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The race to destroy space garbage
- hourislate 10y agoOn one of Joe Rogans Podcasts, Neil Degrasse Tyson had said that there is a very good chance we will trap ourselves on Earth before we can become a true space faring civilization. Sad when you think about it.
- thinkloop 10y agoTrap ourselves because there would too much junk to be able to get up there to clean it?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ninju 10y agoThe 'trap' is that the accumulation of space junk will interfere with attempts to launch space ships and/or disrupt orbiting satellites to the extent that we can no longer see from space telescopes, hence we are trapped on Earth :-(
- FLUX-YOU 10y agoIf the stakes are high enough, you will find people willing to risk the launches. Missions will just be unable to use very polluted orbits and there will need to be planning around that. You would need a ton of debris to make every launch site and mission type in the world useless.
- dogecoinbase 10y agoYou would need a ton of debris... The point of Kessler syndrome is that it's an exponential growth in number of objects.
- Terr_ 10y agoI expect the trap will be political/economic rather than technical: We'll have ways to fix it, but you won't get enough groups to come together and pay for it.
- gozur88 10y agoSeems kind of unlikely. Even LEO is a big place.
- idlewords 10y agoGreat news for the rest of the Galaxy.
- parcec 10y agoI study orbital debris for a living - I'd like to assure you that you don't need to feel too worried about that. Orbital debris is generally consolidated in very thin altitude bands. Rockets on an escape trajectory spend very little time in these shells, only in passing. Compare that to satellites with lifetimes of 15 years. Niel's statement is analog to saying "The LHC could create a black hole that kills us all". Yeah... I guess on some theoretical level it's possible... but it's extremely unlikely. Same concept applies here. I'm quite disappointed in him saying "There's a very good chance", because that is far from true.
- shawn-butler 10y agoHe wouldn't get invited to speak if he didn't make pompous grand statements though.
- hourislate 10y agoHere is the clip from when they start speaking about the space junk. My memory did not quite remember the exact words Neil used so what I wrote was not entirely accurate. Apologies. https://youtu.be/PhHtBqsGAoA?t=6285 https://youtu.be/PhHtBqsGAoA?t=6285
- okket 10y agoSee also "Kessler syndrome": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome And, if you speak German, yesterdays "Sternengeschichten" podcast by Florian Freistetter is about this problem: http://scienceblogs.de/astrodicticum-simplex/2017/04/07/sternengeschichten-folge-229-das-kessler-syndrom/ http://scienceblogs.de/astrodicticum-simplex/2017/04/07/ster...
- loeg 10y agoIs that basically the premise of Seveneves?
- okket 10y agoNeal Stephenson's book is in the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#In_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#In_fiction
- andrewflnr 10y agoIn the same way that flu season is basically the premise of "World War Z".
- roryisok 10y agoThe first line of Seveneves is "The moon exploded with no warning and no apparent reason". The Kessler effect is involved, but its not really about space junk at all It is excellent though
- scotchmi_st 10y agoI believe it's in the afterword of Seveneves, that space debris was mentioned as one of Neal Stephenson's inspirations for the plot of that book.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y agoThe moon is destroyed on the first page of Seveneves. So not quite.
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- drdeadringer 10y agoI wonder if, in the future, something like 'Planetes' would become reality. Space janitors in some sense policing space junk in orbit be it operators controlling collection robots or actual human space-walk collectors themselves.
- sandworm101 10y agoCollisions are the problem. When to large things collide they create hundreds of little things. So any space janitors, as large things themselves, would only increase the number of collisions and thereby exacerbate the problem. The relative speeds of any two objects in low orbit means that physically catching much of anything is horribly inefficient. The DeltaV requirements for a robot grabbing one thing, then moving to grab another, means you are probably better off launching a separate robot for each target. Any complete answer must therefore involve some means of moving debris without physically touching it. Magnets and lasers are the only hope.
- EGreg 10y agoDisagree. What about a large elastic net?
- lambdadmitry 10y agoThey will not work on the scale of kinetic energies involved. Stuff with orbital velocities has so much energy that even metals start to behave like fluids, so an elastic net will be torn after the first impact.
- Retric 10y agoThis is not true because most satellites are in similar orbits, largely because it's easer going east due to earths rotation. Similarly, you could cheaply visit every satilite in geosynchronous orbit. Further, you can pick trash up in an order designed to minimize delta V, and use thing she like solar sails or ION drives. Polar orbits are something of an exception, as are consolations designed for total coverage of the earth.
- andrewflnr 10y agoIf you're a satellite, could it ever be effective to use active radar to detect small, fast incoming debris and smack it with a laser? There's obviously a question of power, but do we even have good enough sensors and weapons? Can you get enough warning to react in time, without making it worse?
- mabbo 10y agoThat's a neat idea, but it misses an important step: after the laser hits the debris, what's changed? Now instead of a small piece of cold metal coming at you, you have a very hot blob of molten metal moving at roughly the same direction and speed.
