Giant Balloons Could Solve Space Junk Problem 210
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100,000 objects bigger than a centimeter wide hover around our planet, accounting for 4 million pounds of junk that befouls our atmosphere and threatens the expensive satellites we actually want in orbit. Dr. Kristen Gates, of Global Aerospace Corporation, proposes that we can clear the skies by attaching a football field-sized balloon to dead satellites, which would increase the orbital drag, eventually bringing a satellite down into the atmosphere where it would burn up. The GOLD — or Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device — unit is easily inflated in space, and best of all, if the deployed GOLD balloon collides with space junk, it won't deflate or break the junk into smaller, less manageable bits."
pop! (Score:2)
If there's enough junk flying around up there to damage satellites, wouldn't it also pop a giant balloon?
Re:pop! (Score:5, Interesting)
With no pressure on the outside of the balloon it would deflate very slowly. This is doubly so because it does not take much gas to inflate a balloon in space due to the lack of outside pressure.
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Yes, but can they make the surface sticky? (Score:2, Funny)
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The differences in velocity are generally too great. It would be like trying to stop a shotgun blast with a single layer of packing tape. If you're lucky, a tiny speck of the tape might stick to a few of the pellets as they shred the strip and continue on their way.
Sounds like a new Myth Busters episode...
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I wonder if you could coat the balloon with a cheap reflective material that would leave residue on debris that impacted the surface. Wouldn't that provide a gradual increase in our tracking ability without costing a whole lot more than the original design?
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Because when the space junk is a bolt traveling at 10km/s relative to you, sticky doesn't quite cut it.
Re:Yes, but can they make the surface sticky? (Score:5, Funny)
Because it will never catch them?
You can test this at home with this simple procedure.
1. Get a sheet of mylar and some sticks, an emergency blanket will do.
2. Using the mylar and some sticks make a your balloon. The sticks will help to simulate the structures that can hold their shape.
3. Tie this off to any structure. That structure will be the stand in satellite.
4. Cover the balloon in glue.
5. Get out your favorite high power firearm and fire some rounds at the balloon. These will be the space junk.
6. see if any bullets, your simulated space junk, got stuck in the glue
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Step 5 gave me the biggest belly laugh I've had this year. Thank you, sir!
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The worrying thing is that if he is from the USA he probably does have a favourite high-power firearm.
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In the USA you hear 'high power rifle' more often than 'high power firearm'.
'Most' countries allow people to buy rifles and/or shotguns for hunting purposes. Even Japan does.
You're not really doing a 'proper' simulation with a ~1k feet per second handgun. A ~2-3k fps rifle will be a better solution, but even a bunch of birdshot would work at close range.
*Looks around*
I don't have a favorite high power firearm, I love them all equally! ;)
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How much waste water could the ISS have? That stuff is valuable, they recycle every drop possible.
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Why are you sure of that?
My chemistry isn't great - probably only better than 95% of the non-chemists in the world - because I only have to use various bits of polymer and surface chemistry in my day-to-day work. But I do routinely have to work with specialists in polymer chemistry and I maintain a friendship with a former adhesives chemist. I'm not at all sure that "they" (whoever "they" are) have the sort of adhesives you descr
Not quite (Score:2)
A firearm is not nearly enough. You need something like linear accelerator to simulate low-orbit speeds.
And then you'd notice your bullets quite often will be _vaporized_ during the collision.
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your bullets quite often will be _vaporized_ during the collision.
Problem solved, no?
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This would cause the balloon to deflate faster
Have you account for needing > 1 atm to inflate a balloon period on earth vs something like .00001 atm working in orbit?
Yes, the air will escape more quickly at first, and even more completely. But there's also a lack of force to collapse the balloon, assuming a mylar unstretchable type vs a rubber stretch type.
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What part of this requires astronauts?
It sure seems that a robot could well tie a string around something, or a velco band or whatever they use to attach space balloons.
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No Astronauts needed, just one Battery Operated Rubish Gatherer (BORG)
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Because no knots are required, only a high friction tape/string and many windings.
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Even easier, how about something like zip ties. Those would be dead simple to attach.
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How do you propose they do this, considering newtons laws?
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*pfft*
Laws are made to be broken, dude!
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Bigger issue: We have to send astronauts out in space to tie balloons to all this junk, one at a time. So..... wouldn't that cost a heck of a lot of money in terms of man-hours?
Super glue is cheap.
