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DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones
Hugh Pickens writes "DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. However, satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts, says David Barnhart. 'This requires new remote imaging and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify complex systems.' For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Legos at the same time while looking through a telescope."
Would the whole process and those dated components even warrant all those expenses?
I think it would come down to a cost-benefit sort of thing.
I'm just working my way through my coffee and I haven't had my breakfast yet, so excuse any insanity in the following.
The best way I could figure one could do this would be to have a robotic "scrap yard" in space - a space station of sorts with storage bays and robotic arms and/or drones that would pull in satellites and have them be disassembled through fly-by-wire. The parts would then be stored in bays and re-assembled.
I can see a few problems with this, of course. One way or another you're going to have to get the drones/station to the satellites. You're going to have to have *something* pull up next to the satellite and either drag it into a reclamation bay or have the whole reprocessing unit go up right next to it. Moreover you'd have to fuel the reclamation station somehow, meaning the satellite that scraps other satellites would eventually need to be scrapped or refueled itself.
It might be pretty difficult to actually re-build the stuff in space, too... so another option would be to just collect the junk and return it to earth. But I'd say it takes way more effort to get something back down from orbit than it does to get it back up there. You don't need to give satellites heat shielding because they're not really supposed to return. So if you were to go the "collect parts and bring them back down" route, you'd have to heat-shield everything, not to mention things like parachutes or retro-rockets that would permit to land without smashing into the ground at terminal velocity.
So... I don't know, this idea seems pretty nuts. I don't think we could do it until we have electrically-powered engines that can be recharged with solar power and a rather large, permanently-manned space station.
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Some satellites are one-offs, but things like the GPS and NOAA constellations have dozens of virtually identical models. And speaking from experience, the space industry is moving (although ever so slowly) toward interchangeable parts to reduce costs. If they knew there were five or ten usable solar arrays for the taking, they could design the interface to accept them as well as a new parts.
The other interesting thing is that being able to salvage satellite parts would mean they would be less of a sunk cost and more of an investment. If they have a resale value after they are retired, that adds profit motive to the launching company.
For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Lego at the same time while looking through a telescope
Sounds like brain surgery to me, not quite rocket science then. Shouldn't be too hard.
Who does an old defunct satellite belong to? I suspect that it still belongs to whoever put it up there, or their executors, whoever bought the company etc.
And who is authorised to say that something is defunct anyway? Imagine such phrases as "We left it dormant for future needs." and "We were keeping it until we could go up ourselves, collect it, bring it back and repair it."
Scientists and engineers may have worked out the economics of doing this, but have they included that nasty concept of Corporate Lawyers?
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Arrgh, what is it with slashdot posters, there is no such thing as Logo's, just like you don't say multiple USB's, you say multiple USB Ports. Lego is the brand name for the construction system and the components are called bricks or components, so the correct way to say this would be 'multiple Lego bricks' or 'multiple Lego components'.
Beat me to it...
There's a tendency now to try to use more common components in new satellites, especially for meteorology birds, while there's always new science, adapting existing hardware to do the work means you might get a couple of instruments on different spaceframes, and not cost as much as the gee-whiz one-offs. Someone already mentioned that R&D, testing, SRM&QA and launch services cost a bunch. If we COULD accomplish this, then restoring capabilities on-orbit would be great.
NASA had a "Flight Telerobotic Servicer" project in the early 90's. Don't know where it went but it did get a fair bit of support and a lot of good engineering talent was pointed at it. From my interactions with DARPA projects in the past, there's a fair chance that something useful will come out of this, even if the whole program is over-ambitious.
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Well, If I had to decide between flying with a rocket built by a self-taught rocket scientist and having my brain operated on by a self-taught brain surgeon, I think I'd take the rocket flight.
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one of the primary drivers of the high cost is the launch costs,
It's interesting todo because the antennas and solar panels makes up quite a lot of the launch costs... they're not talking about reusing everything, just the heavy parts :)
As the article says, the current birds are not made for this, and that is one orbit that you really don't want to play Angry Birds in. It would make much more sense to mandate that if you want GEO orbital space any new satellite would have to be highly modular and repairable, and maybe even plan for refiling (although if you think fuel is expensive here just wait to see the cost there). With an insane amount of money you might kluge together something with the current scrap, but I doubt it could offset the cost of getting the robots to do it there in the first place. Far better and safer to cut losses on the old junk and stop sending up unfix-able designs.
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I think the lego analogy is oversimplified. They should have said it would be like building your own telvision via remote control while looking through a telescope. Legos "just fit". Diodes, resistors, etc, don't just snap together - and neither will all those parts form satellites launched by different companies, for different purposes, over the span of a few decades. Almost nothing is going to "just fit".
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That was in line with my thoughts. If the devices were designed to snap out the fuel cells and reprogram the onboard logic, it could probably be made to work, at least for satellites of a similar type, but going much further than that would require technology which we don't yet have.
There's also the issue of these satellites being owned by somebody, even though they are still in orbit and unusable at the moment.
Presumably a lot of military hardware uses a couple common satellite buses, so the parts could perhaps be interchangeable. I think that reusing across dissimilar craft is a pipe dream for now.
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This sounds like one of those brilliant ideas on paper, but one that will prove infinitely harder in reality.
Remember that "R" in DARPA's name? It doesn't have to work. It just has to be something interesting from which one could learn something new. And I could see a whole lot of useful/interesting stuff coming out of even trying to do something like this.
That is all.
You are describing having two satellites traveling at different velocity impact each other without utterly destroying either fragile device. Just because two satellites are in the same location at the same time does not mean one can realistically "grab" the other.
if they can prove reassembly in orbit is viable then it suggests that the space industry needs to standardize to facilitate this.
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Use some of those inflatable habitats and build a dry dock / junk yard in orbit. Use a tug to take stuff back and forth to and from LEO and GSO.
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Getting from one end of geostationary orbit to the other end and then slowing down to match geostationary orbit again is not trivial in terms of fuel costs. If the stuff is close together (unpowered things in that orbit tend to accumulate over Indonesia apparently due to differences in gravity+shape of the earth) then that is a different story. There's a lot of other stuff in other orbits you'd just have to ignore - eg. the ISS was deliberately proposed to be put in such an orbit so that it would cost less in fuel to bring new modules up from the earth than moving MIR and bolting that to it.
I get the idea that this is taking a long term view and may be about ensuring that future satellites have parts that can be removed and interchanged. It's possible we may be part way there if everyone is using brand X antennas, panels or whatever.