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Swiss To Build Orbital Cleaning Satellite
garyebickford writes "As The ETH Lausanne says: 'The proliferation of debris orbiting the Earth – primarily jettisoned rocket and satellite components – is an increasingly pressing problem for spacecraft, and it can generate huge costs. To combat this scourge, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is announcing today the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.' This looks like a reasonable method, although I think that at some future point it might be useful to just put at least the smaller stuff in a higher 'parking orbit' for later destruction or recycling. This way you wouldn't lose one vacuum cleaner for each satellite retrieved. And much later down the road, it might be useful to collect bigger units — expended boosters, for example — as raw materials and/or containers. The cost of getting the mass into space has already been spent.
I optimistically foresee a future where much of the stuff sent into orbital space has a recycling function built into the design."
I mean, the stereotype of them being neat and orderly was not far off, at least from looking at their towns and cities. Some of the cleanest urban areas I've ever seen. I can see them wanting to clean up outer space too.
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I hope this cleaning satellite is a giant wad of bubblegum with a couple of boosters attached to it. It'll just float around getting in the way of the little stuff, all of which will stick to the bubblegum. We all know how well gum picks up little bits of metal like the keys to a jail door, so it should be perfect for satellite debris.
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"although I think that at some future point it might be useful to just put at least the smaller stuff in a higher 'parking orbit' for later destruction or recycling. This way you wouldn't lose one vacuum cleaner for each satellite retrieved. And much later down the road, it might be useful to collect bigger units — expended boosters, for example — as raw materials and/or containers"
I don't think you understand the issue. These debris are largely small parts from paint flakes to metal needles. The amount of larger "useful" material is small. Moreover, it's in different orbits. You'd spend more fuel running around getting them than you would save just launching up new mass.
The one where the rogue rocket would come up behind the space capsule, and the nose would open up and 'swallow' the target space ship, the close up and come back to earth.
We've known about this tech for decades now...easy peasy!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I get it. It's like an orbital Wall*E.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
The problem with recycling in space is that machines must be brought up into space to harvest the materials, then other machines would be needed to manufacture items using the recycled objects. Just think of a mother board yes you can get the elements back but creating a new processor takes very specialized machinery that needs upgrading every 5 years or so. For this to even be remotely possible there would all ready have to be a manufacturing facility in space, the up front cost to achieve something like this are hard to fathom and it probably would not be economically feasible to achieve due to the need to upgrade manufacturing facilities to keep pace with facilities on earth.
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We are currently orbiting the galactic core at 220 km/s and around the sun at 30 km/s and yet you can catch a baseball tossed to you, unless you're a total klutz, right? If you are riding in a bus, walking toward the back, and a passenger in the back throws a cellphone to you, you can catch it, right? Even though if the bus is traveling at 65mph relative to the street, and the cellphone 35mph relative to the bus floor (or 100mph relative to the street)
Motion is relative. Speed is relative.
The satellite will not be motionless relative to the junk.
Think about it.
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That's not a very effecient way to collect debris, if you have to expend fuel just to catch up to it. It seems like there would be a better solution, like using lasers to push the debris out of orbit into space.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I was thinking more of Mega Maid.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
That's what I'm wondering: the delta-V to go from one target to the next must be huge, even if you optimize your orbit changes. You probably need to take a huge amount of fuel to catch only a few tens of targets. And this fuel turns into gas, also following the same orbit. I wonder if it has any influence on active satellites or if it diffuses away too quickly.
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We are currently orbiting the galactic core at 220 km/s and around the sun at 30 km/s and yet you...
Can you please convert this to ft/s for us Americans?
Even though if the bus is traveling at 65mph relative to the street
I was in full agreement until this comment. Everyone knows buses never go over 35mph... 35mph tops- and then only in the fast lane whilst overtaking a bus going 34.5mph.
The only way a bus would travel 65mph is if you pushed it off a cliff.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Actually, I think there is a financial model here. After proving the technology, they put a number of these satellites in orbit with a number of these "space junk vacuums" on board each one (since they are small), and launch them to take out space junk targets which threaten satellites - for a fee per vacuum. Since they are 30 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm per the article, you could load up a satellite with many of these, and perform this service for far less than the cost of launching a single satellite.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Katamari that weird video game where you roll up a bigger and bigger ball of stuff until you end up absorbing everything?
Well, I've proposed in the past of using aerogels as a giant, low mass "sponge" to mop up orbital debris. The big problem is that nobody has demonstrated a way of manufacturing the stuff, in space, and certainly not without using a lot of the (heavy) supercritical fluid it takes to do it on earth. Since it is too bulky to launch from earth already made, this idea remains in the realm of science fiction.
Anyway, here's a different take on this idea. Perhaps, this Swiss (and other) probes could be launched with the following program in mind. First, they should go after the biggest piece of debris they can find, a spent upper stage would be just fine. Then, using a highly efficient ion engine, they should (slowly) change the orbit of the upper stage so that it will hit other pieces of space debris in as close to head-on collisions as possible. Wham!
While I hardly expect the pieces to stick together like in the video game, the resultant collision should slow down any resulting fragments from the space debris (and the upper stage battering ram) so they will de-orbit quickly. When, after many collisions, the battering ram has been whittled down to no longer be effective, the probe should push it so it de-orbits quickly and goes off to find another. In this way, over a ((very) long) period of time this one probe can clean up a lot of space debris! Think Wall-E in space.