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Re:pop! (Score:4, Informative)
There are no astronauts, there are no robots, there is nothing extra being launched into orbit to intercept existing satellites. This is a small, couple kilogram, briefcase sized package that will be attached to new satellites at launch, so at the end of their life, the balloon will be deployed, and the satellite will de-orbit in a matter of weeks.
They should have designed these satellites to be self-killing - i.e. Burn a rocket, deorbit, and burn rather than just throw stuff all over the place & forget about it.
Satellites generally are designed to be self killing. All satellites have some sort of moderate delta-v rocket meant for station keeping and orbital maintenance. A significant amount of the fuel for this rocket is held in reserve, in order to de-orbit the satellite at the end of its life. Geosynchronous and other high orbit satellites cannot afford to re-enter, so instead they rise up to a 'graveyard' orbit, in order to keep the useful orbits clean. The purpose of this balloon is to replace the reserve fuel for low earth satellites. It is significantly lighter than the required fuel, so it will allow a higher payload fraction for the satellite.
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How are you going to use GPS in space?
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My gut told me that satellites may still be able to use GPS, and this article seems to bear me out. I will admit that the specifics (and the huge block of text) are above me, but a quick skimming implies I'm correct.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16076/ [qut.edu.au]
And all you need to do is catch up to the debris.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Naturally the slashdot headline is wrong. They're talking about attaching it to entirely intact satellites to get them to de-orbit without hitting something and making more debris. (as seen from the URL of the story linked: "_Without_Making_The_Problem_Worse"
In other words, you just have to catch up to the satellites.
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Does it mass more than the fuel to de-orbit? (Score:2)
When The Economist magazine became the first general-interest magazine to cover the space junk problem about 15 years ago, it pointed out that the problem was there was no international agreement or agency forcing private owners of satellites to budget enough fuel to de-orbit the satellite at the end of its life. Every gram costs a small fortune, so they used every gram of fuel to keep the satellite "stationary" (i.e. in desired orbit).
The space junk problem (except for paint chips and astronaut toolbags)
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I find it hard to believe that the mass of a football-field-sized balloon is less than the fuel to just drop the orbit into a brief but colourful brush with the atmosphere.
Well you need to factor in the rocket engine, guidance, and the risk that you may lose active control of the vehicle and be unable to deorbit it. My thinking is that a drag brake (or parachute, solar sail or balloon) could be a separate system. Mostly passive. It gets a simple command, or fires on a timer. It orients itself passively and results in re-entry in a couple of months or so.
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Wouldn't a couple of miles long ribbon do the same thing with less tech?
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A ribbon will actually end up perpendicular to the satellites orbit, due to tidal effects.
Actually that might be a good thing. I read somewhere about attempts to power satellites by dragging a long wire, the movement through the earth's magnetic field produces a current. The problem was that because of the magnetic drag, more fuel was required to keep the satellite in orbit.
So for an end-of-life satellite, simply releasing a long wire may be enough to de-orbit it without requiring more fuel. I think the wire had to be very long (but thin) so the mass wouldn't be too excessive. If it still takes
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Down to Earth or out and away?
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>>>Every gram costs a small fortune, so they used every gram of fuel to keep the satellite "stationary" (i.e. in desired orbit).
It's pretty pathetic that despite 50 years of space experience, we still have to worry about mere grams of fuel. I suspect humans will never develop the ability to travel further than our own solar system - it would be too expensive (in terms of fuel).
1000 years from now we'll be in pathetic shape, with all our oil, uranium, and other resources drained dry, and just barel
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It's pretty pathetic that despite 50 years of space experience, we still have to worry about mere grams of fuel. I suspect humans will never develop the ability to travel further than our own solar system - it would be too expensive (in terms of fuel).
Travel in space is simple. Ion drives and other forms of electric propulsion have the potential for incredible velocities. Gravitation sling-shotting gives you plenty more velocity for free. The problem is that first 9km/s needed for low earth orbit. You have atmospheric drag to contend with, so you need to get out of the atmosphere as soon as possible.
Consider one of the space shuttle SRBs for example. At full throttle, each is pumping out some 5400kg/s at 2450m/s. That's roughly 16GW, or several tim
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I don't think an SRB has any other setting (apart from "fuse not lit yet").
The commons... (Score:2)
The perennial problem of common resource management. There is no agreed upon agent that rules earth orbit space. So there aren't any rules. Without rules, the market is just going to take the cheapest route. Most often this includes polluting common resources, because sustainability and responsibility are expensive. Bad for the bottom line.
