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Giant Balloons Could Solve Space Junk Problem
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100,000 objects bigger than a centimeter wide hover around our planet, accounting for 4 million pounds of junk that befouls our atmosphere and threatens the expensive satellites we actually want in orbit. Dr. Kristen Gates, of Global Aerospace Corporation, proposes that we can clear the skies by attaching a football field-sized balloon to dead satellites, which would increase the orbital drag, eventually bringing a satellite down into the atmosphere where it would burn up. The GOLD — or Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device — unit is easily inflated in space, and best of all, if the deployed GOLD balloon collides with space junk, it won't deflate or break the junk into smaller, less manageable bits."
If there's enough junk flying around up there to damage satellites, wouldn't it also pop a giant balloon?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The question isn't just whether it can collide with and bring down space junk, but whether it can avoid legitimate satellites as well. I guess if anyone has any secret spy satellites floating around they better speak up or lose them to an uncoordinated balloon collision : ).
the good doctor didn't get paid to come up with this
Easy-peasy. No delta-V issues here...
Naturally the slashdot headline is wrong. They're talking about attaching it to entirely intact satellites to get them to de-orbit without hitting something and making more debris. (as seen from the URL of the story linked: "_Without_Making_The_Problem_Worse"
In other words, you just have to catch up to the satellites.
When The Economist magazine became the first general-interest magazine to cover the space junk problem about 15 years ago, it pointed out that the problem was there was no international agreement or agency forcing private owners of satellites to budget enough fuel to de-orbit the satellite at the end of its life. Every gram costs a small fortune, so they used every gram of fuel to keep the satellite "stationary" (i.e. in desired orbit).
The space junk problem (except for paint chips and astronaut toolbags) nearly ceases to exist if everybody would just de-orbit their property. I find it hard to believe that the mass of a football-field-sized balloon is less than the fuel to just drop the orbit into a brief but colourful brush with the atmosphere.
I don't know how big footballs are where this guy comes from, but i wouldn't call a football sized balloon giant.
Rocket Surgeon.
They want to attach a balloon to the end of a satellite to create drag to bring it in and have it burn up...
What about a net that could capture some of the crap up there as it increases drag it would sweep everything clean instead of just bringing in one satellite...
you could even inflate the tip of the net in a disk shape like the top of a balloon to expand the net open to catch stuff
©
WTF is "pounds" ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fy7psIuJjc [youtube]
If you could find a way to make the exterior sticky as it's being deployed, then anything in a similar orbit and speed would be swept up as well. And I shall call it... The Space-Swiffer!
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device
With such evocative words in the name, like gossamer and gold, are you sure this isn't just a giant condom?
easily inflated in space
Doesn't change my mind yet...
it won't deflate or break the junk into smaller, less manageable bits.
Umm, still sounds gross...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"CubeSail" for example; soon available for deployment - http://www2.surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2010/26099_a_mission_to_clear_dangerous_debris_from_space.htm
Should make some nicely visible light show from time to time...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I'm having a problem understanding how filling low-earth-orbit with Zerg Overlords is a good thing.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
...accounting for 4 million pounds of junk that befoul our atmosphere...
Uh...wouldn't said "junk" be falling to earth pretty soon after entering our atmosphere, what with drag and all?
What I don't understand is, since we already paid a hefty price to lift this "material" into space, why not collect it in orbit and save it until we can utilize it as raw materials for future space projects. There must be lots of useful stuff that could be reprocessed and reused.
Doesn't everyone have the expectation that we will have factories in space to build the things that are needed in space from raw materials gathered from around the solar system? This would just be raw materials for those factories that doesn't have to be lifted out of the gravity well of earth.
I don't see why it needs to be an inflatable balloon. If the goal is to produce drag to decrease your orbit until reentry, why not just deploy a very large, football field sized tether and sail to the back. The material demonstrated by the Ikaros mission for use in a solar sail could do something like this. Carrying an inflatable balloon and the gas necessary to inflate it seems like over-complicating the very simple goal of increasing drag. As for deployment, tethers can do some pretty cool deployments simply by using the angular momentum of a spacecraft over a very long, slow, rotation maneuver.
The balloon idea seems weird.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Just curious.*
*:Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna read TFA. :)
Using a net like that is like trying to catch bullets not butterflies.
