More on Orbital Space Debris 275
wvanhuffel writes "This is a call for /.'s to put their thinking caps on. The US Airforce, NASA and other agencies are looking for ideas to find and eliminate threats from space debris to craft (space, in the use of).
Personally I like the idea of "robots to serve as roving garbage scowls" - my question is "How do they identify 'garbage'?" - Would the ISS qualify?" I don't know what happened to the laser broom.
Simple. (Score:1, Interesting)
A lot of work (Score:3, Interesting)
1.Catalogue them -- A database with all known objects and their orbits is the obvious first step
2.Build a sateliite with a relatively low power laser, charged by solar panels. An alternative would be a simple kind of large, thick metal "shield" that would simply get in the way of the space debris.
3.Place a ion engine on the craft.
4.Write software that would automatically select the nearest target from the db and move the satelite into position to evaporate or impact with the debris.
5.Very importantly, have an operator or command center that would be required by the software to OK each impact so that the satelite doesn't get misused or highjacked.
6.If using the satelite with a big metal "target shield", eventually the shield will become useless. It can be pushed into reentry by the ion engine and can then burn up on reentry, the ion engine then climbs back into normal orbit and is fitted out with a new shield by a drone rocket.
7.It will take many years but will start to show progress over time. Good that it will give the operators in the command center work and enable them to read books, playgames etc inbetween hits.
Nanotbot .. Garbage (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to *remove* the garbage from orbit, not just transform it from one sort of item to another.
Now if they could all assemble together into one big nanobot ball as the process progresses, then that would be another thing. But if they are delicate little beasties, then I can't see that happening.
Re:Sticky Umbrella (Score:2, Interesting)
But there are "useful-only" orbits that we want clear. You would have to do some sort of analysis of how long a given size disc would have to be in orbit to clear it to a specific level of safety.
Well, it was just an idea.
TWW
collect the debris with bots and use it as mass (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's turn that space debris to raw materials. Clean up LEO, cut down the amount of stuff that needs to be hauled up the gravity well, and make money doing it.
Build a system of robots that finds debris, cuts it up, hauls it to a refuse station, and reduces it to a reusable form.
You use three types of robots.
Many small mobile bots (solar powered and ion-engine driven) find space debris and boost it to collecting spots.
The second type chops up debris and boosts it to stable higher orbits. More of the second type intersect at the higher orbit and bring debris to the third type, which
vaporizes the debris (no big deal in space with unlimited solar power and no atmosphere), charges the vapor, and shoots the charged vapor down a long tube with a magnetic system designed to act like a big mass spectrometer, separating the vapor by composition and leaving hunks of iron, silicon, etc.
Or use a low tech but more high maintenance design and spin the stuff to separate it. Either way you've got raw materials enough to say, triple the speed they're building the ISS with even the junk materials usable for shielding.
Seems to me that this system could be built by graduate students from a school like Carnegie-Mellon for five or six million dollars, tops.
Notes:If you think that solar power is too wimpy consider that with two or three hundred collectors in orbit it's no big deal if it takes a given collector six months to bring in a load. Also, the collectors can be programmed to keep a bit of debris and coat themselves in it, protecting them from radiation and prolonging their own useful life. Give the collectors swappable boards and perhaps a two year board replacement cycle and they should last for at least a decade each.
As for how to get them up there armadillo aerospace and the like are more than capable of boosting plenty of small payloads to low earth orbit in the near future. Chances are the toughest issue would be the legal fooforah of who owns the abandoned gear. Guaranteed that as soon as people figure out that their dead telsat has market value LLoyds will be fighting the salvage declaration.
So, if anybody wants to do this, look me up.
Rustin H. Wright
Information Geek, former inventor, founder and publisher, Reed&Wright
pubgeek@netscape.net
Recycling, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't it than be smarter to accumulate all the space junk in a big orbital junkyard?
This could also include all the obsolete satelites currently burned down in the atmosphere.
Next to this junkyard there could be an orbital factory using the scrap metal and other debris for raw materials.
Furthermore, this facility wouldn't be *THAT* expensive to build, and i.e. the accumulation of all the used satelites in the same place would be trivial, by programming their final thrust to get them to the place. The compound in question could use solar energy, and be fully automatic.
Building the trivial things, like the replacement solar panels for the ISS as well as other relatively easy to produce things in space would seem like a wiser way to deal with stuff that cost millions to launch up there!
Time to break out the ol' 'Missile Command'... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's launch a bunch of satellites into orbit with lasers or some kinetic energy weapon and wire them into video game consoles back on the ground here. Kids can drop $.50 for a chance to blast away at space debris. That way we can use those well-honed reflexes of the future space cadets (take that how you want to) and maybe even raise some money for NASA with the fees.
