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Space Junk 'Cleaning' Missions Urgently Needed
Following a conference on space debris, the European Space Agency has warned that the amount of space junk floating around in orbit is a problem that needs to be dealt with 'urgently.' They are calling for a number of test missions to examine different methods of controlling or removing the debris. "Our understanding of the growing space debris problem can be compared with our understanding of the need to address Earth’s changing climate some 20 years ago," said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the agency's Space Debris office. A couple years ago we discussed an idea for de-orbiting space junk by hitting it with a laser to change its momentum. An Australian company has now received funding from NASA and the Australian government to try just that. "We've been developing tracking systems using lasers for some years, so we can actually track very small objects with a laser rangefinder to very high accuracy. ... If you allow that velocity to change over a period of perhaps 24 hours, then you can get actually a 100-meter shift in the location of an object to deflect it from colliding with another space debris object." Other plans are in development as well, and there currently exists an international guideline saying that new hardware must de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere after 25 years of operation — but compliance is lagging. Meanwhile, collision events are becoming more common (PDF), and experts worry about the safety of the International Space Station and important satellites. "Their direct costs and the costs of losing them will by far exceed the cost of remedial activities."
Why is it always up to Europe to clean up the rest of the world's mess?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Where's Roger Wilco, space janitor, when you need him?
How about we just attach a giant magnet to the back of space craft similar to what you'd see behind the rear or front tires of an RV to pick up road debris before it punctures the tires.
Citation: http://www.google.com/patents/US3956111
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Perhaps this is something that should have been taken seriously 30 years ago? It will take at least that long to hone the technology and pry the funding from the tightwads that only approve of pork in their districts.
And, maybe NASA should jump at this - they seem to be in search of a mission and the dollars that go with it, maybe this is it?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Sounds like a job for Andy Griffith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1
"Their direct costs and the costs of losing them will by far exceed the cost of remedial activities."
Unfortunately, logic like that doesn't work on elected officials. It will probably take a tragedy and loss of life before people pay attention to the science behind this.
The worst case scenario is a Kessler syndrome event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome. In this situation, a bad collision in low Earth orbit creates enough debris to trigger a series of collisions, each creating an expanding debris cloud. This could take most LEO satellites in a matter of days, and would render much of LEO effectively unusable for years. Part of the problem is that while there are a lot of possible orbits, the set of orbits which are both cheap to get to and practically useable is a much smaller set. And those orbits are almost precisely the orbits with a lot of debris. Right now, satellite are required to be able to move to either graveyard orbits or to be safely disposed in the atmosphere, but there are a lo of older satellites that were launched before any such requirement. And even with such plans, launches inevitably produce a few debris items with each launch, and satellites occasionally shed things. The early Delta rockets were very bad at producing a lot of debris, which contributed much of the current problem. Thee 2007 Chinese satellite test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test very much didn't help matters, and produced a massive still expanding cloud of debris. On the bright side, non-LEO orbits like geostat are still clean.
And then an asteroid comes and wipes us all out, or a megavolcano, or some other random event, and we are all stuck on this rock to die. Great idea guy.
Like this....only REALLY BIG!
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
It should be a high priority to collect the debris, as it is quite valuable - it takes a lot on money to get stuff into orbit, and most of the stuff is probably space worthy material.
We shouldn't think of it as junk, but as free bulding material left around.
..........FULL STOP.
If we can't manage our common sky, even with so much of the investment controlled by the elite. How can we ever hope to manage the bigger mess down here?
Well if we wouldn't have junked the shuttles, we could have used then as the earths trash trucks. Or just give the stuff a shove and burn it up in our atmosphere. Either way talking isnt going to get anything done. Just do it lol
Jack of all trades,master of none
When you know it's going to be a problem sooner or later, but you'd rather ignore it now.
space junk, energy, food, water, finances, republicans, windows xp, alcohol.
Privacy is terrorism.
Speaking of assholes - how have you been?
Mankind will never do what you dream of. No matter how far into space, no matter how far into the future mankind goes, he will always be a messy son of a bitch. Wars and fratricide. Drugs and prostitution. Theft and tax evasion. You name it - everything we've ever done wrong, we'll continue to do, to the end of time, and to the extreme edges of the universe. If we ever find alternate realities, or the dimensional doorways - we'll take all our baggage there too.
Apparently, you don't like mankind, as you want to ensure his extinction when that one big rock DOES hit the earth.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Who was the fool that looked past using a laser and instead went for the 'net' or 'ballistics' options?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYZWP80opd4
I propose a giant electromagnet in orbit. Can it be solar powered? After enough junk has glommed onto it, either deorbit the whole mess or launch it at the moon. The moonfall is a better idea; then a new breed of prospectors would have a chance to reclaim the stuff.
