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Reduce, Reuse, Deorbit (3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry to shift environmental blame onto individuals rather than what industry could

Reduce, Reuse, Deorbit (3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry to shift environmental blame onto individuals rather than what industry could've done, such as: waste stream capture, lifecycle management, material minimization, minimum recycled content, and so on.)

smackeyacky 5y ago
Why deorbit? It cost a lot of money to get that junk off the planet, surely its more valuable up there for somebody smart to harvest it and reuse it in place.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Well, the stuff is there right now, but there’s nobody harvesting them because it’s nowhere near economically viable. Maybe someday in the future, but we can’t just keep polluting the orbits while waiting for that hypothetical day. LEO stuff is going to deorbit due to drag anyway sooner or later, and we very much would like that to be ”sooner”. Higher orbits are stable for a long time, and intentional deorbiting is not feasible anyway due to the amount of delta-v needed. So there are ”graveyard orbits” into which satellites should be moved before they’re out of propellant. Anyway, intercepting and capturing defunct satellites on a large scale would be surprisingly costly because of the large variety of orbital planes involved. Inclination changes are expensive with regard to delta-v!
- qayxc 5y ago
  It isn't worth collecting. This is Earth orbit, not the ocean or some strip of land. The debris zooms around the planet on all kinds of trajectories and it's immensely difficult to match velocity and direction in order to capture it. It's worse than trying to collect machine gun bullets mid-flight that were fired from a rotating carousel by a guy with shaking hands... Some parts, like spent second rocket stages, present some value because they could be reused as wet-workshops [1]. Material value alone, however, doesn't justify the cost of capture in most cases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop
- rcxdude 5y ago
  Most of its value is in the energy in its orbit (not in its altitude). But to harvest it to use for something else you would need to change its orbit substantially, which requires even more energy. It would only be worthwhile for large clouds of debris in mostly the same orbit, which tend not to occur.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Sounds interesting in a sci fi fashion, but you'd need a lot of equipment in orbit to do so - forges, smelters, welding equipment, and of course laborers to process things. I don't think, all things, challenges and risks considered, that it's viable at this time. Besides, the main problem is in the small fragments, which are very hard to actually catch (safely), let alone reprocess. The bigger pieces of space junk are less of a problem, if only because they can be tracked.
- scrose 5y ago
  I don’t think most countries would want another country harvesting their ‘abandoned’ space junk :)
seanwilson 5y ago
> 3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry A good idea coming from a bad source doesn't stop it from being a good idea though so I'm not sure why people bring this up so much. Individuals and companies both have a responsibility to reduce waste.
- harperlee 5y ago
  Public attention can only handle so much, so purposefully diverting it towards suboptimal focuses in order to make more money is not good behaviour, and deserves being denounced.
  - seanwilson 5y ago
    https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-... > Starting in the late 1980s, the plastics industry spent tens of millions of dollars promoting recycling through ads, recycling projects and public relations, telling people plastic could be and should be recycled. How long have we known about this for now? At what stage does denouncing it become its own form of diversion?
    - harperlee 5y ago
      I’m not sure I follow you. From your link: > Industry Spent Millions Selling Recycling — To Sell More Plastic > For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is, the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. So yeah, the companies are keen on having public opinion thinking “consume without fear, we’ll recycle it”, because it has higher margin than being cleaner themselves. Fighting disinformation is not diinformation.
      - seanwilson 5y ago
        > “consume without fear, we’ll recycle it” But who is still loudly saying this disinformation and who is taking it seriously that it's worth bringing up whenever someone mentions that recycling is worthwhile? "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is in priority order too.
shkkmo 5y ago
> 3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry I do not believe this is true. The 3R's is widely believed to have come out of the first Earth Day in 1970. While the oil and plastics companies did put a lot of effort into promoting the idea of plastic recycling, those efforts were later and didn't really start until 1989.

smackeyacky 5y ago

Why deorbit? It cost a lot of money to get that junk off the planet, surely its more valuable up there for somebody smart to harvest it and reuse it in place.

Sharlin 5y ago
Well, the stuff is there right now, but there’s nobody harvesting them because it’s nowhere near economically viable. Maybe someday in the future, but we can’t just keep polluting the orbits while waiting for that hypothetical day. LEO stuff is going to deorbit due to drag anyway sooner or later, and we very much would like that to be ”sooner”. Higher orbits are stable for a long time, and intentional deorbiting is not feasible anyway due to the amount of delta-v needed. So there are ”graveyard orbits” into which satellites should be moved before they’re out of propellant. Anyway, intercepting and capturing defunct satellites on a large scale would be surprisingly costly because of the large variety of orbital planes involved. Inclination changes are expensive with regard to delta-v!
qayxc 5y ago
It isn't worth collecting. This is Earth orbit, not the ocean or some strip of land. The debris zooms around the planet on all kinds of trajectories and it's immensely difficult to match velocity and direction in order to capture it. It's worse than trying to collect machine gun bullets mid-flight that were fired from a rotating carousel by a guy with shaking hands... Some parts, like spent second rocket stages, present some value because they could be reused as wet-workshops [1]. Material value alone, however, doesn't justify the cost of capture in most cases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop
rcxdude 5y ago
Most of its value is in the energy in its orbit (not in its altitude). But to harvest it to use for something else you would need to change its orbit substantially, which requires even more energy. It would only be worthwhile for large clouds of debris in mostly the same orbit, which tend not to occur.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Sounds interesting in a sci fi fashion, but you'd need a lot of equipment in orbit to do so - forges, smelters, welding equipment, and of course laborers to process things. I don't think, all things, challenges and risks considered, that it's viable at this time. Besides, the main problem is in the small fragments, which are very hard to actually catch (safely), let alone reprocess. The bigger pieces of space junk are less of a problem, if only because they can be tracked.
scrose 5y ago
I don’t think most countries would want another country harvesting their ‘abandoned’ space junk :)

seanwilson 5y ago

> 3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry A good idea coming from a bad source doesn't stop it from being a good idea though so I'm not sure why people bring this up so much. Individuals and companies both have a responsibility to reduce waste.

harperlee 5y ago
Public attention can only handle so much, so purposefully diverting it towards suboptimal focuses in order to make more money is not good behaviour, and deserves being denounced.
- seanwilson 5y ago
  https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-... > Starting in the late 1980s, the plastics industry spent tens of millions of dollars promoting recycling through ads, recycling projects and public relations, telling people plastic could be and should be recycled. How long have we known about this for now? At what stage does denouncing it become its own form of diversion?
  - harperlee 5y ago
    I’m not sure I follow you. From your link: > Industry Spent Millions Selling Recycling — To Sell More Plastic > For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is, the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. So yeah, the companies are keen on having public opinion thinking “consume without fear, we’ll recycle it”, because it has higher margin than being cleaner themselves. Fighting disinformation is not diinformation.
    - seanwilson 5y ago
      > “consume without fear, we’ll recycle it” But who is still loudly saying this disinformation and who is taking it seriously that it's worth bringing up whenever someone mentions that recycling is worthwhile? "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is in priority order too.

shkkmo 5y ago

> 3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry I do not believe this is true. The 3R's is widely believed to have come out of the first Earth Day in 1970. While the oil and plastics companies did put a lot of effort into promoting the idea of plastic recycling, those efforts were later and didn't really start until 1989.