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Boeing Proposes Using Gas Clouds To Bring Down Orbital Debris
cylonlover writes "Boeing has filed a patent application for a method of disposing of dead satellites and other debris orbiting the earth by hitting them with a puff of gas. The method, which is still at the conceptual stage, is designed to slow down satellites, forcing them to re-enter the atmosphere without sending up more space junk that itself will need disposing of. The idea is to send a small satellite into orbit containing a gas generator. This generator can be a tank of cryogenic gas, such as xenon or krypton, or a device designed to vaporize a heavy metal or some relatively heavy elements like fluorine, chlorine, bromine, or iodine. This gas would be released as a cloud in the same orbit as the debris, but traveling in the opposite direction."
Clever of them to patent this, since knock-off space-junk removal systems are in such high demand.
A space fart!
How do they propose to keep the non-junk from being de-orbited by the same gas? (I'm too lazy to read TFA.)
hahaha
..the satellite with the gas generator now that you have it up there?
Sounds like more space junk to me.
It's an apparently wholly new and unique method for doing something in the physical world. Why would it make them evil to patent that?
What about the increased amounts of persistent drag that these clouds will present to later satelite deployments? Spraying the gas does not mean it magically disappears after it has done its job. While inside the roche limit, the gas clouds will eventually (after thousands of years) fall back into the atmosphere, the cloud doesn't magically vanish after being sprayed, and widespread use of the technology would make it radically difficult to orbit new satelites.
If used outside the roche limit, the clouds become persistent!
I don't think there is much debris needing deorbited outside the roche, but with politicians and corporations at the helm, you can't be too careful.
It remains to be seen if this vapourware ends up revolutionising the market space of interactive cloud consolidation techniques. The question on all our minds is: will it ever fly? Will the flatulating satellites help to clean up the space and will it be able to remove the junk left over after years and years of crapshooting trash into the Earth orbit? Nobody knows for sure, but in case it can be done the appropriate measures have been taken by the industry pioneers, such as Boeing. No space will be cleaned of junk without Boeing getting a piece of that space pie.
You can't handle the truth.
...sandcasters!
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
Not really. Although there is 'high demand' for technology to solve this problem, the only customer is the government. And the government has unrestricted use of any patent it wants. Including subcontracting the equipment and execution of the task to any subcontractor it desires.
Have gnu, will travel.
be safer, cheaper and just as effective? Assuming each balloon decayed (i.e. oriented itself with orifice pointing directly away from Earth and releasing a puff) within a set period so as not to continue to interfere with other traffic.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
1. Wait the required 17 years.
2. Use gas clouds to bring down orbital debris (including missing socks and underpants).
3. PROFIT!!!
...might be another man's satellite.
My bet is that the first implementation of this is an anti-satellite weapon.
Please do correct me if I am wrong, but this reads like a patent application that contains a novel, concrete implementation of an idea that isn't necessarily obvious to one skilled in the art. That is what patents are supposed to protect, and I have to say I have no problem with that.
It's perhaps the first /. post in a long time that contains a patent that respects both the spirit and the letter of what a patent is supposed to be. It also sounds fairly ingenious and very interesting considering the possibilities, so props to Boeing.
This is such an obvious idea that it isn't right that it should be patentable. There are only a few ways of slowing an orbiting object down so that it de-orbits. The way nature does it is by putting gas in the way, called the atmosphere.
How can you possibly patent something that is "still at the conceptual stage"? Isn't that just an idea, with nothing created or demonstrated? I have a thousand ideas that are "still at the conceptual stage". I will bring human progress to a standstill, unless you pay me a fee for anything you do that uses any of my golden ideas!
Newton claims prior art.
Read about it here.
Yours In Baikonur,
Kilgore T.
So basically we're claiming to patent inelastic collisions? So pretty much ANYTHING bringing something out of orbit by physically altering its orbit (which is almost always the result of an inelastic collision) will violate this claim. Broad much?
So basically we're claiming to patent a collision between two bodies traveling in opposing trajectories? .. seriously? Yeah, I was totally planning on knocking debris out of space by throwing rocks at it in the same direction it's moving!
So basically we're claiming to patent clouds between 100 and 400 km above Earth's surface? Because someone can avoid violating this by.. you know.. ignoring the debris between 100km and 400km. Right?
So basically we're claiming to patent clouds formed in different target zones? Is it possible to be any more vague?
So your projectile that will collide with the debris will fall back into the atmosphere. So would just about any other projectile-based solution. It'd be pretty damn hard to hit an orbiting object with another object with enough velocity to knock the orbiting object into the atmosphere and ricochet the projectile out of orbit in excess of escape velocity.
So basically we're claiming to patent spheres and hemispheres of gasses. Looks like a competitor will need to use rectangles, because this is the rounded-corners patent of gas clouds.
But seriously. C'mon.
without sending up more space junk that itself will need disposing of. The idea is to send a small satellite into orbit
Fail.
Given the cost of getting material up in space to start with, I'd rather see this 'space junk' mined / recycled / reused to build something else up in space, on the moon or somewhere else rather than bring it back down.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Stop bringing common-sense into this, dammit!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I recall a plan from waaaay back in the 1980's of equipping the space shuttle with a high pressure water nozzle. I forget the exact details of how it worked, but it was something like the water would turn into a stream of frozen water particles that would hit the debris, absorbing kinetic energy of the debris as it vaoprized...or some such shit.
