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Satellite Collision Debris May Hamper Space Launch
Matt_dk writes "The debris from a recent collision involving two communications satellites could pose a serious threat for future launches of spacecraft into a geostationary orbit, a Russian scientist said on Friday. Future launches will have to be adjusted with regard to the fact that the debris [from the collision] has spread over an 800-km area and will gather at a common orbit in 5-6 years."
In soviet Russia, satellites launch YOU!
Well, though you might not have thought such a thing was necessary or useful per se' I'm here to tell you that a laser based in orbit than can be used to vaporize such debris is a laser worth having. Oh well
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What was once true, is no longer so
Wait a second. I thought the collision was at like 300mi altitude. Now they'r saying this causes problems at Geosynchronous orbit? I thought GEO was at like 30,000 miles above the earth. Also... I didn't think the shuttle planned on traveling that high anyway.
What am I missing?
Why have lasers in space? It would be way cheaper, and just as effective if we just strap them onto sharks!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Unfortunately, this is not Star Trek, where we can just point some magical energy beam at something and "vaporize" it, rendering it harmless. We have to deal with Real Physics here, especially energy constraints. How much energy does do you think it takes to boil a few hundred kilograms of iron? Do you think we have anything remotely like that which we could feasibly launch into orbit? What do you think happens when it inevitably cools?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Maybe if you gave the sats a twist at launch, like that provided with rifling grooves of a firearm, they could power on by any chance collision with spacejunk with little deflection.
Or maybe they could borrow those high-pitched whistles that supposedly scare away Canadian geese hanging around airports...
How much energy does do you think it takes to boil a few hundred kilograms of iron?
Nothing a sufficiently large matter/anti-matter reaction couldn't generate, provided you have enough dilithium to safely regulate the reaction.
It isn't that hard, people! We had this stuff 50 years ago on Star Trek.
Vaporizing the crap is not feasible, nor is putting extremely large lasers in orbit. Fortunately, neither is necessary. You build a very high peak-power pulse laser on the ground and use it to hit the bits of debris with femtosecond pulses that vaporize a few micrograms off each of them. The vapor acts like a rocket engine, its reaction force slightly changing the orbit. Hit each bit again every time it comes around and soon it is in a decaying orbit. Space Broom
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There's a good briefing from the air force up on line about what happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBjQvRWDBEE
All in favour of an orbital vacuum cleaner say AYE
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
satellites that nudge space junk back down in to the atmosphere so it can (hopefully) burn up upon reentry...
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All you have to do is use a Higgs reactor as the power source - use a fusion reaction as a primary energy source to drive ablation plates within an inertial confinement field that then compresses yttrium arsenide into a Grand Unified Theory quark-gluon plasma, and store the radiative energy from the breaking of the supersymmetry during the cooling process in superconducting inductors. God, why do I have to spell things out for everyone.
Then again, if you have antimatter, why not just send it at the debris?
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
It'll smack into some Russian sattelite?
Sharks can't fly, though, and they would have to be smart enough to aim taking into account the refractive index difference between the seawater and the air.
Maybe if we used flying fish with frickin' lasers strapped to their heads...
Vaporisation for the whole chunk is apparantly not required. Just vaporise enough to give the est a little poke into an eccentric orbit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
It still sounds like nonsense to me
It is so awesome that the slashdot crowd is anime-savvy... And yet, I don't think people going and manually picking up each individual chunk of space debris is a viable idea. Unfortunately, the only thing I can think of is a giant, super-strong fishing net, one end of which would be thrown into space, and when it came falling back, we could just pull on it, and get all the debris it caught back to the surface...
If it was iron we could use magnets. I am more interested in what we do with the non-magnetic materials.
They are actually called Canada Geese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_goose
Do it the cheapest way possible, this will be the third time I covered this very same point. Implement large scale mirror arrays on earth and reflect solar light back into orbit, the focal point of all those mirrors, many thousands of square metres of mirror can readily vaporise all the debris and the really effective part of using a distributed array is that anything above or below the focal point will only get a few mirrors worth of reflected light while those pieces at the focal can get hundreds of thousands of mirrors worth. Energy input required, just sufficient to control the facing of the mirrors as well as of course radar to target all orbiting junk.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Apparently we have a need for Mega Maid... hopefully she won't go from suck to blow.
-=JML=-
i think you mean 800km^2
Furthermore, sharks can't live in space - duh.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Assuming you were being serious, by the time your carefully focused beams travel through the large and chaotic optical device we call our atmosphere, they would be so scattered there wouldn't be enough left to give you a decent tan. Or skin cancer, if you prefer.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
re-reply: lenses or images focus things into an image, magnified or reduced by an amount proportionate to their focal length.
At a few inches, the sun's image is focused to a scorching image about a millimeter across. At a few hundred kilometers, that image is going to be (at a guess, someone else can do the math) miles across. Far to low a density to do any serious damage to an orbiting item.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
...That first the polarity must be reversed.
