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.

Comments

Let's just call it what it is...

[Anonymous Coward]

A space fart!

This is not a bad patent

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:This is not a bad patent

[ShanghaiBill]

Because if you patent stuff that makes sure that it is not used.

Boeing is not a patent troll. They actually make stuff. The obvious customer for this is NASA and other space agencies, and Boeing is a contractor. If they have the patent, they are the obvious choice as the contractor.

Consider the car and oil industries. They are reputed to have patented all sorts of things to stop them.

Please don't use weasel words to make insinuations that you can't back up with evidence. Patents are public records. Can you point to a single case of this actually happening?

Re:unintended consequences?

[Baloroth]

If the gas is sprayed at less-than-orbital velocities, it'd just fall to Earth almost immediately. Boeing in fact addresses that:

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the cloud is created at a density and temperature to dissipate after creation and fall into the atmosphere.

This is what patents are for...

[Nemyst]

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.

Re:What about the non-junk?

[taiwanjohn]

This reminds me of another method using light instead of gas, which was described at a recent space conference. The idea was to pulse laser light toward the west (since most space debris is traveling predominantly eastward), and over time the photons alone could provide enough delta-v to nudge things out of orbit more quickly. For the big stuff they have other plans in mind, such as electrostatic tethers and micro-rockets. But for little stuff, the light pulse would be a cost-effective "shotgun" approach to deal with the cloud of crap that's too small to track.

Sorry I can't find a link at the moment. I saw it a few months ago on YouTube from either NewSpace or SpaceUp, or ISDC or one of the other conferences in the last year or two.