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NASA Warns of Cluttered Space
Ant wrote to mention a National Geographic article looking at the cluttered nature of Near-Earth Orbit. From the article: "Since the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I satellite in 1957, humans have been generating space junk. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 human-made objects larger than four inches (ten centimeters) in diameter orbiting the Earth. These include both operational spacecraft and debris such as derelict rocket bodies. 'Of the 13,000 objects, over 40 percent came from breakups of both spacecraft and rocket bodies,'Johnson said."
NASA hopes to send a team of the world's best garbage men into space to collect this trash. Luckily for them, that's Ben Affleck's current occupation.
... oh, wait, it's not funny if we're actually going to do it.
The enforced labor works with the prison system on highways, why can't it work in space?
Oh, I'm sure it's not all space junk, I'm sure there's some capsules containing rhesus monkey skeletons smearing their dying words on the glass of their cockpits with their fecal matter.
Simple solution, sell each item on eBay "as is" for very cheap. Then issue arrest warrants out for the winning bidders and demand they remove their trash from the perfect ecosystem of space.
If aliens could see our planet, would we be the white trash of the universe? With our garbage strewn about our front yard, four cars in our backyard that aren't mobile and a house that is?
Blame it on the Soviet Union and act like we're doing the rest of the world a huge favor by cleaning it up?
My work here is dung.
Currently, and since its conception, the world's space programs have been based on the model that we can just leave shit we don't need in space. Where were the great minds of NASA to say "Wait...what is going to happen with the rocket parts we are leaving out there." We already knew of gravity and orbits, so the idea that perhaps the stuff would just fly away doesn't seem plausible.
Us as a race, and us as the most influential countries, must look to the future, and I do see improvements, however many issues as well. We do not live in a one generation world, this is a place which we must sustain indefinately (until we find a new host planet of course).
do.what.promptcmds
The key to solving this problem is to not look on it as a problem at all, but rather, as an opportunity. 'Space junk' is a bit of a misnomer....the only reason it's considered 'junk' is because no one has figured out a way to collect and reuse it. When they do, the name will change to something more along the lines of 'space salvage'.
Certainly, some types of space salvage (derelict rockets, satellite fragments, etc.) will have a higher value than others (paint flecks, rocket slag, etc.), but even the lowliest dist speck will have value, for the simple reason that it is there. Considerable time, money, and energy was invested is putting all this 'junk' into orbit, and before we blithely start to squander more time, money, and energy deorbiting them, perhaps we should consider the possibility of putting them to use where they are now.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I really think it matters if we use space as a garbage dump, there's still more space!
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
Space.com has a breakdown of responsibility by country of some of the larger debris in space.
And if you're really hardcore into space debris (it's hard to even type that without laughing), Orbital Debris Quarterly News is your magazine!
My work here is dung.
A big laser mop, that's all I need.
The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 human-made objects larger than four inches (ten centimeters) in diameter
Or what is commonly referred to as the Nicole Ritchie threshold.
Make everything heavier, so it will float back to earth quickly.
Or, make it lighter and 'launch' it at the sun, the great incenerator in the sky.
Yeah, I know, so don't bother telling me...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Sounds like a job for the Half Section. Too obscure?
Seems like you would have to collect everything into a big ball and then leave the ball up there. I can't imagine dragging a bunch of junk down through the atmosphere. One big ball of junk would be much easier to dodge than thousands of small (probably equally deadly) chunks.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
You'd think these things would have been more thought out in the past, but judging by the shortsidedness of the current global warming fun (it was almost 70 in St. Louis yesterday) it isn't surprising. Seeing as how the last space shuttle disaster was caused by something hitting it, you'd think this would be a big risk, but it's a big sky and that's why they're monitoring those things. But hell, it'd keep me awake if I were on the shuttle/space station, most of that 'junk' is likely moving at a good clip, and what about things smaller than 4"? Are these 'rogue' things out there moving faster than a bullet headed towards the delecate skin of a ship? Hope they get it solved before the put the Howard Johnson hotel up there, can't wait for that! ;)
fak3r.com
Java based orbit tracker courtesy of NASA:
3 D.html
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
You should see the pile of quantum foam I cleaned out of my ears last night!
