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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.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
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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I get it. It's like an orbital Wall*E.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
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.
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?
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.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
You forgot the China factor. Now that China has entered the space race, expensive and complicated machines will not be necessary to recycle the space material. Chinese laborers will process the debris manually at a cost savings of 10 to 1. Material too complicated to be processed by hand, such as motherboards, will simply be re-purposed, such as to serve as wall tiles for the new orbiting shanty towns that will house the workers. I think Foxconn is already bidding on the contract. As safety of the workers will not be a concern, the budget for the entire program will be only a fraction of a single NASA launch.
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...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
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.
I wonder how long until it falls apart and creates more debris, which will need to be cleaned up by more satellites.