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People add garbage to the orbit before thinking how to remove it. As with anything new actually. Do first and think how to undo later
by acvny 7y ago
People add garbage to the orbit before thinking how to remove it. As with anything new actually. Do first and think how to undo later
- kempbellt 7y agoSpace exploration is still in its infancy. This is like yelling at a kid for throwing a baseball too hard into the air and it not coming back down. "Timmy! People have to fly up there! What is wrong with you? Why didn't you think about that before you decided to throw the ball?" Up until recently mankind lived by a "what goes up must come down" understanding of physics. We need to add an amendment. "What goes up must come down. Unless you throw it really, really hard, then actually, it might never come back down."
- colechristensen 7y ago50 years ago this was a valid point. Human usage of earth orbits is mature and has been for a long time.
- m4rtink 7y agoAlso it is very likely tugs will be deploeyd in the future to drag dead satellites back to a space station for reprocessing. Mass does not grow on trees in the empty void of space, so reusing those is s no brainer. And the bit of noble gas your solar electric tug is gling to use up for that is negligable compared to all the effort spent to drag it all out of abgravity well or get the raw materials all they was from an asteroid, not to mention all the elaborate processing needed.
- phreeza 7y agoMy understanding is that this would only make sense for satellites in the same orbital plane as the debris.
- saagarjha 7y agoWe'd actually like things that have no use sticking around up there to come down, though.
- ggm 7y agoMy belief is that (within limits) the rule about smallsats and LEO is different: you don't need planned de-orbit because they have short persistence due to drag and almost no significant hit-the-ground risk because they burn up. GEO has to have de-orbit burns or parking orbit. Different. And it is governed by law, within the limits.
- colechristensen 7y agoThe title is specifically about GEO satellites
- ggm 7y agoCompact GEO.. GEOO..... (sigh) good point. So they're not in unregulated space (does that even exist?) and have to have a de-orbit or park policy and understand how to effect it, and are governed by the economy they launch from and the territory they fly over, and the risk of litigation from other GEO owners affected by their policy.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoFWIW, junk in LEO can still remain for dozens or even hundreds of years. Most satellites also don't burn up completely. At least in the US, the current standard is that the odds of a casualty in case of uncontrolled reentry are less than 1 in 10,000. I think that as we see a proliferation of LEO constellations with tens of thousands of smallsats (some of which are almost surely going to be operated by companies that go bankrupt), that standard is going to bite someone in the ass.
- kohtatsu 7y agoI think 1 in 10,000 is high, there's a lot of land out there, and sea.
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- skybrian 7y agoHow do you know whether these companies are thinking about it? There is nothing in the article about this.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThe article mentions when and how one of the satellites will be disposed of.
- ivalm 7y agoBut the volume of all possible geostationary orbits is MASSIVE, much much larger than volume of LEO orbits.
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoThe volume of geostationary orbits is theoretically zero, it's a 2D circle. It's true that most applications can work within some tolerance around that mathematically perfect orbit, and it's also true that volume of all orbits at all inclinations near geostationary altitude is huge. I'll grant those caveats, but I don't think it's at all sensible to waste the best parts of those orbits, especially given the deorbit timelines. It's one thing to gamble with Kessler syndrome that will last a couple decades and cut off our generation from LEO, another if it lasts for millennia and cuts off our civilization from GEO.
- pmezard 7y agoThere was an episode[0] on French radio show "La méthode scientifique" in October 2019 about these questions (following a near-collision between SpaceX and ESA satellites where apparently SpaceX just played dead and ESA people had to maneuver). They talked about a lot of things, but IIRC GEO issues were very low on their priority list. This is a very thin doughnut but still a very very large on considered scales. [0] In French: https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-methode-scientifique/la-methode-scientifique-emission-du-mardi-08-octobre-2019 https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-methode-scientifiq...
- azernik 7y agoThe volume of geosynchronous orbits is massive, but because geostationary orbits are limited to a single plane the available volume for them is quite small.
- gus_massa 7y agoThe geostationary satellites are usually moved to a Graveyard Orbit when they are not longer used. The spots in the geostationary are very few and very regulated. More info in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit
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