On the Matter of Space Junk

SpaceAdmiral writes "Nature reports that space is in need of cleaning. From the article: 'Space could soon become too risky to visit unless derelict satellites and rockets are removed from orbit. That's the stark warning from a new simulation of space junk drifting around the Earth, and scientists are calling for swift international action to solve the problem.'" According to another astronaut there is at least one more piece of space trash they haven't accounted for. Philip K Dickhead writes "Veteran astronaut Mike Mullane claimed that the NASA Space Shuttle is 'the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown [...] It has no powered-flight escape system." He also accused US space officials of suppressing safety concerns raised by crew-members of shuttle flights."

Comments

satellites and Starry Night software

[calyxa]

I have Starry Night, a night sky simulator, and I was amazed at what things looked like when I set my location to the north pole and sped up time by 300x. There were dozens of satellites zooming overhead constantly!

Re:satellites and Starry Night software

[mkosmo]

I use Orbiter ( http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ ) as my space flight simulator. Too bad it doesnt feature space junk :) They also accurately represent space objects as you add them, and its amazing... despite there being so much area... i thought I was too close within 10000 miles of anything. Then again, at those speeds, that is close. Space flight is tricky, and the shuttle does need some escape, but also, we do need to clean our trash out there as we do here. It will be a sad day when space is as full as your local landfill...

Re:satellites and Starry Night software

[deezilmsu]

+1 funnay to the parent. I've actually wondered about all the junk out there. I know it's had to be alot between all the manned and unmanned spacecraft taht have left their mark in the atmosphere just from this country. Then add Soviet Russia and the rest of the Eurasians, and there has to be alot up there.

Make the corporations responsible..

[QuantumG]

For a start, rewrite the space treaty so governments are not responsible for everything their citizens launch into space. Next, hold the corporations responsible for their own mess. For every year they fail to deorbit their space junk (or boost it into a safe parking orbit) charge them a fine. If the fine is just twice as high as a terminator tether they'll soon take care of their space junk.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[lazybratsche]

This might be a step in the right direction, but it only addresses the problem of big peices of debris (i.e. whole satallites or components).

What sounds like the bigger problem is all the tiny hard to track fragments, the sort of stuff created when stages of a rocket seperate explosively. Here, perhaps, more work could be done in developing rockets and satellites that don't shed this sort of garbage.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[Mr2cents]

Ok, You start a new company that "manages" your satellite. You give it money to build, launch and operate your equipment. When it's worn out, you end the contract, and the company goes bankrupt. And voila, corporatism wins again.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[QuantumG]

Well if you want to declare your satelite to be not owned by you, go right ahead. I'd love to see some space salvage operations.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[Bad D.N.A.]

And that is going to make money for someone...how?

The cost of the salvage s/c + 100M to launch and for what?
To hook up with some piece of junk that does not work any more?

Not in your or my lifetime.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[QuantumG]

Try to think outside the box, I know it's hard.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[Anonymous Coward]

'outside the box' shouldn't include outside the reasonable. salvaging dying/dead satellites with technology many years old doesn't sound profitable, inside the box or out.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[Bad D.N.A.]

Oh I think outside the box...

My problem is my box does not extend beyond the exosphere.

If yours does, then size really does matter.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[DerekLyons]

What sounds like the bigger problem is all the tiny hard to track fragments, the sort of stuff created when stages of a rocket seperate explosively. Here, perhaps, more work could be done in developing rockets and satellites that don't shed this sort of garbage.

Well, welcome to 2006 - where not shedding debris has been the gold standard for a decade and more. Contrary to the TFA, the problem *is* being adressed. Among other things, every major rocket manufacturer has modified stages of theirs that will be left in orbit to depressurize themselves at the end of the burn - no pressure, no breakup. Every major rocket manufacturer has replaced their seperation systems with ones that don't shed parts.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[lazybratsche]

I did not know that... interesting. Still, I wonder how far these efforts go, and how much more could be done.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[IcyHando'Death]

Well, actually you aren't contradicting the article, but agreeing with it. TFA states:

For the past ten years, major space agencies have ensured than anything launched into space will come back down to Earth within 25 years of its mission end date.

Unfortunately this doesn't address the problem adequately. The article also states that their simulation assumed that all space launches were halted in Dec. 2004. The danger arises from the inevitable collisions of junk that's already up there now, producing smaller but still lethal and much more numerous projectiles.

