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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."
Does poking holes space junk make it disappear or make more of it?
I'd sooner put a giant laser on the moon.
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.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Have been covered pretty well in Sci-fi by Planetes, a manga / anime. I would very highly recommend checking it out. It does help to emphasize the problems that space debris can easily cause, especially when space travel becomes more common.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Why not use a giant magnifying glass instead?
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Here is the problem. Blowing up or melting items does not work.
But if you heat up one side of an object, that side out-gasses or vaporizes and alters the orbit. Pick the side intelligently and you can slowly nudge stuff into a decaying orbit.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just imagine, you are done with they days duties on-board the ISS, then you slip into your jumpsuit and grab a stick and shoot down space junk. This is simply put, SPACE INVADERS for real :D
And the answer is...
None! We're not even talking enough laser to blind someone at that range, much less vaporize something/someone....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yeah, right, this technology will totaly be used against space junk and not against sattelites of foreign countries.
> Just leaves smaller material in orbit.
Yes, then you have to shoot them again to score more points. At least this doesn't have B&W vector graphics.
This is not exactly how I envisioned the ISS years and years ago - as a kind of space going pooper-scooper.
Unless the laser can cause the space junk to emit reaction mass - from the space junk, I don't see how heating it with a laser is going to be effective. It's space-junk, after all - and while we sort of know what we put up there (for certain values of "we") I doubt we know the characteristics well enough to blast the stuff from orbit well enough to avoid causing more problems.
Lastly, 3000 tons (metric or english) is a lot of mass to do this with over the anticipated remaining life of the ISS and the power available - but I'm just going by a gut feeling about the power budget of the ISS.
My guess is that the power of the ISS laser, if aimed at the ground, would cause less damage than aiming a laser pointer at the ground. For all of the sci-fi programs showing space-based lasers decimating cities, our atmosphere is very good at diffusing light and the ISS's laser isn't going to have the power needed to overcome this.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Here is the problem. Blowing up or melting items does not work.
But if you heat up one side of an object, that side out-gasses or vaporizes and alters the orbit. Pick the side intelligently and you can slowly nudge stuff into a decaying orbit.
Because nothing spins in space.
Launch "Aerogel" producing satellite robot.
Grow immense Aerogel sponge(s).
Push the sponge(s) through the most contaminated orbits.
Finally.... Lasers doing cool shit! Que the song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
so why bother.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
3,000 tons of space junk. What was the scientific community thinking, that putting a ring of trash in orbit traveling faster than the speed of a bullet wouldn't pose a hazard someday?
there is a better article here: http://www.csmonitor.com/Scien...
you can read the full paper (for free) here: http://www.researchgate.net/pr...
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
How does heat affect the orbit?
if you break space junk up it continues on the same orbit.
And radiative momentum transfer can't exceed the momentum of the photons hitting it which won't be a lot or you'd also be pushing on the space station too.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My understanding (as very limited as it is), is that you'd need to ablate enough material off the object to knock it out of orbit and to fall to earth.
However do you even need to hit it that hard? Can you just put enough laser energy on to it to perturb it out of orbit without ablating/vaporizing material? More massive objects would of course require more power applied.
Ok, this is a nice plan and all, but there is one little problem: how do you keep the sharks alive in a vacuum?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If the object is overtaking the ISS it can just heat the facing side up on approach, if the ISS is overtaking the object the ISS can heat up the facing side after passing it. Either should work to reduce orbital velocity, hopefully enough to drop it into the atmosphere. If my weak grasp on orbital mechanics is correct enough...
The side currently facing the laser is still going to out-gas slightly more than the side that just turned away from the laser. Net effect might be less for a spinning object, but it will still be an effect. Besides, no one says this has to work for every single piece of space debris. So what if it "only" reduced the problem by 10%?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When you run a marathon, nobody asks the runners why they don't bring all of their own water on the run.
When you're payload mass fraction to get into orbit is less than 2%, there's little incentive to keep spare fuel for decommissioning, and that doesn't count all of the little bits that fall off along the way.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
All the laser has to do is slow the junk down, just shining the object with the laser will impart a force which will cause a slowing of momentum. Once momentum of the object has slowed below orbital speed, it should fall towards earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Tracking should not be that hard as radar aimed weapons have been around for many years. How much energy and for how long to illuminate is up to the designers.
Passionately Indifferent
Since we are orbiting a sphere and not a circle, the calculations will be a tad more complex - but yes, that is the right idea.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
After all, if you destroy DC, you destroy the people that are authorized to pay you in the first place.
That, and you completely destabilize/devalue the very thing you are demanding. Your $100B USD won't go far if the US government collapses. Better ask for Gold or Bitcoins.
This is supposed to be a technically-minded site, not FARK.
"Blasting" with lasers? Really?
