4 ms·
Removing the shades would be quite hard, dare I say impossible to do in large quantities. Fortunately you don't need to do so; they will eventually drift away
by CydeWeys 7y ago
Removing the shades would be quite hard, dare I say impossible to do in large quantities. Fortunately you don't need to do so; they will eventually drift away under solar pressure. So if you don't need them anymore, stop refreshing the pack and it will eventually disperse, whereas if you need more, launch more.
- MayeulC 7y agoOr just orient them sideways to block less light. That shouldn't cost much fuel, if any (using reaction wheels). I think it would be best to keep those at hand, just in case. If feasible at all, make a part of those shades photovoltaic panels, and beam the energy back using microwaves, as that would provide an extra incentive to launch that (GEO might be more useful for that kind of setup, I have no idea what deltav it would take to transfer to/from both, but you could use ion thrusters since you have on-board power).
- CydeWeys 7y agoHow do you orient them? The dumb ones weigh 1g. How much will they weigh if they're smart, powered, and have reaction wheels for orientation? That's orders of magnitude again. Better to send up 10,000X dumb shades with random orientation and spin. Not only are the dumb ones much lighter, they're proportionally much cheaper too, since they're basically just structured aluminum foil rather than needing thrusters, reaction wheels, computers, etc.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]