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Space 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! Peo
by kempbellt 7y ago
Space 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.