I have trouble keeping track of my car keys, wallet, and house keys - and they're usually within 10 metres of me. Perhaps I need a House Surveillance Network - actually, scratch that...
Get your own free personal location tracker
"NASA Warns of Cluttered Space"--they've seen my office?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
All we need is someone to "builds a space ship from his scrap pile in order to retreive valuable parts left on the moon" and in space by Astronauts, the kind of thing you might find in a tv show.
I'll take the job, as long as they send Betty1 and Betty2 along!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Scary.
Alright everyone, I'm sure we can figure out how to solve this problem in our spare time between meetings and system rebuilds. After all, there's no problem NASA thinks is insurmountable that we can't convince ourselves is easily solved.
Yes, this is the solution to this problem. We send up a really, REALLY powerful electro-magnet and turn it on. It collects everything for us! Problem solved.
:)
Also, another problem created in that it'll suck up all the USEFUL stuff like satellites, but you asked me how to solve the previous problem
mmm... Shorts...
If the objects are in near-earth orbit, then at some point it the future their orbits should all decay into the earth's atmosphere, at which point they will incinerate themselves. Sounds like a self-correcting problem to me! The only question is: when? Anybody have any guesses on how long it will take all this junk to deorbit if we just leave it alone?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I couldn't RTFA from my PDA. Are there private companies working on machines to try to capture these items? I'm sure it would be too expensive to ship back down to earth, but I wouldn't doubt that the raw materials might be worthy in a future moon or mars base.
It sounds like there might be some very valuable materials already in orbit, considering the cost to take up new materials on a launch. I'd love to see "the race to space" be over a bunch of competitive companies working to reclaim and reuse the junk.
What we need is the Mega Maid (tm.) Switch her vacuum cleaner to SUCK and ... (for the more ... sophistication folks, this is a reference to Space Balls)
When I have heard about this problem before, I have thought why can't they orbit a couple of large (200') diameter pieces of very sticky something.. when enough stuff has collected the whole thing will de-orbit and burn up..
I'll make a wild guess that, not many people will care about this problem for a loooong while, until a disasterous space accident is caused by space debris. And then there'll be ridiculous attempts to alleviate the problem, such as a 'kyoto protocol' of space debris, which won't be ratified by guess who. Who's with me?
Hope they get it solved before the put the Howard Johnson hotel up there
First off, the guy making the space Hotel is Robert Bigelow so it'll be a Budget Suites of America. Secondly the vast majority of spacecraft are lauched from west to east to make use of the earths rotational velocity (roughly 400m/s at the equator). So most of those objects are moving - you guessed it - west to east. As is the space station, the shuttle, etc. If they are all moving in the same direction collision speeds aren't that high. Now there are a few rogue satellites that were lauched the other way for a variety of reasons so yes there are small amounts of space junk moving counter to the flow.
The other thing to keep in mind: 13,000 pieces of junk spread across a sphere bigger than the earth. LEO is 100-300km up, but GEO is 35,000km up. That's a huge hollowed out sphere of area for 13,000 pieces of "space junk", most of which is flowing in the same direction. And the stuff in LEO deorbits pretty quick because of the rarified atmosphere (the same reason we have to boost the space station 1-2 times a year.) While there is a minor threat, it is just that - a minor one.
Why is NASA warning us of cluttered space? How are we to do anything about it? Isn't it NASA (and other equivalents) that cause this?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
i vaguely recall a sci-fi story about the post-spaceage future, when spaceflight had 2 b abandoned due 2 the lethal amount of space junk...
How much of it is frozen poop from the shuttle and Mir?
Why not take a whole bunch of that aerogel, and put it up in space in big shields? Maybe even have smaller robots that use it to actively collect larger pieces? Eventualy most of the small debris will stick to it and we can deal with smaller number of larger objects.
On 2006 January 5, Slashdot reported that Washington is working to develop warp engines.
Perhaps, now would be the right time to work on developing shields. They could protect starships from both phasers and space garbage. Is anyone developing shields?
Please excuse me for not having proof to back this up, but I heard on TV once that, due to the contesting gravitational pulls of the Earth, the moon, and the sun, that this debris accelerates continuously to tens of thousands of miles per hour. A hunk of shrapnel the size of a penny could tear a hole straight through a sattelite or spacecraft and hardly lose any momentum.
Kindly reply if you can provide clarification on this or if you can debunk it.
Send the World's Biggest Magnet to orbit round the Earth! (Remember to attatch some politicians to it in order to clean both Earth and near Space)
My 0.02 cents
So how long until there is enough junk up there to block a sufficient amount of the sun's heat and fix the global warming issue?
__ As a Christian I dont believe in Karma!
For example, the EU is now setting up it's own system of GPS satellites. How long until global politics force other countries like China, India, Korea, Japan, etc to put their own systems in place to ensure GPS access during troubled times? Plus communications continue to evolve towards satellite based systems for various reasons and as more countries reach 1st-class tech status they will want their own resources. The idea is that eventually without a specific system in place to mitigate risk humanity could doom itself to staying planetside for generations while we wait for junk to reenter the atmo, or be collected by robots or something.
Maybe now is the time to come up with some plans for the future to do more than just track space junk, and in fact move on to collecting, dispersing, or destroying it.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Certainly, some types of space salvage (derelict rockets, satellite fragments, etc.) will have a higher value than others (paint flecks, rocket slag, etc.), but even the lowliest dist speck will have value, for the simple reason that it is there.
r ktpow.html. Great. You got your first piece. Now you have to change heading and velocity to intercept piece #2. These vectors aren't all heading in the same direction at the same location. And they are only tracking about 13,000 pieces in NEO ... that's not very many pieces given the vast area of space there is! Consider 13,000 random objects on the surface of the earth, now extend it upwards a hundred meters, and add a volume of 1000m in the vertical direction. Long story short, you can't turn a profit given the fact that you need fuel to power the robot to collect this stuff. And given the fact that commercial ventures are starting to break the price point barrier - check out spaceX - 10k a kg will drop an order of magnitude in the next 10 years, easy.
I understand the argument from the standpont that it cost money to put the salvage into orbit. However "collecting" may wind up costing you more than the fragment itself weighs. Consider: Even if you make it up to LEO for free, you have to get to the item and match your position and velocity in the direction the space salvage is traveling to a degree where you (or your robot, whatever) can grab it. Of course you have to abide by the ideal rocket equation http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/
check out http://www.tethers.com/ They have a net thingie for grabbing space debris, and tethers for dragging debris out of orbit!
Actually, the orbit of all space debris is in steady decay, thus this is a problem that will literally clear itself up, barring further launches. No doubt, however, wonderful advances in engineering will result from the accumulation of space junk---impact resistant hulls, self-healing composites, detection and avoidance systems. It's all good.
"We do not live in a one generation world, this is a place which we must sustain indefinately (until we find a new host planet of course)."
Speak for yourself. A rational individual is not motivated by what comes after him, since by definition it cannot affect his happiness. Only the sentimental (but ultimately irrational) sheep look after a future they cannot partake in, while the ubermen borrow as much as they can from that future.
A world populated by utterly rational beings would not be the democratic-socialist enviro-paradise that most lefties imagine.
Let me get this straight... Nasa says "this is a growing environmental problem" and "we know it will only get worse". I would like NASA to tell me what I am supposed to do about that?? Who the hell put it up there in the first place?
Ohhh! Pay Dirt! A pair of half-eaten choco-pants!
What a great series of games that was...
Sir, you better take a look at the radar...
OMG, It looks like a giant....
JOHNSON!
This plug-in shows the mess up there quite clearly, and it's only showing a fraction of whats really above our heads
Seems to me an artificial singularity (read black hole) could be sent on a couple of different orbit tracks and grab stuff. This would work for cases that magnets wouldn't (for instance large paint flakes that are still dangerous at umpteen hundred MPH / KPH, aluminum, etc.)
Now we just need to make contact with the Romulans - I seem to recall that their warp cores used just the type of singularity we would need...
my college roomates must be working for NASA. They just left their shit everywhere!
