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I saw one interesting plan to get rid of space junk. As far as I remember it involved using nuclear bombs to "puff up" the atmosphere, locally making the top of
by everyone 2y ago
I saw one interesting plan to get rid of space junk. As far as I remember it involved using nuclear bombs to "puff up" the atmosphere, locally making the top of the atmosphere higher and thus inducing drag on the junk / satellites.
I think NASA did a bit of work on it, but not much. I forget what it was called. But it was the only plausible plan I have seen.
- airstrike 2y agoI love it. Surely nothing could go wrong with that plan!
- jandrese 2y agoI’d like to see the math on that. It seems more practical to pump gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere if you want to do that.
- dylan604 2y agohumans collectively are saying challenge accepted
- mncharity 2y ago> using nuclear bombs to "puff up" the atmosphere [...] plausible plan My fuzzy impression from [1] is even the high-order-100x density increase of solar/geomagnetic storms has limited impact on lifetime (above low-LEO where there's no need). Summer day vs winter night variability is already like 10x. I'm struggling to picture high-altitude explosions raising enough mass to do more. [1] slide 12 on https://swfound.org/media/207065/02_bruinsma.pdf https://swfound.org/media/207065/02_bruinsma.pdf "THERMOSPHERE DENSITY AND UPPER ATMOSPHERIC DRAG ON SATELLITES IN LEO" Sean Bruinsma
- rini17 2y agoWell then redirect icy asteroid/comet and evaporate it to make longer lived gas ring around Earth. In either case, it's likely to have unforeseen effects on atmosphere and thus climate.
- kryptiskt 2y agoThat sounds like a really bad idea, the EMP from such a blast would mess with electronics in a large area.