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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."
Also, a lot of this stuff has gold in it, being that it is the most reflective material on earth, it is most often used in sheets to reflect solar radiation. I know there is still bunches on the moon at least.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
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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 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.
Yes, there are numerous ways to retrieve material (see the Long Duration Exposure Facility), but AFAIK, all of them are quite expensive. Something that moves material into a graveyard orbit, or otherwise moves it out of the way of important stuff is probably a much more efficient idea.
(as a sideline, saying that something that anything can be economical enough if people just used their imagination is a little silly... while imagination can make the impossible into the possible, you still have to always compare the cost of doing something one way versus doing it another... and there's always going to be a cheapest way to do something, no matter how much imagination you apply to a problem)
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/
What a great series of games that was...
Why does Luxembourg have 9 satellites? I find it odd that they'd have more than countries like Italy and Australia and that China has only 3 times as many. Does Luxembourg handle satellite launches for other European countries or companies as an alternative to the ESA?
Unless you want to put a foundry to melt metal,
This is space- and we've got a nice big heat source less than 9 light seconds away. A big magnifying glass makes a great foundry under those conditions; especially in a vaccuum where the heat isn't going to disipate except by radiation.
something else to fold it into usefull shapes
Something like say, a sheet press? Or just propel the molten material to where you need it, wait for raidative cooling to harden it, and leave it in place. Or mold it.
and welding equipment to put it together in the space station
Which we've already got in place- to put together the space station....
The whole idea that a used 30 year old rocket motor is going to be usefull for someone in a damn space station is ridiculous.
That's the idea- we don't need no imagination as long as we can label things as being ridiculous!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Just encase the space ship in a Faraday cage, stick two metals rods out of each end, and run a powerful magnetic field through them. Any metallic debris will hit at one of the poles which can be replaced rather easily. Sufficiently large debris must be shot with frik'n lasers and vaporized. Flying space monkeys can be warded off with banana cannons.
"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.
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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.
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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.
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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?