Of course the probe will have to be specially designed to do this task. It'll need a LOT of propellent, even with an ultra-efficient ion engine you're talking about significant delta-vee of large masses. Big engines would help too because otherwise it'll take a LONG time to change these orbits. A good grappling mechanism and thrusters (ion again?) will be required to stop the upper stage from spinning. Also, even though it'll use the upper stage as a battering ram, it might need to have its own armoring; there will doubtless be scattered hypervelocity fragments. (Big solar panels for the probe are pretty vulnerable, a small reactor or even laser power from the ground might be needed for the power hungry ion drives). Finally, some of the most advanced anti-sat/anti-ballistic targeting technology will be needed to hit the debris; you're still hitting a bullet with a (big) bullet. At least the space debris is unlikely to be taking any evasive maneuvers!
What's critical of course is that the probe/battering ram hits the space debris as HEAD-ON as possible, this is to rob the debris (and its fragments) of as much orbital momentum as possible so that they almost literally "fall out of the sky". Otherwise you'll potentially end up with a situation like when the defunct Rusian sat hit the Iridium satellite; much MORE debris was created. As for the probe/battering ram, of course it will lose orbital momentum during each collision, the difference is that it can regain it with its ion-drive (better not hit something too big!).
I learned from Speed - I thought they all had to stay over 55 mph...
Try the simple way. How about a fairly high sub-orbital launch of a bunch of water, perhaps with an explosive device to disperse it.
The water is below orbital velocity, even with any velocity added by the explosion. Ditto for the container the water was in. In short order you have a giant cloud of water vapor. Everything flying through that cloud loses a little velocity from collisions with the vapor. A little more time and the water and it's original container fall back to Earth. A little "downrange velocity" would increase the dwell time for the water vapor to stay in orbit, yet keep it all suborbital.
Energetically suborbital launches are a heck of a lot easier than orbital ones, even if a little downrange velocity is added. (Don't forget the first 1000mph is free.)
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No, I believe it would be more like catching a 25,000mph bullet while doing 25,000mph yourself. Just make sure you're both going in the same direction...
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It will probably have a fold-out corkscrew.
To seek out new junk and trash constellations, to boldly clean where no man has cleaned before...
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For us Americans, it's "purdy darned fast". It's faster than NASCAR, and faster than a shotgun shell, by a lot.
Also, it's about 136 miles per second. In each second, that's the distance of two hours of driving at most states' speed limits, one hour of driving in New Mexico (because after an hour of driving in New Mexico, any still-sane human has to stop anyway), and about 30 hours of "driving" through New York City traffic.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
This is a job for Adam Quark, UGSP!
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Easy, Wall-E cleaned up the whole earth.
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I recommend Planetes strongly, even if you can't stand anime(its very low on the bubblegum factor and exaggerated character dimensions), i suggest you overcome your dislike.
Its brilliant hard-scifi in a near future where space have begun to be commercialized, hundred years after the moon landing.
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Clearly this is an act of aggression of the Swiss as an insult to the pioneers of space travel, Russia and USA, and to undermine the cooperation between Russia and USA to install more facilities in space. But perhaps the real and treacherous purpose of this mission is to acquire military technology from the Eastern and Western powers to use for their own insidious plan to spread the concept of peace and neutrality throughout the world. The Swiss cannot be trusted to launch even one rocket into space. They may even go as far as to capture defunct commercial satellites to violate and exploit the intellectual property and trade secrets developed by private space faring corporations. This unjust enrichment cannot be allowed to stand!
Perhaps you say I am a shrill and making mountains out of mole-hills, but then answer this: Why does Switzerland, even today, still enforce compulsory military service for males 19 years of age and older? Why does a neutral "non-aggressive" nation have an army so large that during the 20th century it had the second largest armed force per capita after the Israeli Defence Forces? Why would a nation of peaceful citizens REQUIRE their soldiers to keep their assault rifles IN THEIR HOMES like red-necks from Texas? Why does the Swiss military maintain the Onyx intelligence gathering system for spying on both civil and military communications, such as telephone, fax or Internet traffic, carried by satellite? Why do Swiss building codes require radiation and blast shelters, and why does every family or rental agency have to pay a replacement tax to support these shelters, or alternatively own a personal shelter in their place of residence? Why does Switzerland claim to be a "neutral" country when they engage in "peace keeping" operations? Why is "the peaceful coexistence of nations" one of the five goals of Swiss foreign policy when, for such a small country, they are the 13th largest arms exporter in the world, including some of the finest weapons ever made?
Don't believe what I'm saying? It's all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_army
No, I believe it would be more like catching a 25,000mph bullet while doing 25,000mph yourself. Just make sure you're both going in the same direction...
The problem is that orbits and velocities are different, that is why debris is often such a hazard. Its not just stuff moving in the opposite direction, its stuff moving in the same direction at a different velocity. A collector would need a lot of fuel to be matching various orbits and velocities.
Most of this debris isn't sitting still, It's moving at thousands of MPH. How do you plan to catch something moving that fast without destroying the collector?
A collector could be sacrificial, designed to just sit there and take the hits. As long as it captures the debris and does not itself spall and generate more debris. A loose analogy would be a block of ballistic gelatin capturing a bullet as the bullet fragments.
I wonder how long until it falls apart and creates more debris, which will need to be cleaned up by more satellites.
They aren't solving (quite) the same problem as you are. This scheme is to collect entire satellites, and prevent them from becoming debris over time. It works because you can get a really large amount of debris-to-be in one go.
Yes, with current technology, this would probably be a hopelessly expensive way of deorbiting lost gloves, bolts and pocket watches.
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