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Low Earth Orbit Junk Yard Nearly Full
vlado4 writes "The New York Times has up an article on the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit. According to NASA officials, the amount of stuff we've put into LEO is at critical levels. Additionally they have great graphics of the nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon, as well as the damage to Hubble's solar array. The litter is now so bad that, even if space-faring nations refrained from further interference, collisions would continue to create more clutter just above our atmosphere. Space debris appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration."
Not only are we destroying our own environment, our planet is surrounded by floating trash.
This is a HUGE problem. Considering that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, think about how much damage even a small chip of paint can do at orbital speeds (low Earth orbit = approx. 5 miles per second). Then think of a 2 lb. chunk of metal at the same speed (8 times the speed of a rifle bullet).
Right off the top of my head I can't think of a feasible way of beginning to clean this up. Perhaps large orbital superconducting magnets (easy to maintain cryo temperatures in space) for the ferrous stuff, but what about ceramics and all the other junk?
This has the potential to make what is usually the safest part of space travel (sitting there in orbit) the most dangerous part, unlike the historical danger zones of liftoff and reentry.
This is typical of the shortsighted idiotic human being. Most people just seem incapable of thinking multiple steps ahead. It's a pretty obvious problem that clear thinking would have revealed from the get go. But, as is the human way, it was far easier to just forget about the problem until it interferes. Of course as soon as someone would have suggested that we find a way to clean up the space junk early on, they would have been derided for getting in the way and worrying about petty concerns. Humanity disgusts me.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Didn't somebody design a really cheap system of kamikaze satellites that would grapple the dangerous pieces and de-orbit them into the atmosphere? By really cheap I mean ~10,000 dollars. Surely we could put a couple of those on the ISS in case it looked like something was coming for it. I know it's expensive to launch the things, but AFAIK they're about the size of a propane tank for a BBQ and could be launched in vast numbers on a single rocket. The space is so large we only need to worry about the stuff in the space we WANT to be in or go through. All the geosynchronous stuff is in a much higher orbit, so we only need to worry about the stuff in LEO and the stuff going through it. It shoudn't be a problem to plot a course through it, and we can clear the orbits as we go.
but the ones who do the real damage are the faithless negative types
know anyone like that?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You leave it alone and it will go away. The drag forces on small objects in LEO will cause their orbits to decay in 3-5 years. Debris in higher orbits is another matter.
an ill wind that blows no good
Nice attack piece on China and Russia. An alternative summary could read: The evil Chinese and Russians don't care and create space debris just for kicks; whereas we, the noble U.S.A., do care, it's beside teh point that we just happened to have actually created more (and we don't even bother mentioning other space programs like the ESA or the Japanese because they aren't communist and are therefore also O.K.).
One important question though the article doesn't seem to mention is whether the space debris will plague future generations (when space travel may well be more common place). Won't most of this low-level space degree simply get burned up sooner or later or is that kind of like saying "well plastic pollution does biodegrade eventually"?
One reason this is not so simple, is that there is so much space to vacuum. You will not find much junk by just vacuuming (especially in the vacuum of space)...
Then there is the problem that speeds are very high. A particle in a different orbit than your Roomba will probably go right through it, instead of being properly processed.
Uh, have you looked around the US? I personally live in a valley in Northern California that used to be a sort of paradise in which the locals (Pomo "Indians") used to regularly live over 100 years due to their diet and lifestyle. Today the lake is horribly polluted with mercury and agricultural run off. The lake is called Clear Lake, and it was when white men first showed up here. Today it is about the same color as pea soup and frankly you can't see much further through it most days.
This is pretty much the story of the US. Some people were living in harmony with nature, doing controlled burns on a regular basis to provide stewardship of the land. (In fact my lady and I were just looking at a seed catalog and found a plant that said "to germinate, burn several inches of pine needles above the seeds" etc etc.) Then some white guys showed up, killed and enslaved lots of them, and cut down their oaks (depriving them of a major staple) in order to plant crops or grow cattle. Then the government gets involved, and kills most of the rest of them. We have an island up here now known as Bloody Island because the army came through and massacred all but a small handful of members of one band. The island is up the road from where I work in a tribal casino. Next the government would take further action to make sure they couldn't maintain their old way of life; besides granting all their land to some other white people, they actually paid people to plant walnut trees. Walnuts are tasty but they provide nothing like the nutrition of oak acorns.
You are sadly deluding yourself if you think China is any different from the US. They're just behind. And they're catching up rapidly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because the NYT hates America, right? Glad you rectified their egregious oversight.
They don't "call out" the US. They happen to mention that as a small part of a larger story that really "calls out" the Chinese, if anyone. But we can't let any slight against the US, no matter how small or even entirely in your head it might be, go unchallenged. And of course, the best way to excuse anything is to point out that someone else is also doing it.
Rah! Rah! Rah! We're number one! USA! USA! USA!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I agree. I had envisioned an autonomous satellite that would synchronize its orbit with whatever junk is to be removed then apply a magnetic field so that the object would drop out of orbit. The benefit of this is that you wouldn't have to setup a collision to remove objects - you would just have to get close (wrt proximity and velocity). Of course, this is all a bit futile if carbon fiber and Al make up a significant portion of the junk up there.
In all honesty, I know nothing of this field so anything I have to say is simply speculation and should be treated as such. For example, after reading your reply I'm beginning to think that an autonomous satellite that lays a field of gas in front of oncoming objects might be a better approach. But running out of gas would be a problem. Or how about positioning a mobile mass large enough to absorb the impact from any orbiting junk? Simple, crude, but effective.
No.
We have a massive technology growth. That's the reason why we didn't all starve to death as this bloke would have liked us to believe.
If we will need to, we will find a way to deal with evil waste.
I do, however, hope that you were arguing the case for space colonization in an indirect manner, preparing the ground, so to speak. And since the cause in this case is pretty awesome, everything, including false analogy, goes:)