ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk

An anonymous reader writes Japan's Riken research institute has suggested a new idea for dealing with space junk. They say a fiber optic laser mounted onto the International Space Station could blast debris out of the sky. From the article: "To combat the increasingly dense layer of dead satellites and miscellaneous space debris that are enshrouding our planet, no idea — nets, lassos, even ballistic gas clouds — seems too far-fetched to avoid. Now, an international team of researchers led by Japan's Riken research institute has put forward what may be the most ambitious plan to date. They propose blasting an estimated 3,000 tons of space junk out of orbit with a fiber optic laser mounted on the International Space Station."

Comments

Revising a previous concept

[Geoffrey.landis]

The idea of using lasers to de-orbit space debris has been around for a while.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/...
Back when I was working on lasers for power beaming, the idea was discussed as an alternate use for the ground-based lasers.

Re:after I destroy Washington D.C... I will destro

[TWX]

See, that's the mistake supervillains make... You need to start small. Start with a wealthy but small place, like Martha's Vineyard, so that the powerful know that this is coming for them, so that they can put pressure on their private government officials to make it happen. Then move on to bigger and bigger wealthy suburbs and cities until you get to Washington.

After all, if you destroy DC, you destroy the people that are authorized to pay you in the first place.

Aerogel

[Anonymous Coward]

Launch "Aerogel" producing satellite robot.

Grow immense Aerogel sponge(s).

Push the sponge(s) through the most contaminated orbits.

One flaw

[Nidi62]

Ok, this is a nice plan and all, but there is one little problem: how do you keep the sharks alive in a vacuum?

Russians still have access?

[Karmashock]

I'm not putting space lasers on something the Russians can fuck with... At this point, I've gone full cold war on the Russians in my foreign policy thinking. I've had a few conversations with the Church of Putin and they're so fucking delusional that I have zero hope of a peaceful end to this crap. And that being the case, I don't want to give the russians any leverage on us what so ever.

I'm not really worried about the Russians doing anything to the laser. I'm more worried about us CARING about the ISS. The Russians have already attempted to use access to the ISS as leverage against us and that frankly just burns me on the whole project. Decommission it or ideally pawn it off on someone else. Maybe the Chinese want it? I don't care.

The ISS was a post cold war team building exercise between the US and the Russian Federation. And quite recently the US did a "trust fall" with the Russians and they said something to the effect of "we suggest the americans try trampolines to get into space"... Which means the team building exercise was a complete failure. And that means the ISS was a complete failure at its ACTUAL purpose.

The Russians are going back to their old ways. So the ISS is dead to me.

And that means I'm not putting anything of any value on it what so ever. I'm ready to deorbit it. The Russians can forge ahead with their own entirely independent space program with zero help from the US.