The problem is not being addressed until we start bringing the junk that's already up there back down.

Re:Make the corporations responsible..

[lilmouse]

Just like corporations are responsible for cleaning up really bad pollution sites - that's worked so well! Oh, wait...the superfund is primarily taxpayed-funded, and many of the sites are still dirty! Oh, what a surprise!

Maybe if you required commercial endeavors to put a giant amount of $$$ in escrow when they put up a satellite that might work...

Besides, there's no international law court that can fine a corportation. Yeah, a corp based out of Afghanistan launched some garbage up from their site in China, and then closed down the site there. I'm sure we'll have no problem getting a fine slapped on them in Afghanistan. Let's be serious here.

--LWM

Ken MacLeods Books

[MishgoDog]

Ken MacLeod's Sky Road presents a scenario space is so cluttered part of the premise of the book is that an AI is required to navigate it - no human could leave Earth because of the chaos up there. Lets hope it doesn't get that far!

Sounds like we need the Debris Section!

[EvilMagnus]

Planetes deals with exactly this problem. Only they didn't see it as being an issue until the 2070s (the series takes place in 2075).

Still, a pretty fun anime, and the manga is even better.

Re:Sounds like we need the Debris Section!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes! planetes is great, first thing i think of when someone mentions this. I guess from some standpoints you could say "space junk is great! look at all the jobs it could provide!" but it would be best to avoid it. and the manga is better. both pretty good though.

new moon

[j1m 5n0w]

Maybe if we gathered them in one place we could eventually have a new (very small) moon that could be easily tracked and avoided. I suppose it would be below the roche limit, and would thus perhaps need to be caught in a net, or a strong magnet.

Anyone care to guess which would require more delta v, deorbiting a satelite or moving it to a "designated rubbish pile"? It seems like some space debris would be salvageable, it seems a shame to drop it back into the atmosphere after spending so much fuel to get it up there in the first place.

Anyone have any good ideas for the names of aforementioned moons?

Re:new moon

[coyote-san]

I'm sure it would be much cheaper to deorbit. You need to change the orbital mechanics so the junk starts to pass through the upper atmosphere, but you can let air resistance deorbit the trash over weeks or months.

In contrast to put everything into a parking orbit you have to change all of the orbital parameters. Changing your orbital inclination can be expensive.

Re:new moon

[Seanasy]

Anyone have any good ideas for the names of aforementioned moons?

Katamari.

Re:new moon

[xMilkmanDanx]

Likely would be easier than collecting pieces individually. Gathering up pieces close to an objects current orbit is easier as relative velocities are lower. A large disc (ok, very large) at geosynchronous orbit of a viscous, gluelike material (hard to keep like that in vacuum and temp range) would eventually gather any pieces within the radius of the disc from the orbit that aren't going retrograde or significantly outside of a circular orbit. Of course, that's probably the least dangerous of the garbage out there.

Then the more mass it gathers, the greater the range of relative velocities that it can take impacting. Movement to different orbits could be handled with launching off parts at high velocity (past escape velocity or angled such that they'll burn up).

Realistically, this is currently unfeasible, though might be doable in the not too distant future. Needed: core rail gun to launch projectiles for orbit adjustment, orientation thrusters, sufficient solar/nuclear power to operate rail gun, minirobot(s) capable of moving over junk pile to gather suitable pieces for launch and welding of junk together (assuming glue is untennable idea)

Re:new moon

[Phil Karn]

Disposal orbits don't have to be totally different or hard to reach from operational orbits. They just have to be far enough away to not jeopardize the satellites that are still operating. No plane change is required.

Whether it takes less delta-vee to deorbit or go into a disposal orbit depends on the
orbit. Deorbiting a geostationary satellite is much harder than kicking it into a slightly higher disposal orbit, so that's what usually happens. Only one precise altitude is geostationary, so anything higher is not especially useful for communications.

Low orbits are different. Deorbiting is often practical. If not, then a slightly higher disposal orbit is again used. The most popular LEO orbits are just inside the lower edge of the inner Van Allen belt, so radiation levels increase sharply with altitude and it doesn't take much delta-V to reach an orbit that's too hot for an operational satellite.

Launcher upper stages are an important special case. Most either carry enough fuel to deorbit immediately or are placed into short-lived orbits. Often those orbits are highly eccentric (e.g., upper stages on geostationary launches) and they tend to be unstable and short-lived due to lunar and solar perturbations.

With the recycling!

