The Big Business of Being a Space Janitor (axios.com) 49
Companies are trying to capitalize on the threat of space junk with new technology to clean it up, but it's not clear who will pay for the service. From a report: Today, thousands of pieces of space junk -- ranging from tiny fragments of destroyed satellites to spent rocket bodies and defunct spacecraft -- orbit around Earth, threatening operational satellites and astronauts. As thousands of new satellites are slated for launch in the coming years, operators are desperate to find ways to track, remove and prevent the creation of more rogue debris in orbit. The market for in-orbit satellite services is projected to reach about $4.5 billion by 2028, according to Northern Sky Research. [...] Experts agree space junk is a major threat to keeping space usable and open for nations and companies around the world, but it's not clear who is or should be responsible for cleaning it up, complicating the business case for these companies.
The countries that put the crap up there (Score:5, Insightful)
in the first place should pay the bulk of the costs. You make a mess, you clean it up or pay someone to clean it up.
This is why we don't get to have nice things.
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Good luck with that. I can see it now.
You: Hey China clean up that satellite you shot.
China:
You: Do it or else.
China: *pulls gun* Or else what?
You: Nothing. Carry on.
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Yes they should. The first attempt to remove junk is targeting an ESA rocket body (2nd stage) and is being funded by the ESA. Ideally each country that's added junk to orbit would be responsible to remove it.
But you act like this is a simple problem with a simple solution. Some of the junk in orbit is incredibly small and moving at incredible velocity and is absolutely impracticable to remove. For example, the space shuttle was hit by a paint fragment (yes a flake of paint) going very fast (several miles pe
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what happens if this "junk bulldozer" ESA is sending up accidentally collides with the object it's trying to "catch" and in the process turns a single object in a stable known orbit into 10,000 objects going a million different directions. This is the risk with trying to bring these objects down and it always needs to be kept in mind.
I am no space expert but I would say that you would be pretty lucky if 1 out of those 10,000 objects stayed in orbit after the hit. I think they would either gain speed, reaching escape velocity or lose speed and fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.
The risk would be that they hit something valuable along the way but as you mentioned, it is a pretty big space out there so tiny chances of that happening as well I would say.
So why not blow them up? I never understood too well the concerns for one
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Why not blow them up?
Shrapnel. You've now turned one large object with a known size and orbit into 1000 objects of various sizes in a rapidly expanding fan of orbits. Essentially the difference between dodging a single thrown shotgun shell and trying to get out of the pattern of shot when you fire the shell. It's generally best if you can deorbit the thing intact, which is why they're looking at nets and harpoons rather than grenades.
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My own ridiculous idea is expanding foam for LEO. Just a can that expands into a string of expanding foam, positioned to orbit through the region of concern. Everything it hits either embeds, or shoots straight through and loses enough energy to de-orbit. The foam itsself is low-density, so it has a very high ratio of cross-sectional area to mass - it'll de-orbit through drag naturally after a few months.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
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Yes, space is big. But like terrestial land masses, the areas of space that are desirable to occupy are much smaller.
I live in a country with an enormous amount of unsettled territory. But people object to the notion that we can just haul all our garbage there and dump it.
However, if Vanuatu is submerged, who really cares apart from those up to their knees in seawater? NYC submerging would be a different story.
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in the first place should pay the bulk of the costs. You make a mess, you clean it up or pay someone to clean it up.
This is why we don't get to have nice things.
no problem, they can just hire Roger Wilco to clean up ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This is already international treaty for anything that lands. You get your shit back if it lands in someone else's back yard, but in return you pay their cleanup costs.
Bidding War (Score:2)
I just Imagined a bidding war between Mr. Clean and Captain Planet....
Insurance (Score:2)
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It's more profitable to just sell the insurance and then try to avoid paying out when something happens.
Use the same model we do for the oceans. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds like Planetes (Score:3, Informative)
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Salvage Rights (Score:2)
It seems like collecting space junk, if you could bring it back to Earth you could auction it off to a lot of people that would love to have some item that had actually been in space.
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Which was the plot of the 1970's TV show Salvage 1 starring Andy Griffith.
Who will pay for cleanup? (Score:2)
Don't worry, fellow Americans, I'm sure we will pay the cost to remove the trash! After all, we can't have the path of our valiant Space Force impeded by garbage! Maybe they can contract it out to WMI...
Face Sporce! (Score:3)
Donald: "The bad news is I accidentally blew up the space station while pressing the Diet Coke button. The good news, jobs! Lotsa fantaaastic jobs, like I promised! Space Force is now hiring Space Janitors. #MSGA!"
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China has had an official Space Force since 2015 and plans to dominate the Earth-Lunar economic sphere by 2049 while having the power to deny other countries access to space. Russia also force the Russian Aerospace Forces. No one is laughing at China or Russia. The Space Force isn't Trump's idea, the USAF has been pushing for it for over a decade. What good is SpaceX's Starship if there is no one to counter China or Russia from shooting them down from the Earth-Moon Lagrangian orbitals using space-based sol
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Either way the recent NDAA authorized, at least in some capacity, a Space Force.
