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Why is everyone worried about all that junk? It's reaction mass for getting out of orbit or getting back to earth. It's mostly aluminum which melts easy. Just b

by bawana 5y ago

Why is everyone worried about all that junk? It's reaction mass for getting out of orbit or getting back to earth. It's mostly aluminum which melts easy. Just build a solar furnace in space that has a big 'catcher'. Make aluminum ingots. And shoot them off a spaceship which has a giant electromagnet. As you know, pulsing the electromagnet creates eddy current in the aluminum. This force has been used to weld metal https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09507119809452024 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950711980945202... The ingots fly back to earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

munk-a 5y ago
I think the issue is that actually collecting all those bits (if we needed to quickly clean up our orbits) would be extremely expensive. You'll need to adjust delta-v hundreds of times to match orbit and collect all these bits and pieces. Basically - imagine dusting your place - except you're doing it in a car and you need to stop precisely over each dust mote to collect it. You're going to waste a whole lot of effort on manuvering and what to do with the junk once you've got it is actually a relatively simple problem[1]. 1. You probably want to consolidate all the little bits of junk into one big bit of junk that, at some point in the future, you can scrap for orbital construction.
- bawana 5y ago
  Wow, that's a great problem. Imagine putting up 10 junk collectors the consist of solar panels a super capacitor and a giant electromagnet-all bundled up in a little space drone. The earth tracks garbage maneuvers the drone near the orbital path of the junk, and when the junk comes close pulses the magnet. The junk decelerates, the drone accelerates and then eventually merge orbits. Junk captured. Onto the next one. As most of the acceleration and deceleration is provided by the kinetic energy of the space junk, the drone needs very little reaction mass as it only has to adjust its angular momentum now and then.

by bawana 5y ago

munk-a 5y ago

I think the issue is that actually collecting all those bits (if we needed to quickly clean up our orbits) would be extremely expensive. You'll need to adjust delta-v hundreds of times to match orbit and collect all these bits and pieces. Basically - imagine dusting your place - except you're doing it in a car and you need to stop precisely over each dust mote to collect it. You're going to waste a whole lot of effort on manuvering and what to do with the junk once you've got it is actually a relatively simple problem[1]. 1. You probably want to consolidate all the little bits of junk into one big bit of junk that, at some point in the future, you can scrap for orbital construction.

bawana 5y ago
Wow, that's a great problem. Imagine putting up 10 junk collectors the consist of solar panels a super capacitor and a giant electromagnet-all bundled up in a little space drone. The earth tracks garbage maneuvers the drone near the orbital path of the junk, and when the junk comes close pulses the magnet. The junk decelerates, the drone accelerates and then eventually merge orbits. Junk captured. Onto the next one. As most of the acceleration and deceleration is provided by the kinetic energy of the space junk, the drone needs very little reaction mass as it only has to adjust its angular momentum now and then.