[Gorimek]

It gets real useful when you then build a space station out of all that "trash". It's not perfect, but given that it costs $10k/kg to send up cusom made stuff, you should be able to do a lot, given the right tools.

Re:With the recycling!

[Anonymous Coward]

10k/kg is peanuts.

Re:With the recycling!

[cbcanb]

Trust me, it's much cheaper just launching new stuff at $10k/kg than to bodge together something using the junk already there.

It's called "space junk" for a reason. Some of it's probably OK, but most of it is real garbage.

Re:With the recycling!

[Bad D.N.A.]

WTF? And who is going to put it together?

You can launch a ton of custom made stuff for the price of just one dude
You do know that it takes an army of people to build these things right?

Do you really think you can make/assemble any device worth anything with the junk flying around for cheaper than it would cost just to build it here and launch it? I'm not convinced you could do that if all of the parts were sitting in a lab on the ground somewhere, with a whole team at your disposal, to say nothing of just a couple of people in zero G.

Before we even begin to suggest that NASA should attempt this sort of thing lets see companies right here on Earth use the landfills full of old computer parts for something significant.

Naming the new moon!

[Onuma]

Spaceborne Trailer Park. All that would be there is trash, seems fitting enough.

Re:Naming the new moon!

[ceoyoyo]

Names: Shady Acres Mobile Home Park? Forest Glen? Gotta watch out for those space twisters though.

motivation

[bcrowell]

I'd be much more motivated to clean up my garage if I had to move through it constantly, while the junk was all whizzing by at relative velocities of thousands of miles an hour.

Re:motivation

[Bad D.N.A.]

Really?

Even if it cost you like a gazzilion dollars to clean your garage with only a miniscule chance you would ever come in contact with the hypersonic junk, and then only a miniscule fraction of those times it would pose an actual problem?

That would be one seriously expensive spring cleaning

If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[qualico]

So if we can't even clean up some small space junk hundreds of kilometers from Earth, what makes people think they have even a remote chance of diverting an asteroid?

No doubt the problems are different, but discouraging none the less.

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0726/p01s04-stss.htm l

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[blackraven14250]

You can't get rid of space junk with a nuke though, now can you?

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[qualico]

Actually, could that be a possible solution?

Rain down on the largest concentration of junk with a directed blast towards Earth to cover a wide area.

Never mind...just grasp at straws.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Jerf]

Big number fallacy; a nuke is big, sure, but let's be amazingly optimistic and assume it can completely physically clear a 10-mile radius of space junk, while not adding anything itself.

The average radius of the Earth is 3,959 miles, call it 4000. The definition of LEO orbit is from 400 to 1600 miles above the Earth. Sphere volume (close enough) is defined as (4/3)*pi*r^3.

To cover LEO, we need to cover a volume of (4.0/3)*pi*((4000+1600)**3 - (4000+400)**3) miles, which is 378,000,000,000 cubic miles (378 American billion). Our incredible optimistic nuke can "clean" (4.0/3)*pi*(10 **3) cubic miles, or 4,200 cubic miles. Dividing the (unrounded) numbers reveals that we need to set off 90,449,062 (~90 million) miracle nukes to clean the orbit.

(If you start python and type as your first line "from math import pi", those expressions will slide right into Python so you can verify them. Insignificant figures have been trimmed for presentation.)

And it's even harder than that, since the objects are moving at different speeds, and it's quite easy for objects to slip between the cracks if we don't light up the entire orbit at once.

Clearly, this is absurd, because we don't even have that many pieces of space trash in orbit, by many orders of magnitude. Because of the difference, we don't even need to do any sort of statistics to safely conclude that there are no "concentrations" of space trash that could be nuked, and we are in fact going to have to address the situation one piece of trash at a time.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[qualico]

ok, so forget that outrageous thought.

How about some sort of roving unit that shoots these things down?
They are doing the star wars thing anyway, give em something to shoot at.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[dev_alac]

One thing you do NOT want to do is to set off a nuke in orbit. One good blast and LEO is uninhabitable by all satellites for years. There was a Scientific American article on this in August 04. So atomic weapons in earth orbit are a bad thing. We need other ideas, such as big balls of foam with awful ballistic coefficients or something like that.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Bad D.N.A.]

Mod parent up and with extra nerd points for making the math python compatible!

As parent indirectly points out cleaning the junk is a task many orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive then putting the junk there in the first place.