The USPTO totally rejected my patent app for anti-gravity paint, without even reading it.
A puff of gas jetted out of the atmosphere without the rest of the atmosphere to contain it wouldn't stay together, it would rapidly lose pressure and spread out, much as the gas within a balloon when the balloon pops, only more so because there's no atmosphere around it to slow it or keep it from expanding. This is the principal behind the HEMP, high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, in which a nuclear weapon is detonated outside the atmosphere, (you know, where satellites are, since if they were IN the atmosphere, they'd slow down and crash to Earth or burn up?) and without the atmosphere to contain it, a cloud of gas and charged particles spreads out over a region hundreds, possibly thousands of miles wide.
The satellite or other orbiting debris would of course lose a little energy to the cloud of gas, but only to that portion of the total ejected gas which intersects the orbital path of the object, and would result in the object having an orbital velocity that is the weighted average of the velocity of the object before impact, and the velocity of the gas before impact, taking into account the probably vastly different masses of the two.
You might as well try to stop a bullet fired right at your face, at point blank range, by taking a deep breath, and blowing at it. Hopefully this is one of those things the USPTO will demand to see work in real life before they'll grant a patent. A much better solution would be to have a small rocket go up and actually collect the debris, or actually ram it while going in the opposite direction, slowing them enough to where they fall. Or, they could use a space-based laser... but I guess if you start putting up satellites whose purpose it is to knock other satellites out of orbit, other national governments might get mad about that whole "weaponizing of space" thing.
Let's all remember, before our collective panties get into too much of a twist, that a patent application and a patent being granted are NOT the same thing.
Typical, stupid patent that just happens to seem cool because it's about space.
Patents are supposed to provide a competitive advantage. Has Boeing marketed this? No. Do they have any intention of marketing it? Highly unlikely. The patent office ought to reject the application with prejudice, and charge Boeing extra for a frivolous application.
Not to mention the obvious practical problem: If there is enough gas that stay in place long enough to decay orbits, the gas itself becomes another kind of "space junk"
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm from an aquatic race, you insensitive clod!
Hey.. Not sure about that one, but it's been a long time since I actually felt that a "cloud" mentionned on Slashdot might prove useful!
But then I read it was about a gas cloud.. Not some vapor- oh wait..
Yes, it is. It means that if the US government decides to do this it or whoever wins the contract to do it for them will have to purchase a license from Boeing.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"Clever of them to patent this, since knock-off space-junk removal systems are in such high demand"
If one does not think that the orbit around earth is going to be increasingly cluttered on is just not looking very far.
It is sad on a supposed tech and science site for someone to suggest that the clutter will not become a problem.
The refrain seems to be why patent anything that doesn't have immediate use.
What a crock of shit.
maybe a big net to catch the junk?
It is cool. Might turn a satellite into a cloud of debris, not a slower solid satellite.
But is it obvious, if you know astronomy, read manga, or just live in space for a while and try to stop debris with what you have on hand?
A "micro dust cloud" sounds similar to Boeing's cloud of heavy gas (a "nano dust cloud").
http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/ZRHS2012/RetroSPHERES.pdf
Also recent news, but "The US Naval Research Laboratory is proposing to encircle the Earth with tungsten dust in an attempt to bring down dangerous space junk"
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423629/orbiting-dust-storm-could-remove-space-junk/
IANAP but "Their scheme is to release some 20 tons of tungsten dust at an altitude of 1100km, creating a thin shell of particles that will entirely envelop the Earth," that sounds like a baaaad idea!
ARXIV black hole paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9512101.pdf
In 1995 these researchers modelled collisions of supersonic gas streams and found they are efficient at circularizing debris orbits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Mile_(manga)
It's an apparently wholly new and unique method for doing something in the physical world. Why would it make them evil to patent that?
Because they're patenting Air Friction. That's right, it's a fucking "bolt on" patent: Drag in space!
Of course a moron like you would think this shit is genius.
Xenon and krypton are rare and expensive, especially xenon, which is used in spacecraft ion engines. Using it for this purpose is a serious waste.
Because It's not really all that unique
Why are the links so recent? Because after that collision 2 years ago they put out a request for people to think about this problem.
I seriously doubt that. If large defense contractors wanted to sell an ASAT weapon, they'd try to sell a product they've already developed (more profitable). You know, like the stuff that they've already developed in 1985 (ASM-135 ASAT) or stuff they fired about four years ago (RIM-161 Standard Missile 3).
Plausible deniability. This sounds like something you can deploy without much trace at all.
Heck, you could even just assert you had a "coolant leak" on your satellite :)
Just have your Chinese knock-off gas generator sit over international waters, and Boeing can bugger off.
A large cost of space travel is getting everything needed for the journey from Earth into space. Here we have a large quantity of materials perfect for spacecraft manufacturing already in space. Build a recycling plant or leave it for someone else, but pushing it towards Earth just seems like the epitome of waste.
Seems to me that outer space is outside the jurisdiction of any government or court. If it's not, then whose is it?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
A method for clearing space junk and or destroying enemy communication satellites.