Hmm. Somehow I'm just not finding this +Insightful.
but judging by the shortsidedness of the current global warming fun (it was almost 70 in St. Louis yesterday) it isn't surprising
I'm not sure which "side" you're finding short. I suppose you mean shortsightedness, as in "not seeing clearly into the future." Ignoring that, let's take your comment into consideration and use another city's weather to see if you're making a good case. Hmmm... judging by the fact that it's a balmy -20F in Moscow, I'd say that we weren't planning ahead well enough for the coming ice age. What, one day's weather doesn't indicate a pattern? Oh.
And what were you thinking... that the people burning coal 100 years ago had a good solid grip on a mechanism that, even today, brilliant people armed with super computers are having trouble getting to the bottom of? Or did you mean people 20 years ago? Or last week?
Seeing as how the last space shuttle disaster was caused by something hitting it
It hit itself! Come on now. Do you even watch the non-nerd news? Even they reported that correctly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Many people have thought to capitalize on these orbiting fuel tanks to turn them into livable space, but I dont think that will be cost effective. I think Bigelow is on the right track with his inflatable habitats. We're a long ways away from orbiting factories capable of melting down this junk. De-orbiting may end up being much, much cheaper, as electric propulsion is already 100x more efficient then chemical propulsion. If it ends up being 1000x more efficient, which is not far-fetched at all, then you may see orbiting trash haulers that can de-orbit hundreds of large objects without refueling.
I think it's just luck that we are getting into these advanced propulsion techniques. If we had to continue with chemical upper-stages indefinately, we would never have the resources to de-orbit anything.
Man, first my wife complains and now NASA?
I just need my space.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
They are "warning" because the politicians never give them any money to clean it up, so now that its getting close to be a problem, they are warning the politicians they can't put it off for too much longer. They want more money!
I remember one year, a large piece of junk landed in Australia. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone. In 2001 after the Mir splashed down in the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Chile said they wanted some rules set up because their area was being used as a junkyard.
This satellite is being shifted in its orbit. They said it was to give better weather reporting. maybe they're moving it away from incoming junk. Satellite Orbit Shift To Improve South America Weather Forecasts Let's hope something doesn't hit it in transit.
Daily News http://newsblaze.com
I like space junk - it keeps the aliens away.
First off it makes us look like a poorer planet, I mean honestly who wants to conquer a home with a trans-am up on blocks in the front driveway and thousands of beer cans strewn about the lawn?? Sorry little green guys, we already stripmined this place!
But it's also practical -- long before the impending alien invasion can occur, they'll need to clean up the space junk before they can place their ships in near earth orbit. As soon as the space junk is gone, then there is really nothing to stop them from enslaving us and using us as a food source (mmm.. protein)
As far as i'm concerned space junk is one of the few things keeping us safe, that -- and of course the avian flu. (I'm harboring infected chickens in my cellar just in case one of those little green men shows up at my door)
We get rid of a piece of inane childrens program. And Oscar the Grouch will be in heaven (though we can't say about the other cast members).
What you gon' do with all that junk? ...
All that junk inside your trunk?
The space elevator will have to be protected from hits by debris. Good news is, once a hit occurs (provided it doesn't destroy the elevator) then any debris that sticks can be dismantled and taken down to earth or hurled into the sun.
"It's like any environmental problem," he said. "It's growing. If you don't tackle it now, it will only become worse, and the remedies in the future are going to be even more costly than if you tackle it today."
So like all the other environmental problems, a tiny percentage of the population will change it for the better, but the overwhelming majority will still contribute to the problem until it's so bad that, well, most environmental problems are still getting worse, so the outcome of that scenario has yet to be determined. Not good, though, I'd bet.
stuff |
Before we worry about space, we should clean up earth.
Lets start by getting all the garbage that early pioneers left in the mountians when they were headed to California. The Californians should pay for the clean up. They are the ones that left the stuff there, when it became too much hassle to carry. We all know that this won't happen until someone is running through the hills and hits an abandoned bed. Then the news will be all over it. Maybe we can collect all the trash and make something usefull from it. It is almost to CA and since everything is over priced there, profit$$.
