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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."
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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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
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'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?
it's not so easy to collect them.
The real problem is the wildly different velocities of each different piece. These things are zooming along at bullet speeds, and some weigh more than an SUV. The problem is how one neutralizes these enormous differentials in kinetic energy.
If you tried to collect them in a ball by catching them, each new piece you intercepted would smack into it, creating 1000 new pieces of debris all with wildly random vectors of their own.
Perhaps if you had some kind of foamy goop that absorbed the energy... but it has to remain pliable in a frozen vacuum.
This plug-in shows the mess up there quite clearly, and it's only showing a fraction of whats really above our heads
Another axiom proved true.
"No matter what your interested in, no matter how esoteric you might think it is, there is a magazine about it."
Also, there are a lot of objects up there (spent rocket stages, dead satellites) that stand a good chance of exploding as they age (from leaking hypergolic propellants, etc.), which tends to generate lots and lots of chunks that are too small to track but big enough to cause said VBD.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman