? Easy, just make all space objects run Windows, that way they will crash themselves into the blue ocean of death eventually.
There, I've got it out of the way early so hopefully others won't need to.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
When I was a young 'un, my mother used to cure the embarrassing problem of wool-bobbles on clothes by wrapping a hand in inverted adhesive tape (sticky side out) and running it bruskly over the surface of the affected garment. These days, the rise of the mighty Remmington Fuzzaway (tm) has largely rendered this practise useless.
I believe however, in consultation with my mother, that this might still be applied to the above problem. I propose a giant space hand, sheathed in cellotape and waved liberally about in orbit would be the best method.
http://www.davetansley.com - you proba
"Spaceball 1 has now become ... Mega Maid!"
Why not just put up a sign that says "No littering"?
All those I've seen on Earth are surrounded by empty drink cans, cigarette packs, discarded condoms, etc. Maybe the effect also works in space.
No need for research. All we need is a pair of clones, a plant man, and transmute named Gene/Jean.
See the IMDB for the details
I think NASA should hire Roger Wilco to clean up the mess. He has excellent CV for this kind of stuff..
yush
We only need to use the United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol ship to pick up the debris.
Been watching too much SG-1 lately? You know what happened to them, don't you? If NASA takes your idea, the Asgard are gonna be pissed.
We'll do the jobs no one else will do! Give us an old Space Shuttle, some suits and jetpacks, and some extra-large Hefty garbage bags. We'll take care of that for ya!
Another idea: have organizations "Adopt-an-Orbit" and keep our skyways clean. Unfortunately all the brag signs they put up will cause the same problem....
Why is NASA so scared about rocks hitting their spacecraft? All they need to do is sit in the middle and shoot the biggest pieces, then shoot the small fragments one at a time. Never shoot another big one until you've cleaned up all the tiny pieces, and you'll be fine.
Ever see an old steam engine? Notice that big angular piece of metal just above the track in front? It's called a cowcatcher. The premise is, whatever is in your way (be it a cow or some girl tied to the tracks) will either be pushed to one side or split to either side. Depending on how tough your metal is, it'll deflect a lot of lesser junk too. That's the way to deal with it. Even the Enterprise had a deflector shield; you can't avoid or clean up every little piece of material in space.
And finally: who says all that junk isn't worth something? It's just a treasure waiting to be discovered! Put Martha Stewart in a spacesuit and provdide her with gold rickrack and glitter glue, and we'll be able to provide even the poorest third-world peasant with a stunning centerpiece on their dining room table.
...
Death Star.