You'll end up with projectiles at orbital velocities punching holes in your net.
It's Dr. Kristin Gates. At least try to get the basic facts right.
Seriously, if you think this is a good idea you don't understand orbital dynamics.
Anything that is causing drag on the football is intern also causing drag on the hundred times larger satellite it is attached too.
In about 80 to 90 years, that football might have been noticed in fuel used for station keeping, otherwise it won't make a dent in anything that matters.
If the football is going to 'cause drag and eventual reentry' the satellite was going to do that anyway and the 10 minutes that the football brings it in sooner isn't really all that relevant.
Nothing stays in orbit forever, its all either coming back to Earth or heading out into space, its just a question of when it happens in a meaningful way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You wouldn't necessarily need to inflate a large balloon. There are several other low-mass/high drag options. A long ribbon would be one. It could be coiled up against the torque of a spring (for example) and be released by mechanical means; a lot simpler than carrying the stuff (valves, hoses/tubing, tanks, etc) to inflate the balloon (even though you would only need a small amount of pressure). There were several experiments with tethers and satellites back in the '90's. Two mechanisms would help bring down the satellite: electrodynamics and gravity.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
football field ... heh, that changes things slightly.
That just brings us back to 'if you can do something to activate said football field sized balloon ... why not just fire some rockets to lower its obit WAY faster and FAR more CONTROLLED.
If you argue that you may not have control of the sat then I'd like to know how you plan to activate this ballon.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The electromagnetic force that is.
Why would you bother with atmospheric drag, just pay out a cable and use electromagnetic drag instead. Oh wait they can do that already...
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=264
The electromagnetic force that is. Why would you bother with atmospheric drag, just pay out a cable and use electromagnetic drag instead. Oh wait they can do that already... Terminator Tether - EDT Solution To Space Debris
The perennial problem of common resource management. There is no agreed upon agent that rules earth orbit space. So there aren't any rules. Without rules, the market is just going to take the cheapest route. Most often this includes polluting common resources, because sustainability and responsibility are expensive. Bad for the bottom line.
So the earth people can make a choice: sell all of the corridors to the highest bidder, and hope that they take care of it. Or you tax the industries that want to use those resources in order to pay for a governmental body to keep an eye on them and make sure the rules are followed.
With the first option you just have to hope that the companies won't exploit the resource for short term gain and then leave anyone who uses the same resources with the bill for cleanup. In the second option, the government holds some of the profit back to clean up when the corporation inevitably does something stupid and leaves a mess. Back in the day, they even held company leaders criminally liable for their negligence. Imagine that.
Ok, now that you have a huge football field sized balloon, why not make the outside surface sticky and collect other bits of space junk on the way to the burn?
There may be more than one company, but the one I ran across years ago
was 21st century airships.
http://www.21stcenturyairships.com/HighAlt
At 65,000 ft there is no wind.
With almost the same controls as used for RC planes one person
could launch or land a stratollite for repairs or upgrades.
With this lower version of the satellite you could use less power
and get less interference.
You cover less area, but the costs of launch are so much lower
it makes it well worth it and even more if the balloon has multiple
ppl hanging their gear off it.
As cheap as they are they could even have one on standby in a region
for rapid deployment in case one gets in trouble.
Sometimes Low Tech beats High Tech, pun intended.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
On board prior to launch =OK
Catching up to a 18,000MPH satellite=expensive
Set off a bunch of nukes in the upper atmosphere. This will cause the atmosphere to expand, increasing drag and sending LEO space debris plummeting to earth.
Of course there will be side effects, but hey, it's NUKES.
I mean, I suppose there may be trace amounts of atmosphere up that high, but I can't imagine something even the size of a whole football field being able to effectively utilize the tiny amount of air that might be available to induce drag.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why not simply magnetize the dead satellite or include a small permanent magnet? This would create a magnetic sail. The magnetic field around the satellite would slowly trap plasma from the trace of gases and ions in earth orbit, as well as anything leaking from the sat itself. This would inflate the magnetic field lines and expand a kind of mini magnetosphere around the satellite. This would create drag against the earths magnetic field, and outer atmosphere.
Common permanent magnets can be much stronger than needed for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/magnetic_sail
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
As other have pointed out in response to other comments, that would be like trying to catch shotgun pellets with strips of plastic wrap.