We have junk/landfill problems here on the ground that we do not have a solution for. Sure we should try to minimize the amount of refuse we leave in orbit but unless/until we are ready to abandon space because we simply pollute it too much, we should try to find solutions to the junk problems here on the ground. Once that problem is solved then we can try to apply the solutions to space.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[DoraLives]

So if we can't even clean up some small space junk hundreds of kilometers from Earth, what makes people think they have even a remote chance of diverting an asteroid?

Actually, what will happen is that we will develop a kick ass asteroid diverter, an inbound Death Asteroid will be found, the asteroid diverter will be launched on its mission to save the world, but it will collide with a piece of space junk on the way up and be destroyed, thus resulting in the death of everybody.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Bad D.N.A.]

I remember in grad school my prof. discussed an event in the 60's 70's? where we did exactly that.

I dont remember if he discussed any specific orbit or L shell that was involved but I do remember that he stated that everything in that orbit was knocked out.

Does anyone have any factual references to this 'event?'.

I've wondered about this for a while.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Frumious Wombat]

Just idly curious: I was brought up on old sci-fi like Niven, with the various Bussard Ramjets as the plot device to get us to interstellar space. However, one story had a more reasonable design of a scoop made of some ultra-light mesh, which was magnetized.

So...

Since much of the junk is fairly small, and it should be carrying a charge from the solar wind, could you run a dragnet across some suitable orbit, charged to the same polarity, and electrostatically bump everything below it at a certain range back into the atmosphere? Is this idea (it's late) on the scale of "in a few years with some engineering", "space-elevator time-frame", or "we'll see Bussard ramjets leave for Tau Ceti first?"

I presume the alternative "try to live with it", is going to become untenable soon.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[qualico]

lol, that would be funny more than tragic.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Phil Karn]

Your professor almost certainly was talking about a series of US "high altitude" (i.e., space) nuclear weapons tests performed in 1958 and in 1962. This was at the very beginning of the "space age", so while the radiation effects on the few satellites in orbit were very significant (or fatal in some cases) there weren't many of them up there to be destroyed.

You can find good writeups in any good history of US nuclear testing. The Wikipedia article on "Nuclear testing" is as good a place to start as any. Look for "Rocket-propelled warheads".

This sort of thing was banned by the Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed by the US and USSR in 1963.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Detritus]

Nukes in space do not behave like nukes in the dense atmosphere of the Earth. Most of the effects that we associate with nuclear weapons are the result of a complex set of interactions between the nuclear fireball and the Earth's atmosphere. A nuclear weapon in space produces most of its energy in the form of soft x-rays from black-body radiation. Good for killing an exposed astronaut but of little value for doing anything to inanimate objects.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[shadowbearer]

  I can't see any reason why it couldn't be done.

  I can think of a few problems, however :)

  For one, you'd likely need a nuclear reactor to keep the mesh charged.

  For another, to be effective, it'd have to be at least hundreds of miles across. Tides would play merry hell with a structure like that, as would other particles, like sunlight and the upper atmosphere. You'd have to have ion thrusters on the outsides to keep it open and oriented (oh well, we already have a nuclear reactor, just need some working mass)

  Anything larger than perhaps a kilogram, depending on your field strength, is going to make a hole in the mesh.

  There are satellites in LEO we want to keep, too :)

  FWIW, I think it can be done, I'm just not sure how practical it is. Of course, once we develop 'turbo-laser blasters and photon torpedoes', we can simply blast the junk to oblivion ;-)

SB

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Frumious Wombat]

You'll notice that I didn't mention running out to patent this process. :~)

Too bad; I imagine the "Floating Junk Meteor Shower of 2012" would have been quite a show.

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[dev_alac]

The event is called Starfish and it pretty much cleaned out LEO. I think we just gave the data to the Soviets and told them "don't do this, it's just that bad for both of us."

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[Bad D.N.A.]

Thanks, that concurs with what I was told (without the actual name).

I remember my prof. catagorized this as one of the dumbest things that we have done in the last x+ years (that was of course 10 years ago but I haven't forgotten it).

My curiosity on this topic falls along the lines of all the fancy GPS military hardware we have. If the oposition (whoever that may be) could detonate a device in a GPS orbit would that cripple the defense/offense system of the military? No doubt? smart men have thought about this and have solved this problem long ago???

Re:If we can't clean up junk, forget other NEOs.