So the earth people can make a choice: sell all of the corridors to the highest bidder, and hope that they take care of it. Or you tax the industries that want to use tho
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Although the ultra thin envelope could be the size of a sports field (100 m diameter) when inflated, it is so thin that it can be folded and stowed in a surprisingly small volume (a medium size suitcase). It is most economical to attach it to a spacecraft or rocket upper stage before launch and deployed after the end of mission.
...
The GOLD system actually weighs less than the propellant needed to do the same job and it is very inexpensive, and this means it is more cost-effective to add a GOLD system before launch than to carry the extra fuel.
This just might be stupid enough to work (Score:2, Funny)
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Or sail... (Score:2)
"CubeSail" for example; soon available for deployment - http://www2.surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2010/26099_a_mission_to_clear_dangerous_debris_from_space.htm [surrey.ac.uk]
Should make some nicely visible light show from time to time...
Help (Score:5, Funny)
Why not collect it in space? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I don't understand is, since we already paid a hefty price to lift this "material" into space, why not collect it in orbit and save it until we can utilize it as raw materials for future space projects. There must be lots of useful stuff that could be reprocessed and reused.
Doesn't everyone have the expectation that we will have factories in space to build the things that are needed in space from raw materials gathered from around the solar system? This would just be raw materials for those factories that doesn't have to be lifted out of the gravity well of earth.
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In most case you would spend more then you could possible get out of bringing it back.
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1. Launch costs will have to come down by a hefty factor before it becomes economic to launch entire factories and bring raw materials from far away. Once launch costs have come down that far (and I'm not holding my breath), the value of the raw materials that are in orbit today will seem slight. Meanwhile, even one more collision between derelict satellites will make the orbital environment more dangerous and harder to clean up.
2. The raw materials that are in orbit today are in a wide variety of orbits,
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Why not collect it in space?
It's not economically feasible to collect it, but you might like Planetes [anime.com] - an Anime about collecting space junk in exchange for eco-friendly credits (like carbon offsets).
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Re:Why not collect it in space? (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, you've grappled the object. Where do you want to send it?
Sending it down requires a drag chute of some kind. Or it requires just enough delta-v to drop its perigee just a little lower into the atmosphere.
Suppose we had the mother of all factories sitting in equatorial orbit. Suppose your space junk is in a 35 degree orbit. Both objects are traveling at around 27Kkm/h if they're in a relatively low orbit. However, one object is moving 27Kkm/h due east, and one is moving 27Kkm/h 35 degrees north of east. Relative to each other they are moving at thousands of kilometers per hour when they pass each other. To collect the object you need to apply that much of a velocity change to it, which is a huge amount of energy (not quite what it took to launch, but we're getting into that kind of magnitude).
Think of it this way - you're on a racetrack going 200mph. Another car is going 200mph the other way. You want to collect it. How do you do this without massively changing its velocity?
One of the first rules of orbital mechanics is that plane changes are expensive. That's why the shuttle can't visit the ISS and the hubble on the same mission. They're both in similar altitude orbits, but in different planes. The shuttle doesn't have enough fuel to change planes (at least, not that far - and without looking up the numbers that is probably only 10 degrees or so).
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Weird.... (Score:2)
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There was this article [wired.com] in Wired magazine talking about space junk and bringing them down with a giant tether. It seems like the balloon idea might work with large pieces of junk, but it seems like the bigger threat are the small pieces no larger than a few inches. The article stated that the ISS had a few close calls with some pieces of junk no larger than a baseball that could have caused massive damage if it hit the station. We can't tied a balloon or tether to every little piece out there. We need a
Got her name wrong (Score:3, Informative)
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Now who's wrong?
Not just a balloon! (Score:2)
Use the force instead (Score:2, Interesting)
The electromagnetic force that is.
Why would you bother with atmospheric drag, just pay out a cable and use electromagnetic drag instead. Oh wait they can do that already...
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=264
Use the force instead (Score:2)
A permanent solution, the stratollite... (Score:2)
There may be more than one company, but the one I ran across years ago
was 21st century airships.
http://www.21stcenturyairships.com/HighAlt [21stcenturyairships.com]
At 65,000 ft there is no wind.
With almost the same controls as used for RC planes one person
could launch or land a stratollite for repairs or upgrades.
With this lower version of the satellite you could use less power
and get less interference.
