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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."
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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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?
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?
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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.
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?
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Duck Dodgers? Did he ever collect space garbage? I think who we really need is Quark.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
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...
They are actually called Canada Geese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_goose
Apparently we have a need for Mega Maid... hopefully she won't go from suck to blow.
-=JML=-
Furthermore, sharks can't live in space - duh.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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!
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.
Furthermore, sharks can't live in space - duh.
Sharks in frikkin' spacesuits with frikkin' lasers on their heads?
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.
Anyone who has played adventure games knows there's no space janitor like Roger Wilco!
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.
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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 ?
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.