If there's so much crap floating around out there, how is that taken into consideration when launching spacecraft, etc. into orbit, or further? Is it like flying into the proverbial flock of geese? What are the risks of hitting something when you're doing a space launch?
I just do not understand how the author can claim that the debris in space is going to increase after 2055 even without future launches. If that is the case then it certainly is much more than a man-made issue. That just doesn't make much sense to me at all.
A lot of news agencies are picking up this story. The full text of the article they're using is in the Science "Policy Forum": Risks in Space from Orbiting Debris.
Blofield can send up his spacecraft which can swallow other space capsules (You Only Live Twice) and thus space garbage!
"Oh, my God. It's Mega Maid. She's gone from suck to blow."
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Aerogel. It caught bits of comet travelling really fast.
To capture space junk though...A ginormous blob of it, bigger than anyone has ever made before. Are we capable of launching an object that can produce aerogel in orbit in large enough quantities?
... a real live Asteroids game!
Skimming though the replies, I'm surprised I haven't seen any mention of the Kessler syndrome. In a nutshell, space junk creates more space junk through collisions in a chain reaction that eventually renders LEO unusable for many years.
Perhaps NASA and othe space agencies need to launch satellites that will unfold into giant aerogel panels, similar to the collector on the Stardust spacecraft, but on a much larger scale. These giant fly swatters would sweep through space for a few years, picking up paint flecks and other micro-debris before being deorbited.
Of course, these spacecraft would have to steer clear of objects large enough to punch through their panels to avoid contributing to the Kessler syndrome, rather than avoiding it.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
1. Gather pent-up male Slashdot readers and point upwards ... ...ewww...I really just typed that.
2. JumboTron, Natalie Portman, various cooked breakfast cereals
3.
4. Profit! (from conglomerated space debris)
...what does your sig mean?
And for an excellent anime examining the possible effects of the issue of orbital debris (and for all I know, the only anime), check out "Planetes". I don't think it's been licensed for American TV distribution but it has been dubbed and fansubbed into English and it's available on DVD or *wink wink* online.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Consider: Even if you make it up to LEO for free, you have to get to the item and match your position and velocity in the direction the space salvage is traveling to a degree where you (or your robot, whatever) can grab it. Of course you have to abide by the ideal rocket equation http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/r ktpow.html. Great. You got your first piece. Now you have to change heading and velocity to intercept piece #2. These vectors aren't all heading in the same direction at the same location. And they are only tracking about 13,000 pieces in NEO ... that's not very many pieces given the vast area of space there is! Consider 13,000 random objects on the surface of the earth, now extend it upwards a hundred meters, and add a volume of 1000m in the vertical direction. Long story short, you can't turn a profit given the fact that you need fuel to power the robot to collect this stuff. And given the fact that commercial ventures are starting to break the price point barrier - check out spaceX - 10k a kg will drop an order of magnitude in the next 10 years, easy.
:\
Don't forget you have to be careful to dodge the amount of space trash out there when looking for new pieces. Probably costs a decent amount of time and money to maneuver around that garbage. Someone should really do something about it.
We should all go up there and see who can make the biggest Katamari!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
It is EXCELLENTLY written, and is great fun to watch even if you're not that interested in space trash. Great story, also deals a bit with global economics and what happens when you widen the development/financial gap between 1st and 3rd world countries even more by bringing the massive profits from space mining and tourism into play.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Increase the earth's gravity like they did with the speed of light and never told us. If the gravity is higher, the garbage will fall into the atmosphere. Than the military can lower it back to normal...
We hear about space junk being a hazard but I've never seen a reasonable explanation as to why. 13,000 objects spread out over a sphere of radius 6500km or so doesn't seem like a lot, even if they're all concentrated in just a few bands. Why is the danger of collision so high?
First genuine belly-laugh I've had on Slashdot in ages!
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
What is the biggest threat to the ISS right now, debris from the size of a dime to a dollar bill. This can be dealt with by capturing it and disposal.
