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Ugly Truth of Space Junk
fysdt writes "Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space — human-made orbital debris — is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of 'solutions' sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter. What may be shaping up is an 'abandon in place' posture for certain orbital altitudes — an outlook that flags the messy message resulting from countless bits of orbital refuse. US General William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, underscored the worrisome issue of orbital debris during a presentation at the National Space Symposium on April 12, 2011. In a recent conference here, Gen. William Shelton, commander of the US Air Force Space Command, relayed his worries about rising amounts of human-made space junk."
One expert is - "orbital debris expert within the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md."
The other is - Gen. William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, who has been assigned to USAF space posts since 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Shelton
The higher orbits are high volume areas
Not quite. The geostationary orbit, one of the most valuable commercially, is infinitesimally thin. Any debris that goes by there requires maneuvers from the operating satellites, which burn fuel and take a toll on the useful life of the satellite.
The creators of PlaneteS basically stated that they tried to get everything about oribital mechanics correct, except for the central premise of hiring people solely for collecting space junk, which would be massively ineffective and inefficient.
I've always been partial to the 'puffball' technique: using a large (on the order of tens of kilometres in diameter when deployed), low mass loose mesh of fine fibres, with any incident debris vaporising the fibres and coming to a halt over a distance of a kilometre or so, without breaking it up and creating more debris.
He's just trying to clear a nice approach eliptical for the mothership to come down and enslave mankind. Don't listen to a word of it. Space junk makes intraorbital navigation hazardous, and that hazard is our best unnatural defense against the alien overlords.
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Toro
Which I for one do not welcome!
Isn't that pretty much the premise of Quark?
Comment of the year
and as this is in fact rocket science the problem is we have 3 different "speed bands" we are working with
1 the junk that is going slow enough to fall out of orbit
(in a more or less short period of time)
2 the stuff that is mid range speed (could take like "forever" to fall out unless somebody/something whacks it in the right direction)
3 the high speed stuff (this is very rare and is the stuff that heading out into deepish space)
the problem with 1 and 2 (mostly 2) is hitting this stuff CORRECTLY is very hard to do (ideal situation is it burns up on reentry with "does not hit anything important" as a push bet)
the worst case is you hit somebodies in service satellite or have a chunk of something wipe out a State building or something else and cause an international incident
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The definitive word on Space, is of course, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..."
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Express-AM11 was knocked out by space debris, Kosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 collided destroying both.
Challenger STS-7, Endeavor STS-59, Atlantis STS-115 and Endeavor STS-118 were all hit in widows or radiators while all the shuttles, ISS and MIR were regularly hit with smaller debris.
ISS has over 100 Whipple Shields installed to reduce the impacts of small objects.