As mentioned in the article, even if you have a propulsion system in place the human tendency is to use the fuel to extend the lifetime instead of sending it in a kamikazi mission to deorbit. If the last ounce of fuel can give you either another 6 operating months or deorbit in 2 days, it will be used to get another 6 months.
Why don't we just do like we always do: Instead of cleaning up the place, move Earth to a less cluttered location in space?
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
!#&*
The problem with trying to catch anything in space is that it is likely to be moving in a different direction to you and since its in orbit it will be going very fast. So the combined speed in any collision between your object and a peice of space junk is likely to be extremely high (afaict orbital velocities make bullets look slow). The space junk would most likely just punch a hole straight through your net.
That is why space debris is such a hazard in the first place.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I see it being a bit hard to attach a balloon to a screwdrive or a nut and the like.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
The big stuff that would be worth mounting a mission to de-orbit typically isn't the problem. The little, tiny, hard to track bits of space rubish is the real problem.
The big stuff can usually be avoided since it is easily tracked. The little, tiny stuff is effectively a bullet travelling at 17,000 or so miles an hour. It's too small to track and one piece of such junk can ruin your spaceship. Plus, there is a lot more of it than the few, big, defunct satellites that you might want to attach a balloon to.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
No. They're talking about attaching it to new satellites as a cheaper de-orbit solution than carrying sufficient reserve fuel.
Why not just employ a small liquid jet... it wouldn't take much liquid to push an object and a liquid wouldn't break a satellite up. When the liquid supply runs out, the next shuttle mission could resupply it.
Are we using metric or imperial units here? Is it association football field size or gridiron football field size?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
They were able to keep #6 in the village so they should be good at collecting the space junk.
Launch a big hunk of it up there. Think of it like this: Fire a .50 caliber rifle into a pool, it wont make it more than a few feet, it loses all its power and fragments.
Attach a bunch of thrusters to a big several meters square hunk of ice. Maybe throw some sensors on it too. Then let it seek and destroy space junk. Shit will smash into it and get stuck; and when you're done, either retrieve it and melt it down or send it into the atmosphere (waste of water though). Even if something goes wrong and the ice fragments, a chip of ice is less dangerous than say, a bunch of screws some idiot shuttle mechanic dropped.
A firearm is not nearly enough. You need something like linear accelerator to simulate low-orbit speeds.
And then you'd notice your bullets quite often will be _vaporized_ during the collision.
We need all that junk. Don't burn it up! We need a large counterweight for the space elevator. I propose a Large Electro-magnet to collect all the (magnetic of course) space junk to be used as the counterweight. All we need now is a couple (read 24) thousand miles of cable.
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
I see only good things about this. Satellites that become defunct can easily be tracked, actively reduce space junk, and are decelerated faster if they enter the high atmosphere.
Imagine what would happen if some piece of junk hits that garbage bag with a speed of 30.000 km per hour.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
OK, what's wrong with the Shuttle? It goes up with a payload, hangs around a bit then comes down empty. This is expensive for each launch (despite the hopes that the opposite would be the case).
But some of that cost could be recovered if while up there and empty, they collect the bigger satellites. They may need to pre-emptively deorbit the satellite closer to where the shuttle can get to, but this is still less than that needed to deorbit the satellite completely.
Then, instead of burning up in the atmosphere, we get some high-tech raw materials.
Even if it only pays for itself, the lack of clutter up there is a net benefit.
One way to stop the little stuff would be to put a BIG piece of aerogel in the orbit(s) you want to clean up. As demonstrated by the space probe Stardust which collected many pieces of cometary/inter planetary/interstellar(!) dust grains at relative velocities of tens of km/sec, it is fully capable of decelerating the particles without disintegrating in the process. (Obviously some orbital debris will be much larger so it would be necessary to make the aerogel much thicker than the 1(?) centimeter thickness that was used.) I don't know how thick it was but looking at the space craft diagrams it looks like a waffle in thickness.
The only reason why this is practical is because aerogels are 99% air (or in this case vacuum). Anything else like styrofoam or for that matter wood would be too heavy to put into orbit economically. Unfortunately, since it can't be compressed, this scheme requires one major new breakthrough, the ability to manufacture it in orbit with almost complete recycling of any additional materials needed. From what I understand, one way to make it is to use supercritical liquid CO2 as a solvent. Well, in order to keep your launch costs down, you'll need to recycle almost every last drop of that.