One fix is to fire satellites into orbit designed to trap the debris in silica aerogel matricies. The birds in question would have to be built with maneuverbility in mind, the AI to detect the incoming particles, and to maneuver the "Catcher's Mitt" to capture the debris. We are talking about a satellite that would be nearly twice the size of the current record holder commo satellite, the Thaicom 4, due to the fuel supply for the craft would have to change orbits, velocities multiple times during the lifespan of the vehicle.
How big would the mitts be? How accurate would the sensors and software can we design without going overboard? Probably the best design would be the size of a large filing cabinet for a disposable mission, to the Stardust mission sized racket for a "bucket drop" profile.
Now the stickler: what do we do with all the junk that the system has caught? Several ideas come to mind. First we jettison the mitts and let them burn up on reentry. The second is a "bucket drop" or return mission. Seal the mitts in capsules and recover them for later examination to improve our understanding of material interaction with the harsh rigors of space.
How many mitts would be carried along for the ride depends on the satellite chassis itself. The initial design for a sacrifical mission would be a 4 "tennis racket" mitt configuration or 2 large filing cabinet sized mitts for maximum entrapment and disposal of material. The weight savings of not having the return vehicles would be the bonus side. The downside would be no research gained from the lost materials.
The best design of the mitts for capturing the debris, would have to be tne equivalant of many kevlar vests using ceramic plates to be effective in capturing the material. The weight considerations would be very restrictive, but we would have little or no choice in the matter for we are dealing with objects moving at very high velocities. The satellite's speed and agility would be able to deal with most of the fast-moving particles, but I expect that there will be holes put in the mitts from the heavier, faster moving ones.
My 2 cents worth
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Start grabbing them out of orbit and sell them on ebay to goldenpalace for $25,000 each. That way they can clean space and make a profit!
Thanks :)
I have high hopes that the Spaceship One technology will continue to evolve so that I can commence my plans for my retirement job- low orbit salvage and junk collection. This fulfills my boyhood dream of getting into space and it should pay pretty well in the next ten or twenty years. I'm not particularly worried that others will steal this idea- clearly there is enough junk out there for everyone.
But wasn't NASA responsible for a great deal of the space junk in the first place?
This is very much like saying "Teenager warns of cluttered room".
This sounds like the plotlie to "Salvage-1", a 70's era SciFi series. See http://imdb.com/title/tt0078681/
Clearly, most of this orbital debris comes from Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking people into space.
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Katamari Damacy.
There should be some Borgs somewhere that will "assimilate" it...
Ok, it's friday...
"If it costs $10k per kg to get something to LEO, all you have to do is find stuff already in LEO that could work, grab it, and put it to use. I'm sure some of the stuff up there has some practical application."
Sweet idea, but if anyone really wants to help humanity today , they should probably go to the dumps and scrapyards of any third-world-country currently being used as a hardware-"/dev/null" by us and try to work out how to make somehing worthwile out of that junk (without contaminating future generations of the locals).
Jus' sayin'... not really snarky.
sig? Oh, that sig...
Whoa!! After all I could be a space cowboy!!
...that there must be an absolutely enormous treasure in dollar value, research technology, and more....just lying there in public domain, waiting to be grabbed by young space entrepeneurs.
The future is now... I can already see Michael Jackson make a bid for the bones of Laika on eBay.
This is space- and we've got a nice big heat source less than 9 light seconds away.
What would that be? In case you are refering to the sun, it is about 8 light minutes away. (Sorry, could not resist.)
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
You know, the Peanuts strip character who went everywhere in a cloud of dust...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
nothin that a few square kilometers of aerogel couldn't solve.
It's only a model.
Is it feasible that we could be effectively imprisoned on our own planet by the accumulation of such debris?
If enough accumulates, the chances that a spacecraft will hit it go up dramatically.
Disasters similar to the Columbia might become commonplace. I know that was not caused by debris the came from an external source but you get my point.
A program designed to clear the LEO area would be necessary.
Something like a giant carbon fiber net designed to collect debris and bring it back to Earth or a large enough explosion to vaporize the junk.
Who said anything about bringing it all back to earth?
The point is somebody already paid the cost to get it to orbit. If you can find some use for it in orbit, you're saving a lot of money.