[dev_alac]

Most military hardware on orbit is hardened against events like this. It'll survive for a while. At least long enough for us to figure out what to do about whoever launched it. I can only point to that scientific american issue for more information on what may or may not be possible in such an event. Regardless, ALL civillian LEO craft will be destroyed within months, if not weeks. GEO sats would be unaffected for the most part.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy just shouldn't be such a dickhead about it!

OK

[hurfy]

'the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown '

As opposed to the ones that have a powered ejection seat...

Surely you cant eject gracefully from that little Russian capsule either, or can you?

So the LEAST dangerous one would be ???

or does he simply work for a aerospace design corp now?

WOuld be handy i suppose IF you were in the right time of launch to use it and IF you had time to activate and IF you were pointed the right way (wouldn't really want to eject toward the path of a booster rocket or something).

Exactly how long does one have when the bomb you are riding on goes off? Didnt the first one blow up almost immediately?
Certainly you cant eject during reentry, if your ship is burning up, isnt that jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?!?

Re:OK

[NeuroManson]

If memory serves, you can bail out of Russian capsules after reentry. They use high explosives to cushion the landings, so if those fail, you have Russian stew (the hard way). The airborne bailout is supposed to be one of those last resort deals.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

> Surely you cant eject gracefully from that little
> Russian capsule either, or can you?

The capsule itself isn't dangerous, so there's no need to eject from it. The danger is the rocket it's attached to. That's why Mercury, Apollo, Soyuz and Shenzhou all have what's called an "escape tower". That's a big solid rocket attached to the top of the capsule which will fire if the main rocket starts to blow up. The escape tower will haul the capsule away from the exploding rocket, then the parachutes open and the capsule lands. The Russians have had at least two incidents where their crews were saved by this system.

Gemini capsules were on a rocket filled with a fuel that burned slow enough that any explosion would be much less violent, so they had ejection seats instead of an escape tower.

Shuttle has no options. When it goes boom, everyone dies.

Re:OK

[Dun Malg]

Exactly how long does one have when the bomb you are riding on goes off? Didnt the first one blow up almost immediately?

The Challenger crew compartment was essentially still one piece when it hit the ocean. Considering that part crew escape mechanism design involves engineering decisions like NOT putting the crew vehicle next to the "bomb" , like the space shuttle, but rather putting it on top, like [soyuz|apollo|other traditional] spacecraft; well, yeah, then there's plenty of time for a solid fuel rocket to separate them from the fireball.

Certainly you cant eject during reentry, if your ship is burning up, isnt that jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?!?

The space shuttle is a flimsy design, 30 years out of date. "Standard" spacecraft design is pretty darn reliable-- they basically don't burn up on reentry because they're not built out of ceramic foam blocks glued onto superlight carbon fiber frames, they have predictable non-flimly ablative heat shields. The only time you'd ever need to "bail out" with a standard design would be if the parachute failed, after actual reentry, and that is (in theory) possible.

So basically the two space shuttle accidents have shown that it is a highly vulnerable system. A fuel tank explosion on launch of (say) one of the Apollo/Saturn V launches would result in the crew module separating and being pulled away by the solid fuel rockets of the escape tower for a safe parachute landing. Damage to the reentry vehicle from an insulating foam chunk off the launch vehicle would be impossible, given that A) the former is above the latter, B) it's not built like french racing bicycle out of delicate materials, but more like a solid military aircraft.

Re:OK

[Dun Malg]

... Russian capsules after reentry. They use high explosives to cushion the landings

They use solid-fueld braking rockets for last-second deceleration of a parachute landing. Rocket failure might result in some pretty nasty bumps and bruises, but that's all. It's a highly reliable system. The soviets even used it for para-dropping armored vehicles with the crew strapped inside. NASA opted for "splashdown" and naval recovery for simplicity's sake.

Re:OK

[NeuroManson]

Ah, okay. Could have sworn at one time or another, that they actually used explosives to counteract the impact. Maybe earlier models of Soyuz capsules?

Re:OK

[WegianWarrior]

As opposed to the ones that have a powered ejection seat...

As opposed to the ones that have any form of escapesystem at all. The Gemini and the Vostok used ejection seats (the use of which was the normal mode of ladning in the case of the Vostok - the cosmonaut did not ride his capsule all the way down). The majority of manned spacecrafts (Mercury, all the various versions of the Soyuz, Apollo, Shenzhou and the planned CEV) fetures escape towers - a rocket that will pull the part of the spacecraft with people inside away from any accidents (and hopefully high enought up for parachutes to work). As far as I can tell, the Shuttle shares the dubious distinction to be one of two (the other was Voskhod, which was basicly a juryrigged Vostok) to have flown in space with no escapesystem at all.