You cover less area, but the costs of launch are so much lower
it makes it well worth it and even more if the balloon has multiple
ppl
Dr. Strangelove has an answer (Score:3, Funny)
Set off a bunch of nukes in the upper atmosphere. This will cause the atmosphere to expand, increasing drag and sending LEO space debris plummeting to earth.
Of course there will be side effects, but hey, it's NUKES.
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It's the only way to be sure.
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How can it increase drag when there's no air? (Score:2)
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As the ISS constantly loses altitude because of a slight atmospheric drag, it needs to be boosted to a higher altitude several times each year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station [wikipedia.org]
Or easier ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Common permanent magnets can be much stronger than needed for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/magnetic_sail [wikipedia.org]
Re:Or easier ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Move it already (Score:2, Funny)
Why don't we just do like we always do: Instead of cleaning up the place, move Earth to a less cluttered location in space?
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Ah yes, like taking a leaking oil tanker out of the environment after the front falls off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcU4t6zRAKg [youtube.com]
Solve? (Score:2)
huh (Score:2)
Solves the wrong problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The big stuff that would be worth mounting a mission to de-orbit typically isn't the problem. The little, tiny, hard to track bits of space rubish is the real problem.
The big stuff can usually be avoided since it is easily tracked. The little, tiny stuff is effectively a bullet travelling at 17,000 or so miles an hour. It's too small to track and one piece of such junk can ruin your spaceship. Plus, there is a lot more of it than the few, big, defunct satellites that you might want to attach a balloon to.
Cheers,
Dave
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If the big stuff stays up there, it has a tendency to get hit by the small stuff, which turns the big stuff into more clouds of little stuff. Above a certain density of stuff in orbit, this can lead to a rapid chain reaction that leaves LEO rather inhospitable. Better to de-orbit the big stuff as soon as it's no longer useful.
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If we can deorbit even one *before* it explodes, we can cut the number of space debris by hundreds or thousands.
Call them Rovers (Score:2, Funny)
speed (Score:2)
Imagine what would happen if some piece of junk hits that garbage bag with a speed of 30.000 km per hour.
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How can satellites be secret? Either they are highly reflective and everyone can see them or they are going to be very warm.
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Please name one satellite that has done this. I have a hard time believing any of them have enough fuel to change orbit repeatedly.
Re:Collision course (Score:4, Insightful)
abelenky17 is off-base. The ones most likely to be of interest are also the largest (and generally most-capable) units, which would require the most fuel to move. Mercury SIGINT satellites are around five tons, and the Lacrosse synthetic aperture radar satellites reportedly mass up to 16 tons, and both are in LEO.
This isn't to say that they cannot change orbits, just that it requires a very good reason to do so, as not only does it use up precious fuel, but like any operational satellite it has scheduled uses. They're never put up there "just in case we need them."
It's also not to say that there is no use for highly-variable orbits. That the Air Force has been playing with their recently-launched toy shows as much. It's just that such things are not trivial achievements. Such capabilities make it much harder to hide from overhead eyes. Lacrosse-5 has some kind of technology that allows it to "disappear" even in direct sunlight, which makes much more sense than loading it with tons of fuel, but still leaves it fairly predictable.
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But. . . but. . . this is done every day. A US Air Force commercial [youtube.com] told me so!
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The space station, is a fine answer. Unlike other satellites it does get fuel resupplies though. Is there a place I can see how much sats change orbit?
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It doesn't sound like it's meant to bring down some random spacejunk with which it collides (which would mostly pass through it after all, at best / if impacts won't produce more debris), just to bring down a satellite to which it is attached. Not the only effort of such kind [surrey.ac.uk]
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That was my first thought: "to fight space junk, we'll just send more space junk".
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Make it an Australian football field and you've got a deal.
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The problem with trying to catch anything in space is that it is likely to be moving in a different direction to you and since its in orbit it will be going very fast. So the combined speed in any collision between your object and a peice of space junk is likely to be extremely high (afaict orbital velocities make bullets look slow). The space junk would most likely just punch a hole straight through your net.
That is why space debris is such a hazard in the first place.
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Up in orbit, there's not much drag to slow things down, so "pretty soon" can mean years, decades or more. Once it passes below a certain speed would start to fall faster, but as it's in the orbit zone it'll take quite a while before it hits enough things to slow it down. And sometimes those hits with other junk objects results in even more smaller pieces being generated.
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