So perhaps giant panels (spheres?) hundreds of meters (kilometers?) across of aerogels could be used to "sponge" up various orbits. You'll probably need to attach a small ion engine to overcome drag (from the atmosphere and from the junk) as well as to move (slowly) to new orbits of interest (and eventually to de-orbit the whole thing or crash it on the moon!).
I no longer login because I feel that while attacking a company's products is fair game (specifically Apple), having stories singling out their users as "selfish" and unkind is not "news for nerds stuff that matters". Am I an Apple fanboi? Let's just say I've used NIX for decades (yes I'm old) and I'm not talking OS X.
One way to stop the little stuff would be to put a BIG piece of aerogel in the orbit(s) you want to clean up. As demonstrated by the space probe Stardust which collected many pieces of cometary/inter planetary/interstellar(!) dust grains at relative velocities of tens of km/sec, it is fully capable of decelerating the particles without disintegrating in the process. (Obviously some orbital debris will be much larger so it would be necessary to make the aerogel much thicker than the 1(?) centimeter thickness that was used.) I don't know how thick it was but looking at the space craft diagrams it looks like a waffle in thickness.
The only reason why this is practical is because aerogels are 99% air (or in this case vacuum). Anything else like styrofoam or for that matter wood would be too heavy to put into orbit economically. Unfortunately, since it can't be compressed, this scheme requires one major new breakthrough, the ability to manufacture it in orbit with almost complete recycling of any additional materials needed. From what I understand, one way to make it is to use supercritical liquid CO2 as a solvent. Well, in order to keep your launch costs down, you'll need to recycle almost every last drop of that.
So perhaps giant panels (spheres?) hundreds of meters (kilometers?) across of aerogels could be used to "sponge" up various orbits. You'll probably need to attach a small ion engine to overcome drag (from the atmosphere and from the junk) as well as to move (slowly) to new orbits of interest (and eventually to de-orbit the whole thing or crash it on the moon!).
I no longer login because I feel that while attacking a company's products is fair game (specifically Apple), having stories singling out their users as "selfish" and unkind is not "news for nerds stuff that matters". Am I an Apple fanboi? Let's just say I've used NIX for decades (yes I'm old) and I'm not talking OS X.
Thing is, this isn't a heat resistant or heavily built balloon. It'll burn up before the satellite. Remember - Higher drag = more heat. If anything, it'll slow the sat MORE, resulting in a steeper entry more likely to break the craft up.
I don't read AC A human right
There is no mention of methods to attach the GOLD to the satellite while in orbit. Short of having individuals approach and grapple the satellites I only see a few ways to attach the balloon. Currently I'm picturing something like a harpoon gun that could fire a spike bundled to a small CO2 cylinder and the balloon. On impact the spike embeds in the satellite and the cylinder discharges inflating the balloon. The operation could be completed with one person (for target identification and fire control) and computerized target tracking; and it could take down multiple targets in one mission to be more cost effective.
Thoughts from the greater community?
better to have a solid material that can be electrically ignited and produces the gas necessary. More compact than a bottle of compressed gas that'll have to be maintained for 10-20 years. fwiw, this is your automative airbag's mechanism.
isolated and separate control circuit with redundant power and radio. Satellite can command initiation; or, ground command to built in reciever can initiate. Said redundant power could be a few solar cells on the surface of the package and a redundant radio could be small simple receive only package that listens for a specific tone code at a specific low band frequency with a simple antenna. Whole thing could be the size of and simpler than a cell phone circuit board.
Feel free to slap this idea down, I'm not a scientist or even a pretend one on slashdot. Could a land based or space based laser heat a small orbiting object relative to the 'ambient' temperature? Would that have any effect on its drag?
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Can I have one of those balloons filled with NOx?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Just don't make them into gigantic billboards visible from earth at night with huge advertisements on them, or we'll all have to go on a killing rampage.
Or possibly as a backup for the rockets. There are things up there that were supposed to be able to deorbit themselves before the malfunction...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why don't we domesticate seagulls and make them drag the satellites down from orbit. A couple of seagull farms should be a lot cheaper than attaching huge balloons to space junk.