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China has had an official Space Force since 2015 and plans to dominate the Earth-Lunar economic sphere by 2049 while having the power to deny other countries access to space. Russia also force the Russian Aerospace Forces. No one is laughing at China or Russia. The Space Force isn't Trump's idea, the USAF has been pushing for it for over a decade. What good is SpaceX's Starship if there is no one to counter China or Russia from shooting them down from the Earth-Moon Lagrangian orbitals using space-based solar reflectors.
Heh. Just give Musk permission to design and mount defensive weapons on Spaceship. You might have to offer some funding... on the other hand you might not. This is the guy who built and sold a handheld flamethrower (albeit one of limited range and capacity), for fun.
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The US already had a group to deal with space. Many just find T's new name for it silly, like a 1950's comic book for adolescents. He tends to do "youthful" things, and this fits right in.
I also suspect it didn't have a well-known name and identity before to avoid scaring the world. It's the kind of thing you normally want to keep low key, similar to why the word "defense" is used instead of "military", as in "Department of Defense".
However, low-key is not his style. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he chan
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The US had a Space Force in the 1980s, they hollowed out Cheyenne Mountain to house it. Apparently the Air Force didn't like the competition and it got shut down when the Pentagram figured out they could force NASA to do most of their research and development for them and not pay for it.
One mans junk... (Score:2)
1 - disassemble salvaged parts, sell what's reusable,
2 - deorbit junk to burn up on re-entry,
3 - recover for launching entity ( for a fee or as part insurance recovery).
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Much as I'd like 1, it isn't currently practical. The junk worth salvaging is mostly in inconvenient orbits, and would require a lot of delta-V to get to where you want it, and disassembly isn't something you can easily do robotically. By the time you have a space station up there capable of carrying out industrial-scale salvage operations, you don't really need them.
2. is the most likely option.
Ask the man who knows more about space Janitors (Score:4, Funny)
Mr. Roger Wilco!!!!
Sorry for the lame joke, but it was there, waiting for the taking.
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I was disappointed it took me so long to find it. Kind of solidifies the idea that today's ./ posters are a very different group of people.
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I was disappointed it took me so long to find it. Kind of solidifies the idea that today's ./ posters are a very different group of people.
Care to share? I'm not interested enough to do more than a cursory Google search, and that didn't turn up anything.
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I was disappointed it took me so long to find it. Kind of solidifies the idea that today's ./ posters are a very different group of people.
Care to share? I'm not interested enough to do more than a cursory Google search, and that didn't turn up anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"We rejoin our friend and semi-hero, Roger Wilco..."
Why not institute a fee on new launches (Score:2)
The fee would be applied if/when the objects were deemed either as a hazard, or no longer maneuverable.
If you recover, or de-orbit objects, there should be a bounty paid for the removal.
Any extra money made from reselling/smelting/reuse of space debris could be kept by whomever did the work.
That's easy: Insurance companies. (Score:2)
That's easy:
Who has a financial incentive to do a general cleanup? Insurance companies that insure space launches and orbital platforms such as communication satellites.
I can imagine an organization like Underwriters' Laboratories, owned by member or subscribing insurance companies, collecting something like a fraction of the premiums on policies for flights through and orbits within the regions they manage, and hiring contractors to do the work.
The ince
Ah, the 1970s (Score:1)
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I was trying to remember the name of the TV show I remember as a kid that had something about a guy who fetched space junk back to earth
Top marks for remembering my man!
Lest we forget... (Score:1)
We have already been told [youtube.com] about this.
Who would pay? Well, who wants the material? (Score:2)
Who would pay? Well, who wants satellite parts and/or materials? You go recover the stuff and sell it to them.
The original owners don't like the idea of someone else getting hold of their satellites? Well, they can pay you to go recover their dead satellites for them.
Insurance companies worried about danger to things they insure from debris? They can pay you to go clean up the debris.
Salvage One covered this already.
Space janitors (Score:2)
Looks like I missed the last train to Nutley!
make it corporate "community service" (Score:2)
Do the space equivalent for corporations convicted of data breaches and other criminal actions : Equifax, Yahoo, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Exxon, etc. Instead of slap-on-the-wrist fines, sentence them to clean up a section of low earth or geosynchronous orbit.
Maybe Boeing? (Score:1)
Deploy the Space Forces with Lasers (Score:1)
Didn't Donald Trump, in his great and unmatched wisdom, just announce the United States Space Forces?
This is obviously an opportunity to use the space debris for target practice and space-weapons development. For cleaning up the environment, what else do you need? How could anyone oppose?
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Converting fast-moving objects to fast-moving rubble won't help. It's the same ½mv**2. You need to push them out of the way of things that need to occupy that space. Upside is, thanks to inertia in a frictionless environment, you don't have to push very hard for very long.
I can just see it now. Huge dragnets with solar sails attached.
Are we dealing with childeren? (Score:2)
Are we dealing with childeren here, or adults?
Because, you know, kids always go - i didn't do it!
Be an adult and clean up your own mess.
How is this even a question?