- maxerickson 10y agoWith high enough power, the debris might eject some material (pushing it into a different orbit). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Avoidance_and_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Avoidance_and... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom I guess it isn't something that would be on lots of satellites. But it wouldn't need to be.
- andrewflnr 10y agoMy idea was that you get a rapidly spreading cloud of metallic vapor coming your way. Again, though, power. Also what maxerickson said, but then you need to be even more precise, at least if it's coming right at you.
- hn_user2 10y agoSatellites can currently move out of the way. Cheaper and less energy to move 2 meters one way and then back again.
- hliyan 10y agoThat does require it to expend precious propellent though. Perhaps what we need are satellites built in shapes that allow them to turn and dodge debris using only gyroscopic attitude control
- ProfessorLayton 10y agoI've often wondered something related to this, could a hostile nation ruin space orbit for everybody? What if a nation deliberately trashed space? Additionally, I wonder if nations with things in orbit have also considered that possibility.
- Klathmon 10y agoSpace is really really big. It would take a LOT of junk and a lot of money and time to ruin all orbits. Even LEO is at least as big as the surface of the earth, and getting debris to stay in that orbit for more than a few months takes thrusters to keep it from decaying.
- idlewords 10y agoYou could do this pretty easily. All orbits at the same altitude eventually intersect, and high LEO orbits take decades or more to decay. Moreover, at orbital velocities, even tiny fragments can destroy a satellite. So if you fill an altitude range with enough orbiting shrapnel, you can ruin the party for everyone. The movie 'Gravity' has some breathtaking visuals of how such a runaway event would look.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- goodcanadian 10y agoIndubitably. From the article: Collisions are rare, but half of all near-misses today are caused by debris from just two incidents. In 2007, China destroyed one of its own satellites with a ballistic missile. In 2009 an American commercial communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian weather satellite. There are only a handful of nations with the launch capabilities, but if any one of them wanted to ruin the party for everyone, they could probably accomplish it by hitting a few satellites with a few missiles. I don't imagine it would take very many destroyed satellites to create a serious debris hazard.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoJust like all externalities, addressing the challenge comes down to who is willing to pay for it and the resultant free rider problem. There would be obvious value in creating a space junk collection/elimination capability, but the expense when compared to the individual offset/mitigation solutions, keeps everyone from being the first mover on this. It's clearly not a big enough problem for there to be enough economic incentives to solve it.
- jessriedel 10y agoThere are only a handful of countries with the capabilities to launch things, there are essentially no entrenched interests who benefit from space debris, and the science is rather clear. I think this is substantially easier than other purported free-rider problems that have been solved by international agreement, e.g., the ozone layer.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoIt should be quite easy to define, if you send something up then there must be provision for returning it at the end of its life.
- idlewords 10y agoThe movie 'Gravity' has some amazing images of what a cascading series of collisions at orbital velocity would look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKW-Gd_S_xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKW-Gd_S_xc
- sprash 10y agoObligatory: http://stuffin.space/ http://stuffin.space/
- FraKtus 10y agoAmazing, thanks for sharing!
- syphilis2 10y agoAnyone curious can download the current space catalog from https://www.space-track.org https://www.space-track.org (signup is required). It's a good resource if you want access to formatted data about what's up there, and where.
- sargun 10y agoThe telescope described in the article is part of the US Space Surveillance Network. They have an incredibly beautiful installation in Hawaii: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Ground-Based_Electro-Optical_Deep_Space_Surveillance_%28GEODSS%29_in_Diego_Garcia.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Ground-B...
- oh_sigh 10y agoHow about autonomous satellites which cannibalize space junk's orbital velocity to de-orbit the junk, and maintain the satellite's orbit? Imagine, a satellite is collecting space junk it encounters, and compressing a big spring using solar power. Once it gets enough junk, it launches the junk backwards, giving it momentum and sending the junk into an unstable orbit.
- snovv_crash 10y agoRather than a spring, a coil gun would work with any conductive material quite effectively. I imagine that the difficulty is repeatedly changing orbits - this will probably require more propellant than can be derived from junk. I was wondering if SpaceX couldn't use its second stages to grab some junk while it is deorbiting. That would be some seriously good publicity.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoEh, if it becomes a real problem I'm sure someone will figure out how to vaporize it with a big laser.
- userbinator 10y agoI wonder if there's a way to collect and recycle it, especially the larger objects, since from what I know aerospace components contain plenty of exotic/expensive materials.
- swashbuck1r 10y agoI have a picture in my head of a fleet of Katamari Damacy inspired satellites gobbling up space debris using magnetic 'glue' and ejecting wads of collected mass back to earth as part of moving to new paths that will intersect debris fields. Occasionally a space vehicle grabs hold of the growing debris ball and moves it to another orbit that needs to be vacuumed.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoIs any of a satellite magnetic? Mostly aluminum etc.