Radio Waves Employed in Space Construction

CDeity writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology claim that radio waves could be used to shape and fuse debris in space to form massive structures according to this article. Scientists have in the past employed sound and light waves to position small particles, and every expectation indicates these techniques could work on a large scale. One engineer estimates " it would take approximately one hour to form a rubble cloud into a 50-meter long enclosed structure.""

Comments

I've seen this done on a smaller scale

[faeryman]

and its very cool! At the Space Camp center, there used to be an exhibit where you could suspend in midair some little white polystyrene (?) balls with sound waves. After about 10 seconds the sound would sto and the balls would fall. I was always amazed at it, and always wondered if there were any practical uses for this.

energy?

[sploxx]

I'm really wondering where all the energy should come from.... energy to move these "bricks"...

Can the opposite be done as well?

[codeonezero]

Ok,

So I haven't quite read the article but it occured to me.

Is it possible to demolish such a structure with radio waves? Or do the laws that lets you do things one way, prevent you form doing things the other way?

if you can't demolish the structures with radio waves, then what changes once you have built the structure that prevents you from doing so?

What about weapon uses?

[phillymjs]

Since I'm currently watching a TiVoed episode ot The Outer Limits where this is a common theme, I have to raise the question of "the promising new technology being perverted into a weapon."

If you can form structures out of crap floating in space, why couldn't it just be compressed into a large enough object to survive re-entry, and sent on its merry way, aimed at what the aggressor wants to obliterate here on Earth?

Imagine if GWB suddenly backed down on all his we-gotta-git-Saddam rhetoric because it was getting hom nowhere and the American people were firmly against attacking Iraq, and then two or three months later Baghdad was mysteriously leveled by an nearby meteor strike one morning.

~Philly

Re:What about weapon uses?

[freuddot]

Human have known, for the last 35 000 years ( at least ) that a rock is an efficient weapon to throw at the head of your ennemy. There's just no way you'll prevent weapon discovery, big or small. Put more than 1 person in a group and noone can both enjoy freedom and be sure not be killed by another one.

That's why we have society. And culture. And laws. And morale. Preventing the technology use/discovery or whatever is pointless. You have to acknowledge that you are living in a big spaceship with 6 000 000 000 other living being. Jettison is not an option.

The solution is a social one, not a technological one. I do not claim to know it. I just claim that it is not by saying this XYZthingy could be a weapon that anyone's gonna solve anything.

If you want to solve problems, just take away the reason that LeaderXYZ has to kill others/invade country/destroy environment.

Weapons Research

[N8F8]

And how long would it take to push debris into an enemy satellite? Or form a large enough mass to plunk down on an unsuspecting enemy?

Re:Weapons Research

[Anonymous Coward]

No, why waste energy moving debris when you could just laser them instead at a fraction of the power?

Oh, and why hurtle debris when you could simply destroy the orbit of your target and make it feel the burn like Steve Balmer.

Clean up the space junk

[p3d0]

Could this be used to solve that nasty space junk problem? As I understand it, there is no known way to clean this stuff up.

what about?

[perrin5]

Newton's 3rd law (equal and opposite reaction...), according to their nifty little diagram, this would require satelites surrounding the object, and pushing them from all directions, so:
1) how do you keep the satelites around after they start generating their waves?
2) how do you keep them symmetrical? (the requirement is that they set up a resonator, I think, in which case, spacing is VERY important).

What about on earth, in water?

[btempleton]

Could this technique be used to take building blocks that have been tuned to be neutrally boyant, and then assemble them into structures using sound in the water, then slowly lower the water and weld each layer as it comes out of the water?

Of course neutrally boyant requires no gasses in the objects that can be compressed, though I could imagine you might have metal building blocks with a gas bladder inside that can be filled by computer controlled pump to make it neutrally boyant to some degree.

Imagine building the frame of a house in a big
tank.

Anybody done this?

Quality Control

[broken_bones]

I would have to imagine that quality control on something like this would be a nightmare. I didn't see anything in the article that talked about refining the pulverized asteroid. One would think that if you had a non uniform mix of materials it would affect the structural integrity of whatever you're building. Still the idea is really intriguing:

1. Break Rocks
2. Compress with radio wave "force field" (now how cool is that?)
3. ???
4. Profit

I know it's an overused joke but, in this case, it seems to me to be exactly what they're talking about.