How about using some of Regan's star wars technology? Not to blow stuff up, but to give it a hard push with powerful lasers or xray beams. Push the small stuff into a degrading orbit to burn up in the atmosphere. It would be easier to target the small stuff like since you don't have to be close to it to give it a nudge. Once the little pieces are cleaned up, they can go after the less prevalent bigger pieces.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Probably some of the satellites have value to fix or parts. Especially the dead surveillance and intelligence satellites. Who owns salvaged satellites or parts ? Only maybe they have tamper mechanism, boom.
with NASA's current budget, there is no way we US citizens can tackle this. If they want to solve this, they need to give NASA more funding.
I wonder if anyone has looked into placing a satellite into orbit that was able to fire extremely precise mist clouds of some liquid. It would be launched either in a polar orbit or an opposite orbital direction from most satellites. It would fire the mist clouds into the path of a piece of debris and the energy imparted (~17,000 to ~34,000 MPH relative speed) on it from the mist would eventually cause it to deorbit. The best liquid for this would probably be something that remains a liquid on the dark side of the orbit, but evaporate on the light side to presumably self deorbit if it did not hit the debris in question, and of course be cheap (maybe some kind of cooking oil?). The satellite would have to have a pretty sophisticated tracking and targeting system but its probably not out of reach. The hardest thing I imagine would be to target the clouds precisely enough and make them small enough at the required distances (several miles) and speeds so that they only effect the target debris. After the satellite ran out of liquid it could either be refilled, or self deorbit by changing orientation to fire shortly before it ran out of liquid into its orbit instead of perpendicular to it.
just shoot down any satellite the Chinese send up, they've lost the right to use the shared orbital space of this earth with their irresponsible creation of horrendous debris field
Maybe some of the space junk will reflect some of the sun's light energy and reduce global warming...
"Let's make a big mess, to motivate ourselves to fix that other big mess."
"Our understanding of the growing space debris problem can be compared with our understanding of the need to address Earthâ(TM)s changing climate some 20 years ago,"
So nothing will be done about it? =P
In the real world, that's a whole lot harder than it sounds. It's easy enough to get to an arbitrary LEO satellite, assuming you know its orbit well enough, but any dismantling and reusing would be extraordinarily difficult. This counts doubly for decommissioned satellites or debris which could be tumbling in some arbitrary fashion with no way to control. Plus, manufacturing in space is really really hard, as we've learned over 30 years of the Space Shuttle and 15 of the ISS. You probably need to launch lots of equipment (plus maybe a human or two, though no existing manned vehicle is up to the task) to make it work, and now you're doing much more work and spending much more money than you would just building something from scratch. And then of course here's the kicker: you've done all this work, and now (assuming you didn't leave anything new behind) you've removed one single piece of space junk. With the mass you've already needed to bring up to do your repair/retrofit, it's highly unlikely you'll have fuel to get to another object in even a very close orbit, and so you have to head home and launch another mission. And another. For every single piece of junk out there. It'd be absolutely impossible to make this work on a large enough scale to do anything about the debris problem.
It's theorized that this is a possibility where collisions between space debris produce more debris and rise the likelyhood of further collisions. This would lead to a rapid feedback loop as collisions cascade. This would likely render space travel impossible for the next couple thousand years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Experiments and other stuff
Until we have a big ass disaster because of space debris, no one will do anything except talk about it.
In case no one pays attention to Human history, we do NOT usually do anything until after someone bad has happened, then we run around like chickens with our heads cut off and remove more human rights.
Be seeing you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series)
But maybe you get to salvage an original Intel 8086!
And who knows what crap is flying over our heads. Bubble memory, perhaps. Soviet Z80 clones. Solar panels that were incredibly expensive and rare 15 years ago. Worn out capacitors. I guess it's worth it to some people. The other trouble is, what if you have some mission failure and end up adding to the junk pool.
Theft and tax avoidance are the new kids on the block. And neither generally directly kills anyone.
Wars and fratricide ... are probably the oldest behaviours of the bunch - and they've not made us (or any of our ancestor species) extinct. Ever.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Do not give that which is holy to dogs, and cast not your pearls before swine. SF is way too good for the average illiterate student.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I guess this sounded too realistic and not sarcastic enough for moderators.
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Solution seems very simple. We wait for the coming of the great white hanky and it will all get cleaned up at once.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)