9 ms·
Station keeping. The L4 and L5 points are nominally self stable, if you put something there it won't wander off. (this isn't true of the L1 point which is more
by ChuckMcM 6y ago
Station keeping. The L4 and L5 points are nominally self stable, if you put something there it won't wander off. (this isn't true of the L1 point which is more dynamic). To do station keeping you need reaction mass and working thrusters. That level of infrastructure requires some maintenance, whereas you could put an empty/abandoned ISS in the L4 or L5 point and it would just sit there for no additional cost.
- gizmo686 6y agoRight, but why do you need to do station keeping at all. Tracking objects is cheap, and a normal graveyard orbit isn't going to be perturbed so much that it would be notably harder to reach again in any reasonable timeframe.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoFew chances to have a collision with existing space junk in either L4 or L5.
- aetherson 6y agoThat's shooting an ant with a rocket launcher. You could avoid space junk in much lower orbits than the Lagrange points. I encourage everyone to get a sense for the sheer scale of this. Do it on your floor or walls. Try a scale of 1cm = 5000km or 1cm = 10,000km. Cut out little Earths and moons and map out geosynch, the lagrange points, etc.
- interestica 6y agoOrbits decay. Things change. Political priorities change. I mean, they didn't want skylab to come down when/where it did.
- Faark 6y agoSkylab was in LEO. There is hardly any decay once you get higher up, you're quickly approach "many lifetimes". That's why the new huge LEO constellations won't be a big space garbage problem.