Back in the 'good, old days', a lot of thought went into weird and wonderfull ways to bail out from orbit, but these days it seems like there is little will to admidt that things can go horrible wrong up there...

Re:OK

[Rxke]

Read the summary again: "It has no powered-flight escape system." Soyuz has this. As had Apollo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system it's usually a little solid-fuel rocket atop the crew cabin, that brings you out of harm's reach when a launcher fails catastrophically. Such a system could've saved the Challenger crew. Normally these things work automatically, whenever certain parameters go out of a certain range (signifying something's seriously wrong.)The first generation of Soyuz had this too, but it was triggered manually by flight control, almost cost the live of one cosmonaut when his rocket started misbehaving, IIRC. He sat there, unable to do anything, hoping launch-control would react in time.

Re:OK

[Detritus]

These systems have a limited flight envelope. They may work when something goes wrong on the pad, or in the early phases of ascent, but once you reach a certain speed/altitude, you are fscked if something major goes wrong.

Re:OK

[Rxke]

Launch and early ascent phases are arguably the most dangerous episodes in a spaceflight, next to reentry. You're *always* fucked when something mayor goes wrong. Does not mean you don't have to try to implement some safety-measures, esp. when these are relatively painless to implement re: costs and weight-penalties. Safety-belts and airbags have saved countless of lives, but you're still fucked when something mayor goes wrong. I don't see car-manufacturers not installing these items because of that. (I know flawed analogy, aren't they all...)

Re:OK

[Detritus]

Many people are under the mistaken impression that these escape systems are a cure-all for anything going wrong during ascent.

Re:OK

[Rxke]

Heh, probably so. They're a last-ditch attempt at saving lives, just like the ejection seat. (not all pilots survive using those) I can imagine astronauts not being too enthousiastic having to use the emergency-system, but if you have to choose between 100% chance of dying and a smaller percentage of it happening, ...

Re:OK

[Dun Malg]

Ah, okay. Could have sworn at one time or another, that they actually used explosives to counteract the impact. Maybe earlier models of Soyuz capsules?

Nah, explosives can really only impart one quick, violent, generally omnidirectional force. Kinda like trying to slow a car down by having people on the side of the road hit it with a sledgehammer.

Hahahaha oh my fucking god

[Wisgary]

Was anyone else suddenly shocked by the serious tone of the article switching to a nice "Philip K. Dickhead"???? HAHAHAHA

Re:Hahahaha oh my fucking god

[DickBreath]

Yes, I was just Shocked!, Shocked, I tell you to see that such a name would not be taken seriously.

Quick clean

[Rhinan]

What we need is a space magnet...

Re:Quick clean

[Skeezix]

I think we need a vacuum in space. Oh, wait...

NASA suppressing safety concerns?

[dtfinch]

Those space shuttles are pretty expensive IIRC. They're not going to save much money by putting them at risk.

dupe

[kobach]

yet another duplicate story. eventually all /. is going to be is dupes. what a sad world we live in.

MegaMaid to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is the "MegaMaid" from SpaceBalls. If it could suck the atmosphere off planets, I'm sure it'd also do the trick nicely with all that space garbage

It'll clean itself up...

[vrmlguy]

Once peak oil/global warming/the singularity hits, no one will be launching anything for quite a while. This will give the crap in low orbit a chance to drop lower and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

various uses for space junk

[j1m 5n0w]

Trust me, it's much cheaper just launching new stuff at $10k/kg than to bodge together something using the junk already there.

It's called "space junk" for a reason. Some of it's probably OK, but most of it is real garbage.

I suppose that depends on the intended purpose. I don't think assembling a space station out of it is practical (at least, not without a lot of manufacturing infrastructure that we don't have in orbit right now), however, it could be used as part of a space elevator counterweight (assuming the significant orbit modification can be made more cheaply than launching a similarly heavy object from the ground), or use the debris as the reaction mass for a mass driver, or use it as a radiation shield.

Re:various uses for space junk

[Anonymous Coward]

part of a space elevator counterweight (assuming the significant orbit modification can be made more cheaply than launching a similarly heavy object from the ground)

Why in the world would you launch it? You have a space _elevator_.

