3 ms·
I'm using "intercept" to mean "extremely near miss, at high relative velocities". With the quasi-chaotic nature of orbits, that's easy for our rack of orbit-ca
by bell-cot 2y ago
I'm using "intercept" to mean "extremely near miss, at high relative velocities". With the quasi-chaotic nature of orbits, that's easy for our rack of orbit-calculating computers to arrange - using only a few well-timed little nudges from the Killer Satellite's ion thrusters. (Assume that the latter are in fairly elliptical orbits; some of those retrograde.)
It's not critical that the killsats produce actual aerogel. A little cloud of snow, from a water tank and squirt nozzle, could also work. What matters is that it's cheap, reliable, low-mass, soft-ish, and collides head on-ish with Bit O'Junk - cutting the latter's orbital velocity by a few hundred meters per second. Done near apogee, that'd drop Mr. O'Junk's perigee enough for atmospheric drag to finish him off in very short order.