(You can implement a targeting/size filter to keep from shooting at real satelites.)
How about aerogel? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thick enough, it could be used to capture those tiny bolts and fragments they can't track by radar.
Also, one of their concerns about using lasers to zap bigger debris was the fear of generation bazillion smaller particles that couldn't be collected or tracked thereafter.
Why not create an autonomous robot that circles the globe, zap the objects it can while collecting the smaller debris in an AeroGel fish net?
Think it won't hold up to the task? Check out the photos [nasa.gov] of AeroGel. The fluffy thing can hold up a brick!
Collect it as ballast for tether/space elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
Are giant Nets too low tech? (Score:3, Interesting)
An Alchemist's Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
First and foremost, any solution needs to consider the economic factor. A solution that pays for itself will be a hands down winner.
Second, it seems like many of the solutions here would create more debris than already exists. A single large satellite is far simpler to track and avoid than a few thousand pieces of that large satellite. Unless your lasers or other weapons completely convert the debris into energy, you're wasting your time. Even if they force the debris toward Earth, the question would remain of "how did they do it"? The answer is by vaporizing matter which blasted away in the opposite direction. That matter is now not only debris in space, but untrackable debris. Even a paint fleck can do (and has done) serious damage to another orbiting object.
Third, THIS SPACE JUNK HAS VALUE!!! If its matter, and its in orbit, it is worth thousands of dollars a pound. It blows my mind everytime they guide something down that took millions too get up there instead of coming up with a way to get stuff into a parking orbit. Eventually, probably even today, there should be enough materials in space to justify manufacturing in space instead of sending more stuff up.
Steps we should take to turn this lead into gold include a) all future items launched should have provisions to reach an orbiting factory/storage facility at the end of their expected life. b) they need to all have provisions for capture via forces instead of mechanical means. This might mean adding magnetic materials or something. This way, an orbiting vehicle could capture them without contact that could cause further scattering of debris. c) software needs to be developed that can calculate capture plans for multiple objects that utilize the energy (stored in the momentum) of the objects captured effectively to help reach the next object and eventually get back to the orbiting factory/storage facility. Sort of like a game of 3D billiards. d) automated recycling and manufacturing technologies need to be developed to turn these raw materials into useful things like airtight habitat shells. At least initially, we'd probably have to keep bringing the high tech chips and stuff up the hard way, but the heavy shells and stuff could likely be very effectively manufactured in space. Things like girders for the space station should be relatively easy to do.
Nanosatellites (Score:3, Interesting)
BBCnews reported [bbc.co.uk] some time ago on such a posible role for Surrey Satellite Technology's nanosatellite [sstl.co.uk] SNAP program [sstl.co.uk]. A swarm of cheap (at about 100,000 UK sterling) manuverable tiny satellites that can latch onto and gradually deorbit junk.
How though could such carry enough reaction mass to actually slow something down enough? Info on its propulsion system is here (pdf) [sstl.co.uk]. Could you just do it via its flywheel? Or use such to cluster together junk for collection by something bigger?I could certainly see a role as a beacon to actively tag stuff (on the net even! [bbc.co.uk])rather than relying upon constant ground based monitoring.
reality check (Score:3, Interesting)
The article is a bit heavy on the space-junk media hype. The practical answer is to let nature take its course and work toward prevention.
Any method of attempting to destroy debris isn't going to be practical. Giant debris collectors deliberately placed in dangerous orbits are likely to simply be smashed to pieces rather than gather any meaningful quantity of debris. Laser systems could vaporize metal fragments, but this vapor will simply congeal into globlets and cool into the space equivalent of bird shot. Until we develop gravity disruption fields, there is no effective way to affect the orbits of debris. The best bet is to wait the problem out. LEO is unstable. The Earth's atmosphere bulges significantly during solar maximums, and this drag has the effect of cleaning out the spacelanes within a reasonable period of time. In time, the problem (at least at LEO) will take care of itself if we can stop adding to it.
I'm pretty sure the following is being done, but there should be restrictions on any mass accelerated to orbital speeds. Specifically:
Or, we could just use the Q solution. Simply change the gravitational constant of the universe.
silicon foam (Score:3, Interesting)
A little orbital mechanics (Score:2, Interesting)
Sweeping out a single orbit would be like driving through a staight city street at high speed with a bulldozer and then thinking you did not have to stop at stop lights on that road because you cleared everything out of that path two hours ago.
Objects start mostly going in the same direction, but the tidal forces of the moon distort the orbit and twist it until it is following some other path. (of course we also have the polar orbits the military use)
Most of these objects quickly hit the atmosphere, Many stay up for years and a few probably get ejected out of earth orbit.
It is the intersections you have to watch out for