Atmospheric drag is like a little retro-thrust at perigee, which will not change the perigee altitude, but will lower the apogee alt until the orbit is roughly circular. After that it tends to decay "circularly". Highly eccentric orbits (geo transfer) have other non-intuitive effects.
I have no doubt in my mind that all of this will be resolved....once we build one of these.
A couple Katamari should do quite nicely!
We're busy setting a record for warmest day in January, thanks.
We should do what all the other planets do: use small moons to gather the debris into managable rings. a few massive objects, cunningly placed between earth and moon would disturb the orbits of smaller objects in question. Some would be pushed into the earth or out of orbit, and the rest would be in the rings. Rings are full of debris, but all are moving in more or less the same direction and in the same plane, so their impacts are less spectacular. Avoiding the debris means staying out of the plane of the ring. Collection also becomes simple. Surely there are some near-earth asteroids we could use?
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
The anime PlanetES is about a thrown-together group of space junk collectors. Just came out this year too.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Well if the japanese animated seires PLANETES is any indication, we'll have companies employing debris collectors by 2050 with government contracts to clear space of debris for commercial flights to the moon and back.
Link, please. I want to point and laugh.
For real. Bolt them together and make a space trailer park. Why should space be only for yuppies??? This is a job for folks who don't mind actual work and can get their hands dirty. Besides, bubbas would know what to do with the stuff, yuppies wouldn't have a clue, and government would appoint committees to decide if a committee should think about formulating a plan about what to do with the committees on space salvage. then they would turn it over to congress to vote on it, back to more committees. Scientists would just write grant proposals, which they would turn into the government committees..
You look at the history of past earth exploration, it was 1% scientists/explorers and one percent fancy uniformed soldiers and one percent governmental "managers" and 97% bubbas/desperadoes/mercenaries/cob jobbers hired on to do the actual work.
I have found that we bubbas actually don't need the other 3% to get stuff done, and we for SURE can do whatever needs to be done cheaper. Probably eventually someone is going to slap their head and realise that russia has massive heavy lift potential, cheaper than anyone else, and that's where the first actual space colonists will take off from. It's not going to be space ventures (yuppie scientists and wall street tech shills) or galactic virgins (yuppie tourists) or nasa ('nuff said), that's a gimmee.
I read the whole article, and well, I still don't see where's the news. We've heard about that debris thing for years on TV and all that, so what's new with this article, that they confirm that the situation is bad, or that they consider fixing the problem, although it has already been considered?
You just got troll'd!
This is the perfect scenario for an old game "Asteroids" to be updated... Blow up the crap, get points, blow up a functional satellite, lose big points. Blow up the ISS, get fried by Ronald Reagan's Rayguns.
I think it's got potential...
Sign me as a Gamer, who gamed long ago when all your home system played was pong or double pong(hockey) who fed many a quarters into Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Space Invaders deluxe too, and an all time favorite BattleZone....
I'd be happy to go out and zap the crap!
Sig Hansen?
Ahhh!!! The sky is falling!
Cheesy Movie Night
Joke waiting to happen: So the government admits to being able to track anything larger then a coke can hundreds of miles above the earth in orbit, but we still can't keep track of millions of illegal aliens on the ground?
*rim-shot*
That's a shield!
One man's junk is another man's protection from alien invaders!
The sky if falling, the sky is falling! BONK!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Before anyone mods this down as Offtopic, read what I have to say:
Planetes takes place in the early 21st century, after the first major civilian space flight disaster is caused by a random floating bolt punching through the window. The general story follows a small company on a space station, who's business is collecting space junk and keeping the orbital paths (relatively) clear.
This, mind you, is a fairly logical business venture for civilian space travel. In order to keep orbital debris from posing a hazard to business, military, and civilian spacecraft, someone needs to work up there, collecting and either deorbiting or recycling space junk. It could cost in the billions to keep working up there, but the savings offered to those with vested interests up there would be several times that.
Secondly, you can make a good deal from recycling various components, or even more from governments who want their top secret property returned to them. And imagine the stuff you could sell on eBay, launch motors from an Atlas to display in your back yard? A left over chunk of insulation from an external fuel tank? A glove lost from an unsecured airlock? The mind boggles.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I forget the novel, but was about mankind having to end its space program and be "trapped" on earth due to too much space junk. Does nayone remember the name of this?
