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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.
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.
"Spaceball 1 has now become ... Mega Maid!"
I think NASA should hire Roger Wilco to clean up the mess. He has excellent CV for this kind of stuff..
yush
How about a large dish coated with a think layer of soft material which you put into an orbit you want to clean and after its been there for a while fire the retros and burn the lot up in the atmosphere.
For some reason, one thing I haven't seen people mention so far in this thread is the fact that to be in orbit at a given height above Earth, you have to be travelling at a very specific orbital velocity. So the umbrella either has to be going with the flow, in which case it's not going to catch up to any of the space debris (unless the debris has an eccentric orbit), or against the flow, in which case it is going to impact the space debris with a very high velocity.
I suppose a third option is to have it going with the flow, but faster than orbital velocity, in which case it's going to need a lot of fuel... (remember, a spacecraft has to eject balast every time it changes direction, otherwise conservation of momentum would be violated.)
-a
How to rationalize theft.
The Spring 2002 issue of Artemis Magazine had an excellent article on this by Henry P. Cate, Jr., titled the "Junk Man's Ladder". The idea is to put up a tether (many kilometers long "rope") in a convenient orbit with electrodynamic lift capabilities and some thrust, move it around to "catch" space debris, and move the junk up to the center of mass of the tether, to give it greater stability. Tethers like this are form of "space elevator", able to lift move things from low to high orbit with high efficiency. More on orbital tethers can be found at Tethers Unlimited Inc., run by Robert L. Forward and Robert P. Hoyt (who I was fortunate to have dinner with a couple of months ago).
Energy: time to change the picture.
First and foremost, any solution needs to consider the economic factor. A solution that pays for itself will be a hands down winner.
Second, it seems like many of the solutions here would create more debris than already exists. A single large satellite is far simpler to track and avoid than a few thousand pieces of that large satellite. Unless your lasers or other weapons completely convert the debris into energy, you're wasting your time. Even if they force the debris toward Earth, the question would remain of "how did they do it"? The answer is by vaporizing matter which blasted away in the opposite direction. That matter is now not only debris in space, but untrackable debris. Even a paint fleck can do (and has done) serious damage to another orbiting object.
Third, THIS SPACE JUNK HAS VALUE!!! If its matter, and its in orbit, it is worth thousands of dollars a pound. It blows my mind everytime they guide something down that took millions too get up there instead of coming up with a way to get stuff into a parking orbit. Eventually, probably even today, there should be enough materials in space to justify manufacturing in space instead of sending more stuff up.
Steps we should take to turn this lead into gold include a) all future items launched should have provisions to reach an orbiting factory/storage facility at the end of their expected life. b) they need to all have provisions for capture via forces instead of mechanical means. This might mean adding magnetic materials or something. This way, an orbiting vehicle could capture them without contact that could cause further scattering of debris. c) software needs to be developed that can calculate capture plans for multiple objects that utilize the energy (stored in the momentum) of the objects captured effectively to help reach the next object and eventually get back to the orbiting factory/storage facility. Sort of like a game of 3D billiards. d) automated recycling and manufacturing technologies need to be developed to turn these raw materials into useful things like airtight habitat shells. At least initially, we'd probably have to keep bringing the high tech chips and stuff up the hard way, but the heavy shells and stuff could likely be very effectively manufactured in space. Things like girders for the space station should be relatively easy to do.
- into decaying orbits or
- a designated "trash ring" or
- push it to escape velocity
depending on specifics of each piece of junkFunny as it sounds, this could work. A proactive strategy would be based on using single hits over multiple targeting windows to push each piece of junk into decaying orbits or to shepherd junk into a trash ring where our grandkids could mine it (what will be the multiplier for the value of a chunk of scrap metal that is already at orbital velocity?). Beebees that miss would add an insignificant amount of water vapor to the upper atmosphere or leave near Earth space. Each shot would cost no more than the cost of the beebee-- the power is free. Someone could figure out the ratio of the size of the solar array to the number of shots that can be fired in month's time. My wag is that with collectors comparable with today's, the thing could manage a few shots a week.
A program like this would need a good name. I suggest "Space Balls"