Another solution, since nukes can't be used

[BerntB]

Nukes are neat. You might be able to build 'em big enough to solve this, but there might be consequences. :-)

If nothing else, nukes close to the Earth would blow the civilian satellites with radiation. That is why Orions can't start from the surface these days, if I remember correctly from the "Project Orion" book... :-(

I read about an alternative on the Usenet space groups. See the first hit on this, for instance.

deposit?

[j1m 5n0w]

Perhaps the solution would be to require companies to put down a deposit whenever they stick something in orbit. They get it back when the object leaves orbit.

"the first one"

[barakn]

If you are referring to Challenger, it became engulfed in flame 74 seconds into flight. The intact crew cabin smashed into the ocean 164 seconds later. I wouldn't call that immediately.

Space Nets, Recycling Programs and Alien Janitors

[qualico]

How about a Space Net that scoops up debris?

The area of collection is small in comparison to the orbital space, however, over time everything should coalesce into one manageable unit as it sweeps overhead.

Then if possible, direct it to a solar trajectory or burn it up in the atmosphere.

Another option could be to offer commercial ventures incentives to collect space junk. The items returned are paid back per weight.
Some smartass will figure out that eBay buyers will also pay big bucks for a piece of historic space junk.

Anyway, just some thoughts.
No doubt the problem is a difficult one to solve.

Perhaps when we make first contact, some alien race offers space junk cleanup at a good discount. "No Earth credits refused! Order now and get free mystery rocks!"

bootstrapping

[j1m 5n0w]

Why in the world would you launch it? You have a space _elevator_.

You need the counterweight to build the space elevator in the first place. Once in place, newer, stronger space elevators could indeed use the original elevator to hoist new counterweights into place.

Chain reaction..

[aero2600-5]

You would think the potential loss of almost all the satellites in orbit would make them do something about this. The junk floating around in our orbit is a disaster waiting to happen. The satellite traffic is already pretty heavy. Assume that one of the satellites suffers a direct hit from a meteor or a fast moving piece of space junk. You're satellite has just become about 100 pieces of space junk. Assume that just two of those pieces collide with other satellites. Now there are a couple hundred pieces of space junk in that particular orbit. Follow the chain reaction, and we could lose most of our satellites in just a few weeks.

We're going to wind up with rings just like Saturn, but ours is going to be the remains of our communications infrastructure.

Aero

Re:Chain reaction..

[scrwvwls]

We're going to wind up with rings just like Saturn, but ours is going to be the remains of our communications infrastructure.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't space junk low orbiting though?

Re:new moon (oblig.)

[Anonymous Coward]

That is no moon! That's a space station!

Dupe and a miss

[smooth wombat]

Let's see. First we have a duped article. The original was posted on the 20th. Both the current article and the article from the first posting are dated January 19th.

Then there is the second part of the posting. A story which I submitted on the 18th and had rejected so I posted it in my Journal. Go ahead, go look. I'll wait. It's the same thing, isn't it? Ok, not the same. My article had more information and a better outtake from the book.

I know Taco has been posting stories about the selection and editing process but this is just shabby. Posting a four-day old story and one rejected one at the same time only serves to confirm peoples suspicions that the editors don't really take much more than a cursory interest in what they decide to accept.

Get Pedro and that garbage truck of his

[elrous0]

The cocky Pedro thinks he can clean anything up since he got that fancy new truck.

-Eric

Time for Quark!

[1_brown_mouse]

Quark (1977) or Quark (1978) was a great show where Adam Quark, captain of a United Galactic Sanitation Patrol ship, and crew collected giant space baggies of trash.

What was old is new and in humour there is truth.

point of no return

[White Yeti]

The point is that collisions between the debris already up there are enough to continue to drive up the piece count, even if no one launches any more mass.

Where

[g0bshiTe]

... the fuck is Mr. Clean?

less delta-v?

[lilmouse]

Anyone care to guess which would require more delta v, deorbiting a satelite or moving it to a "designated rubbish pile"?

I'll take a guess and say deorbiting is cheaper.

Why? Because you can you use very basic, very slow ways to brake it's orbit - such as painting it the right colour so that it will reflect sunlight and get pushed closer to the earth. (Think of plans to move that asteriod that might his us in 70 years) We don't have to deorbit it *now*, just eventually.

I can see the argument about keeping it out of the gravity well, tho :) If we could just dump it on the moon...

--LWM