Non-equatorial orbits are also unstable due to the gravitational feedback of the equatorial bulge. Space junk would last longest in a very thin equatorial orbit, i.e. a ring system. Even ring systems are unstable and decay, but last longer than tilted orbits.
Wasn't there a space comedy in the 70's/80's that was based on a Space Garbage Ship?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
PlanetES. If you don't know, it was about trash collectors in space. Damn cool show.
I am not worried about the garbage in space. It's a freaking big place - including just orbit of space. I am more worried about the stuff we could recycle - lots of junk in space means less stuff here. Meh, it is miniscule. We don't have enough stuff on this planet to even come close to making a dent in near earth orbit.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
There's no need to scoop all this stuff up - it's already in a vacuum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series)
'nuff said
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
This is becoming a very big problem. Nobody wants to have a 10cm object hit them at 1000mph in space. Space tourism? Sign this release form...
So, let's look at the situation - Orbiting garbage. We need space janitors. Giant robots that pick up garbage, except the garbage is moving really fast.
All you need is the world's largest and strongest giant Net that is "pulled" around the earth at various altitudes and you could just sweep up the garbage.
Or... you need a really sticky giant substance that will collect the smaller objects. Maybe a few dozen giant balls of silly putty in orbit?
Or... turn it into a "starwars" weapons testing ground. Let the government track garbage in space and blow it up. Our tax dollars at work. Just make sure we don't blow up any of *our* satellites.
Let people volunteer for space cleanup duty. I bet a lot of people would volunteer to go to space, put on a giant catchers' mit and catch space garbage.
Hey, if it's there we might as well make use of it
Here is the thread.
:P
Read the whole thread in its entirety. He whines and bitches because (A) he had posted the same article but didn't get selected for it and (B) his massive ego determined that his write-up was better and therefore deserved the post. If this thread alone isn't proof that he's an egomaniacal karma whore, then I don't know what is.
Of course, you could have found it by looking at his post history and seeing all of the -1 Offtopic posts in one post thread.
Nasa should take a cue from Sun and implement garbage collection.
"NASA Warns of Cluttered Space" - Who are they warning? Themselves? "humans have been generating space junk" - Erm, no Humans haven't - Nasa has. I dont have a bin next to my recycle bin that says "space junk" guys.
The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!
My idea has been to send up a large mylar bag (don't laugh 8-) which would then be inflated with a foam that would set up (sort of like poly-styrine [sp?] or the foam insulation you can have injected into the walls of your house). This would create a large solid-but-permiable object where debris could agregate. The foam would tend to absorb debris and their energy.
The planned orbit of this semi-solid object would be set up to intersect a lot of the smaller bits. This would damage the "bag" but once the foam was set the "tatterd" bag would still help keep the object in one chunk.
Many impacts would puncture the bag of course, which would result in a "catch" of the object.
Many other objects would bounce off the object, which would rob the offending debris of a lot of kenetic energy, causing them to deorbit.
The object itself would have a whole lot of surface area compared to its mass, so it would deorbit in a matter of days (if not hours).
This would be especially effective if the object were actually in a retrograde orbit.
So anyway, we end up with a big blob of foam with a bunch of wrenches and screws and metal tidbits embedded in it burning up on reentry all at once, instead of individual objects in excentric decaying orbits...
"Sky Clearance" anyone? (Thankyou Max Headroom).
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
looky here-- it's been done.
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/feather.html
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Suddenly, the plotline for asteroids seems clear!
Deadly Litter (c) 1964 by James White
(trolling for Karma)
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Well, it's a start. I didn't say it would be efficient.
Wouldn't it be cool if Earth had rings like Saturn? We're working on it.
They don't mention it on Wikipedia but Gordon Shumway (aka ALF) was one of the guys destroying space debris in orbit (one of the reasons he was able to escape the Melmac explision IIRC).
In the Alf Tales cartoon the starting sequence showed him zapping stuff in space before returning to Melmac wand rejoining with family and friends.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield