Using Lasers and Water Guns To Clean Space Debris

WSJdpatton writes "The collision between two satellites last month has renewed interest in some ideas for cleaning up the cloud of debris circling the earth. Some of the plans being considered: Using aging rockets loaded with water to dislodge the debris from orbit so it will burn up in the atmosphere; junk-zapping lasers; and garbage-collecting rockets."

Comments

Re:Huh?

[Colonel Korn]

Since space is a "near" vacuum wouldn't the water flash to steam instantly and be useless?

The enthalpy of vaporization for water is very large. On exposure to vacuum, immediately the water will begin to boil. This will very rapidly cool the water so that most of it ends up freezing (the enthalpy of fusion is comparatively much lower). Not only does this make mathematical sense, but it's witnessed daily on vacuum lines in labs.

Re:Something doesn't seem to add up

[Kjella]

Your imagined point of equilibrium is the point where there's nothing but space garbage, and if you shoot up more there'll be more garbage even though some of it falls back. I'm sure you remember Newton's law of conservation of momentum, now apply it to two oribiting satellites on almost similar trajectories crashing into each other, breaking into many pieces. Basicly, they'd become a spray of junk, some going up, some down, some faster, some slower. They'll spread out as if you fired a shotgun, catching up to some satellites while slowing down covering a greater and greater area to collide with others which will again behave the same way. It doesn't matter if 90 of 100 bits fall to earth if they take out >1,1 satellite each on average. It'll just escalate exponentially like a nuke going off, leaving a fine layer of bullets all over the stable orbit.