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NASA's Top 10 Space Junk Missions

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the play-debris-for-me dept.

Ant writes "NASA has identified the top ten space junk missions and said over 19,000 pieces of space junk are known to exist..." That's nothing: You should see my living room.

2 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Questions questions questions by teebob21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For the sake of discussion, let's assume this report showed a problem orders of magnitude worse, and we were on the verge of Kessler syndrome conditions. What technologies exist today to combat the problem? (Yes, I know, no government today would unilaterally scrub space without a quid pro quo...)

    If there are 19,000 trackable chunks of debris, how many untrackable (and just as deadly) small particles are there? I know that particle densities are minute. If we launched an array of satellites with Aerogel paneling, is it reasonable to expect a significant improvement in "air" quality up there?

    What about that heat-ray device recently pulled our of Afghanistan? Can we launch one of those to spray microwaves tangentially to the Earth's surface? Would the heat applied to a paint-chip sized debris particle be enough to change the orbit? It doesn't take too much delta-v to alter the eccentricity of a paint fleck enough to burn up in orbit, does it?

    (Less coffee, more sleep next time, methinks)

    --
    khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
  2. Short answers, more like guidelines by starglider29a · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In no order:
    • It takes the same delta-v to de-orbit any two masses in the same orbit. Paint chip or Star Destroyer. Thrust requirements follow Newton, not Roddenberry.
    • Whatever energy you have to apply to an object must be applied to the object. It's 100km away at 7km per second. Good luck.
    • The delta-v to get close enough to where you can apply delta-v (bump a paint chip) adds up. If you could hit it with a beam from 100km away, that would be great, but delivering delta-v at 100km is problematic.
    • Almost nothing is magnetic, so forget that. We don't have a tractor beam, and Yarkovsky Effect is insignificant on these tiny pieces. A maser/laser doesn't deliver momentum very well. Heat does nothing.
    • Blobs of Aerogel in a counter-directional/retrograde orbit could sweep up the small stuff, but the volume that needs to be swept is like mopping a basketball court with a cotton swab.

    Solve the "how do you apply force at a distance" issue and yer halfway there.