Berman, are you still pissed about JJ Abrams not letting you in on the new film? Sheesh.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
But you don't have to vaporize the whole thing, just push it low enough that its orbit decays and it burns up. Ultimately, don't we have gravity working for us in this situation?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Hmm. Now imagine if you could buy these mirrors for 20 bucks a pop and put one on your roof. Then charge rich people $100,000 an hour to control the array and play "missile command" IRL. Plus, if your cable company raises their rates again you could blow their sattelite out of orbit.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
What if you made your distributed array out of those evil green lasers that pop balloons and crash airplanes?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Because it would tear away our stratosphere on the way up, you insensitive clod. Why don't you just go side with the debris if that's how you want to roll? Some of us are trying to save a planet here!
This better not delay the launch of Direct Tv D-12 later this year I want the 50 more HD channles.
The really scary sharks can fly just fine.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think the most feasible method is to create a huge 'roomba' - A couple of small vehicles that can be put into orbit near the debris field, spread out a large net and _slowly_ move to scoop all the debris up before moving to a position that brings the whole kit down into the middle of the pacific or similar. It won't have to be as complex as the Mars Rovers, nor incredibly large. You should be able to get the whole thing into orbit in one launch. Basically a huge net with controllable motors on it. A back up vehicle that waits till the net is done, and scoops up any bits not captured in the net, before dropping itself in the ocean as well. Not much need of recovery for the vehicles, nor the satellite bits. Just dump the entirety of it all in the ocean THEN the fricking sharks with lasers on their heads can have at it.
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All the cool planets sort their space debris into convenient rings using the gravitational pulls of small moons. We just need to invest in placing a few in low orbits and they will quickly destabilize anything in orbits not resonant with their own.
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
the last thing that you want to do is break up something about 6" around into 1" pieces. Can not track it. OTH, a laser CAN be used to slow down pieces with relatively little energy, which will take it out of orbit MUCH faster. Though to be honest, I would think that at this time, the companies and govs should instead pay to have their sats deorbited and THEN worry about the little stuff. That way, it avoids this issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The debris is spread out over a volume of millions of cubic miles and the bits are moving at relative velocities of miles per second. They will tear right through your nets unless you match velocities with each bit, which would would require enormous amounts of fuel and take centuries.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Iridium satellites are in low-earth orbit. Cosmos 2251 was in low-earth orbit. Therefore space debris are in low-earth orbit, 20,000 miles away from geostationary orbit. If you're going to be concerned about satellites then start with the ones in low-earth orbit.
We had those on Star Trek 50 years ago too. Just figure those out, and everything will be all right.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
Then again, if you have antimatter, why not just send it at the debris?
I think we should launch a satellite in the opposite direction and then explode it.
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Good. Start the paperwork for the salvage rights, and go gather the stuff up.
We do have something which can boil iron. It's called a nuclear bomb. Strap some stainless steel rods to it and you may be able to add X-ray lasers to it for a longer reach.
This is why ASAT is so easy. You can do it, without meaning to!
I accidentally the yttrium arsenide plasma. Can you fix?
Everybody knows that starships, which are in orbit, crash spectacularly (not being affected by the atmosphere) into the planets surface after being hit by a laser. During they go down usually they exhibit a series of smaller fires on the outside, for which they obviously have some oxygen supply somewhere. I have seen that in hundreds of movies, so it cant be wrong. In the same way i know that cars immediately explode after hitting an obstacle and that keyboards make electrical sparks if something goes wrong - be careful with these - its easy to electrocute yourself.
Sharks can't fly, though, and they would have to be ...
You know how I know you haven't seen a flying shark? You're still alive.
Furthermore, sharks can't live in space - duh.
Sharks in frikkin' spacesuits with frikkin' lasers on their heads?
The power source is already there for a really large magnifying glass.
Granted, I only have high school physics on my resumé, but if you blast it from down here, you're bound to hit something that points towards the earth. That means the materials vaporized will be pushed towards earth, giving whatever you're shooting at a boost towards a higher orbit.
Now, while we don't have any large 'nets' to catch debris with, I do believe the most effective thing to clear stuff out of orbit is the atmosphere, and atmospheric drag tends to be more effective at lower altitudes. So you'd really want to push debris to a lower orbig rather than a higher one.
if you blast it from down here, you're bound to hit something that points towards the earth. That means the materials vaporized will be pushed towards earth, giving whatever you're shooting at a boost towards a higher orbit.
It doesn't work like that. A push directly away from the Earth will not give a 'higher' orbit (one with more angular momentum), it will change the shape of the orbit (the eccentricity). Essentially the orbit will become longer and thinner, and at a different point in the orbit it will be lower and start to brush against the atmosphere, thus invoking atmospheric drag.
I can't imagine it's really wise to take a disastrous situation and make it worse. How are you going to avoid thousands of bits of space debris when it all has random orbits?
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
you can also blast against it when it's rising on the horizon (unfortunately then there's a lot more atmosphere to plough through). Then it's orbit velocity will be reduced as you are firing at an angle against it's direction of flight.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Giant magnets. Seriously. Put a big magnet in orbit in the danger zone, have it re-enter after its gobbled up all the stray iron.
I expect my cheque shortly.
Three quarters of the atmosphere's mass is within 11 km (6.8 mi; 36,000 ft) of the surface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere. Bet I could readily set you on fire with 100,000 m2 of mirrors at that range, even at sea level.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yep, here's a really scary flying shark in action (around the 2:20 mark).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Anyone who has played adventure games knows there's no space janitor like Roger Wilco!
"Do you think we have anything remotely like that which we could feasibly launch into orbit?
No, but please don't give these people any more marketing ideas.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The bits of stuff already have random orbits. Since you would be tracking while zapping you would know the new orbit of your current target at least as well as you knew the old one. The orbit is not going to be changed drastically: just enough to drop the perigee down to perhaps 150 miles. The atmosphere will take it from there.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Suck it all up.
Yes, especially if this guy is right about what the Iridium satellite really hit:
USAF Briefing on Iridium Collision
I don't understand why these satellites collided in the first place. I understand NASA tracks pretty much all objects larger than a bolt in orbit. Why wasn't the collisision predicted and prevented ? The Iridium satellite was still active as I understand it, so it must have had some capability still to avoid the collision. Can someone enlighten me here ?
Just call Adam Quark.
( For you kids - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series) )
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Relative to what?
The ground, yes.
Each other? No. Tens of meters per second, at most.
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Yeah! Nothing like super compressed pixelated bewbies in HD!
There appears to be some 2 dimensional thinking going on here.
The statement '8 Km area' would lead one to believe that the debris has
spread out over a flat plane.
Obviously, when things collide in space, there is more of a
cloud of debris than a pool table of debris.
What is th actual **VOLUME** and 3 dimensional scale of the problem
and where is it located in 3 dimensional space?
The debris is also not static. It will continue to move and expand
in orbit.
Parent is a troll. I tried this and my tachyonfield has completely collapsed. Thanks a lot, now I have to recalibrate the deflector again.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
if you blast it from down here, you're bound to hit something that points towards the earth. That means the materials vaporized will be pushed towards earth, giving whatever you're shooting at a boost towards a higher orbit.
It doesn't work like that. A push directly away from the Earth will not give a 'higher' orbit (one with more angular momentum), it will change the shape of the orbit (the eccentricity). Essentially the orbit will become longer and thinner, and at a different point in the orbit it will be lower and start to brush against the atmosphere, thus invoking atmospheric drag.
No, this is very, very wrong. The GP was more correct than you are. If you apply a prograde impulse (increasing orbit altitude) at point A of an orbit, then the rest of orbit will change shape and rise in altitude, with the opposite side of the orbit having the highest measured altitude. However, point A will _not_ change its altitude. Essentially, this means that applying a prograde impulse to space debris (or pushing it away from the earth) will _not_ cause part of its orbit to be lowered.
What if you made your distributed array out of those evil green lasers that pop balloons and crash airplanes?
Then you wouldn't be using mirrors, as the GP posted, but back to lasers (although the spiffy green ones) like the article goes over.
1. Launch giant magnets.
2. ???
3. Welcome, for one, our new ??? overlords.
4. Prophet!
10 points for being technically correct. 5 more points for being a dick and pointing it out on /.
-50 points for failing to read the rest of his post and understanding that, while he said "higher orbit" which is technically inaccurate, he went on to say "decaying orbit" and linked to a page the explained the plausible concept he described using the accepted orbital terminology.
Actually, they wouldn't have to worry about the refractive index difference. Since their vision and the laser both use visible light, and the light from anything they are looking at must pass through the same water-air boundry as the laser beam, all they have to do is simply point the laser at where their target appears to be in order to hit it. Even if the target is not physically in that location.
As I get older, I misread the headlines in weirder and weirder ways...
I'll see your laser, sir, and raise you this:
http://katamari.namco.com/
It was predicted, but not with the required accuracy. The problem is that inactive satellites, like the Cosmos, can only be tracked by radar, and radar is not precise enough. From the prediction, these satellites would pass at 137 meters from each other, the probability of a collision was very small.
Iridium has over 60 satellites in orbit, they receive hundreds of warnings each day from NORAD about possible encounters, the prediction for this one wasn't close enough to warrant evasive action.
All in all, it was terrible bad luck.
We tried that once, now we have a hole in the ozone layer.
Win some, lose some.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Uh, any idea just how complex doing this would be, even supposing the laser could be funded and then built in a timely manner? Oh, and BTW, the Star Wars Missile Defense System had no chance of actually working, again, due to its excessive complexity. It was just designed to make the Russkies THINK it would work, and thereby bankrupt the USSR. In that sense, it worked very well!
Wow! You mean when things explode they dissapear?
They have to put into orbit a giant armoured electromagnet to gather all those space junk into one place.
You're assuming that everything at a particular altitude has the same orbital inclination. Refer to the orbits of the two satellites involved in the collision to see how similar orbital altitudes but wildly different inclinations result in very high speed collisions.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
> Uh, any idea just how complex doing this would be, even supposing the laser could be
> funded and then built in a timely manner?
Yes.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, you couldn't. I did the math.
The image of the sun, created by a perfect paraboloid mirror with a focal length of 11 km, would be 11,000 km across.
So, I'd be able to see your mirror, and it would even cast a discernible shadow, but as for burning - I wouldn't even be able to read by it!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp