5 ms·

> A graveyard orbit sounds like it will be flying around up their indefinitely as high speed shrapnel. Does anyone know why they would choose this instead of de

> A graveyard orbit sounds like it will be flying around up their indefinitely as high speed shrapnel. Does anyone know why they would choose this instead of destroying it on re-entry? Because the ∆v required to re-enter the atmosphere is significantly higher than that required to leave geosynchronous orbit for a higher graveyard orbit. But yes, ultimately it will remain up there as "high speed shrapnel" - which is not an ideal situation, and continuing to treat disposal as we have may put us in a situation where these orbits become so full of high speed garbage that they are unusable. As a species, we need to do more work on cleaning up our space garbage before it's too late. Kurzgesagt actually has a great video on the topic of space debris for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU

phkahler 7y ago
Starship should make it feasible to go garbage collecting up there. That doesnt mean anyone will pay for it though.
- penagwin 7y ago
  Keep in mind to do garbage collecting you are essentially trying to intercept high-speed objects that likely have no telemetry. If your speed and orbit aren't correct, or if there's shrapnel or other debris, you'll destroy your ship. And you can only pickup garbage that's in a similar orbit too.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    We're talking about the graveyard orbit, which is not far from geosynchronous orbit. In fact there's such an intercept being done soon, the mission extension vehicle (MEV) is going to rendezvous with an old but still controlled satellite in order to extend its useful life. This rendezvous is being done in the graveyard orbit in case something goes wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle
- toyg 7y ago
  There is an old anime about that: Planetes.
  - ShakataGaNai 7y ago
    I watched that one back in the day. It's been as while but as far I as remember it was fairly decently done on the space physics/what can go wrong aspects.
  - gerikson 7y ago
    One of my favs. I love the mix of SF and slice-of-life.
- slowhand09 7y ago
  I prefer having technology to vaporize rather than collect. But if we have the technology, just a scanning tractor beam to collect the debris. My guess is it'll all be too primitive for any reuse. So collecting it with a beam, then projecting it in a sun-seeking trajectory by reversing the beam.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    I prefer having technology to vaporize rather than collect. The ESA is putting a lot of focused attention behind this very thing, to certain extents [0] [0] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc7/paper/717/SDC7-paper717.pdf https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc7/paper/7...
    - fennecfoxen 7y ago
      Only for breaking up satellites already approaching the atmosphere, though.
  - fennecfoxen 7y ago
    "Vaporizing" a satellite is a misleading concept which draws on atmospheric analogies that do not hold up. A satellite is made out of metal and such things. You can heat that metal hot enough to melt it, but then its structural integrity will fail, and the liquid will disperse into a cloud of metal droplets while other satellite-parts drift away. When the metal droplets cool off, they will still remain in about the same orbit. This does not make an impact with any of these droplets particularly safe. Transporting the amount of energy to properly vaporize metal is also problematic and expensive. We do not possess tractor beam technology. Our tractors on this planet all use mechanical linkages. If we did have tractor beam technology, powering it would remain a problem.
    - wahern 7y ago
      We do possess optical tractor beam technology: > However, about 10 years ago, researchers found that the object may experience an optical pulling force (OPF) toward the source direction when illuminated by an unfocused beam, such as a diffraction-free (nondiffraction) Bessel beam, which is named an optical tractor beam (OTB). Although it seems counterintuitive, OPF has been theoretically proved and experimentally demonstrated within recent years, as will be reviewed in this paper. Source: https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photonics/volume-1/issue-2/024001/Photonic-tractor-beams-a-review/10.1117/1.AP.1.2.024001.full?SSO=1 https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photoni... Although, there's a lot of distance to cover between the current state-of-the-art and actually capturing orbital debris.

phkahler 7y ago

Starship should make it feasible to go garbage collecting up there. That doesnt mean anyone will pay for it though.

penagwin 7y ago
Keep in mind to do garbage collecting you are essentially trying to intercept high-speed objects that likely have no telemetry. If your speed and orbit aren't correct, or if there's shrapnel or other debris, you'll destroy your ship. And you can only pickup garbage that's in a similar orbit too.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  We're talking about the graveyard orbit, which is not far from geosynchronous orbit. In fact there's such an intercept being done soon, the mission extension vehicle (MEV) is going to rendezvous with an old but still controlled satellite in order to extend its useful life. This rendezvous is being done in the graveyard orbit in case something goes wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle
toyg 7y ago
There is an old anime about that: Planetes.
- ShakataGaNai 7y ago
  I watched that one back in the day. It's been as while but as far I as remember it was fairly decently done on the space physics/what can go wrong aspects.
- gerikson 7y ago
  One of my favs. I love the mix of SF and slice-of-life.
slowhand09 7y ago
I prefer having technology to vaporize rather than collect. But if we have the technology, just a scanning tractor beam to collect the debris. My guess is it'll all be too primitive for any reuse. So collecting it with a beam, then projecting it in a sun-seeking trajectory by reversing the beam.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  I prefer having technology to vaporize rather than collect. The ESA is putting a lot of focused attention behind this very thing, to certain extents [0] [0] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc7/paper/717/SDC7-paper717.pdf https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc7/paper/7...
  - fennecfoxen 7y ago
    Only for breaking up satellites already approaching the atmosphere, though.
- fennecfoxen 7y ago
  "Vaporizing" a satellite is a misleading concept which draws on atmospheric analogies that do not hold up. A satellite is made out of metal and such things. You can heat that metal hot enough to melt it, but then its structural integrity will fail, and the liquid will disperse into a cloud of metal droplets while other satellite-parts drift away. When the metal droplets cool off, they will still remain in about the same orbit. This does not make an impact with any of these droplets particularly safe. Transporting the amount of energy to properly vaporize metal is also problematic and expensive. We do not possess tractor beam technology. Our tractors on this planet all use mechanical linkages. If we did have tractor beam technology, powering it would remain a problem.
  - wahern 7y ago
    We do possess optical tractor beam technology: > However, about 10 years ago, researchers found that the object may experience an optical pulling force (OPF) toward the source direction when illuminated by an unfocused beam, such as a diffraction-free (nondiffraction) Bessel beam, which is named an optical tractor beam (OTB). Although it seems counterintuitive, OPF has been theoretically proved and experimentally demonstrated within recent years, as will be reviewed in this paper. Source: https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photonics/volume-1/issue-2/024001/Photonic-tractor-beams-a-review/10.1117/1.AP.1.2.024001.full?SSO=1 https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photoni... Although, there's a lot of distance to cover between the current state-of-the-art and actually capturing orbital debris.