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.

Comments

Does this work on Ceramic Material?

[cnelzie]

Just curious as I am under the impression that not all of the debris is composed of ferrous material that could be affected by a large magnet. Some of the debris is little more then chips of paint that fell off of satellites, shuttles and other space craft.

Nitpick

[JohnPM]

Carbon nanotubes have become a hot item of discussion across all fields of engineering because, in part, the cylinders constructed from hexagonal links of carbon atoms are believed to be perhaps the strongest manmade material.

That should be "strongest material fullstop". The inference to natural materials can only be referring to spider silk. Spider dragline silk has a tensile strength comparable to steel, but will stretch 35% without breaking. It seems steel can achieve up to about 5 Gpa in tensile strength depending on quality, etc. Carbon nanotube fibres are expected to be in the hundreds of Gpa.

There is a cautious belief amongst materials scientists that carbon nanotubes may in fact be the strongest substance possible in terms of tensile strength.

A great overview of nanotubes as a construction material can be found in Bradley Edward's Space Elevator manuscript. See also the slashdot discussion about it.

What do you mean 'How would they ID garbage?'

[DirkDaring]

NASA and other agencies are already tracking all the junk. The problem isn't tracking and ID'ing the junk. The problem is getting it.

Dirk

Terminator Tether

[XNormal]

You can always trust Rober Forward to come up with a good idea.

See his Terminator Tether page. It's a great way to bring down an orbiting mass without actually having to carry the mass of fuel that would be required for a deorbiting burn.

Re:what abou the space pen?

[lokki]

NASA spent countless $$$ to come up with a pen that would work in space

Not true. Check out http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.htm The Fisher Space Pen (and I happen to own one) was developed without NASA requesting it, or paying for the research.