- first, nothing gets "blasted" with a laser; a laser is - optimally - a point extreme heat source. The "shooting crap down" thing going on in the military today really is about DISABLING the guidance, control, or propulsive systems on whatever aerial platform they're shooting at, or at least disrupting (for missiles) their aerodynamics enough that their own velocity tears them apart. The laser "blasts" nothing. Disabling the guidance, control, or propulsive systems on what is already "space junk" is logically, pointless.
- even assuming a laser did "blast" something, it's pretty much the last thing you want to do in orbit. Unless you're pulverizing it to flecks so tiny that a) they simply don't carry enough kinetic energy to harm something (ie dust) or b) a signficant fraction of them will be deorbited by air-friction in low orbit, you're simply trading one character of threat with another. The Chinese "blasted" a satellite, so now instead of one piece of dangerous junk we need to track and avoid, there's 12000+.
-Styopa
Sure, its for frying space junk. Ya, that is far more comforting than outfitting the space-station with a space-to-ground death ray.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If we gave them improved laser weaponry, maybe they would let us ship them all to space to destroy the space debris.
(Please forget to include a return capsule)
Just do like Dr. Evil and show them a clip from "Independence Day".
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Everyone would cheer if they went after Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod. It would solve more problems than it causes
Doesn't work
Yes it does.
Here is the problem. Blowing up or melting items does not work.
Here is the solution: don't do either of those things.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I see a couple problems.
1. lasers don't magically make things go away like in the cartoons. They just break it into smaller pieces by making it hot
2. photons don't impart much inertial energy onto an object compared to radiation beams
3. the space station has very limited power and it is carefully allocated to good use
TFA Says Nothing About Sharks Though
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Little did I know that this was the long-term plan planted by the Government implemented by Atari. My years of playing Asteroids will now lead me to picked up by a government van, dropped at Fort Lauderdale, where I will be immediately transported into space to fill my destiny.
Just like The Last Starfighter! (Did I date myself too much...)
will it be using excited bromide in an argon matrix?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real question is how to get the sharks into orbit
I get that you saw an article about adjusting an asteroid's path and you're excited to share that, but you need to consider a few things:
1) That method requires a wealth of energy/time and makes very miniscule adjustments that are applicable to asteroids because their orbit is so huge that small changes a long ways out can make a significant difference. This debris is literally right next to our planet.
2) For the amount of time, energy, and (most of all) money you'd spend doing this you could send both Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in a Kerbal-inspired space ship zipping around LEO picking up all this debris and still have money left over.
I don't know enough information to do an economic feasibility study - I was just addressing the concerns of Stormcrow309 that it would not work. It obviously would work, but as you point out it might not be worth the cost.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I've always been told we're having difficulty getting enough stuff into space to build a decent sized base.3,000 tons is an awful lot of raw materials.
New TV series. You cross Monster Garage with Survivor. First one to build a shelter lives.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Therefore, we shall call it the Alan Parsons Project.
None because the atmosphere does a fantastic job of absorbing energy from laser blasts.
If you want to kill people from orbit, you should take bricks up with you and throw them out the airlock, it's way more likely to succeed.
What about to eyes? Either directly, or reflected off the copious shiny things we have around
If you want to kill people from orbit, you should take bricks up with you and throw them out the airlock, it's way more likely to succeed.
No, the bricks will just enter a slightly tilted orbit, intersecting the original one at the point of throw.
was getting larger. Then it struck me.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
> Back when I was working on lasers for power beaming
Short or long haul? Down or up?
We looked at lasers for space-to-Earth power beaming, but it's less practical than you might think-- heat rejection gets to be a serious problem. Most of the practical applications were Earth-to-space or space-to-space power beaming.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...
http://proceedings.spiedigital...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10...
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.js...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And the answer is...
None! We're not even talking enough laser to blind someone at that range, much less vaporize something/someone....
Plus the atmosphere, you know, exists...
That depends how hard you can throw them. The ISS orbits at 7.8KM/s. A quick google shows the highest-velocity tank guns can fire at 1.7KM/s. Modify for vacuum and aim it retro and you should be able to de-orbit your brick. Aiming might be tricky though, as no active guidance system is withstanding that much acceleration - if you want precision you'd be better off just using a small rocket.
to get rid of the slop, you have to net it and destroy it. the Japanese have proposed a craft to net the slop and burn it up on re-entry. that's a PLAN.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Dunno why but I was just thinking about this movie. Death Blossom FTW.
what could possibly go wrong with this plan? would a laser that powerful represent a destabilizing weapon? If you can de-orbit "space junk" what else can you de-orbit? How could you regain control over a ISS taken by person(s) intent on using it as a weapon?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
And the answer is...
None! We're not even talking enough laser to blind someone at that range, much less vaporize something/someone....
Just you wait until the cats see that red dot...