I was wondering last night about solving the space trash problem, and I had a hypotheses on how to fix it but some obvious problems with it. So the assumption is that a lot of the space debris is really small, like old tools or wreckage from old spacecraft, and they're in all sorts of eccentric orbits that are decaying very very slowly, like, thousands of years slowly. So what if we made a huge fabric sheet made out of something tough like kevlar that wouldn't be used to actually catch the debris, but just used to slow it down so it can fall back to earth faster? The problems I could think of with this plan are:
1. It would have to be huge, like 10+ miles wide. How to manufactures something like that and unfold it would be impractical.
2. The earth's exosphere is huge, even if we manage to manufacture something that's huuge, like 100 square miles, it still would only be able to sweep a tiny fraction of the space that is filled with junk.
3. 4. Kevlar, while tough would probably still get torn to shreds which means that this solution would probably create even more space junk than the junk removed and even if a 1x1 cm patch of kevlar might not have much mass, if it crashes into the ISS at 100kph it could still cause as much damage as an old bolt.
So, likely impractical. Has anyone else ever had any solutions?
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
Problem? It's fine really. We won't be around much longer and most the debris will be gone in a thousand years, long before the next intelligent species emerges.
I liked the idea of using earth-based lasers to slow stuff down, seemed like the amount of energy required was low enough that the diffusion of shooting from the ground to the atmosphere wouldn't be too much of a hindrance. Probably be a big energy drain though.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I believe most of the trash in low earth orbit is still subject to atmospheric drag and will deorbit. See how the ISS needs to be reboosted periodically.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
if we would just hurry up and develop personal spacecraft I'd definitely go out and scavenge up old space trash with a magnet harpoon or something
so the big issues with collecting space garbage are
-matching orbit with it to do anything to it directly takes a ton of energy because it's still got all the velocity it had that put it into orbit in the first place
-most of it is not really tracked and is hard or impossible to find, it doesn't have transponders to tell people where it is like working satellites do, events that create it tend to spew out clouds of very small pieces of debris in random vectors which makes it impossible to predict, etc.
and a fun fact about orbital mechanics: if a bit of debris intercepts and strikes you in low earth orbit from a perpendicular or opposite orbit from your own, the relative velocity is going to be approximately 17,000-34,000 MPH, because 17,000 MPH is roughly the velocity needed to maintain low earth orbit. Micrometeors also pose risks like this but we're making it more likely for such intersections to happen.
BahamutZERO on
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
just detonate a bunch of nukes to vaporize all the objects
I think I saw one proposal that had a satellite that would just dangle a large web of conductive tethers that would generate a magnetic field to sap energy from magnetic debris and cause their orbit to degrade faster.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
A giant space death laser that cuts dangerous large debris into even more dangerous bits of small debris, but we also do nothing to secure the space laser, it's actually running on an extremely powerful wifi signal that literally every device on the planet can detect and connect to. Nobody botherered to set a wifi password for it so anyone can login and point the death ray at any target they like on the Earth's surface.
A giant space death laser that cuts dangerous large debris into even more dangerous bits of small debris, but we also do nothing to secure the space laser, it's actually running on an extremely powerful wifi signal that literally every device on the planet can detect and connect to. Nobody botherered to set a wifi password for it so anyone can login and point the death ray at any target they like on the Earth's surface.
And when we learn that obviously we don’t have the means to get it all the way there and the giant trash bomb threatens to crash into Earth, we’ll just assemble a larger trash ball to fire at the original, knocking it back into orbit for another generation to deal with
And when we learn that obviously we don’t have the means to get it all the way there and the giant trash bomb threatens to crash into Earth, we’ll just assemble a larger trash ball to fire at the original, knocking it back into orbit for another generation to deal with
How hard is it to route gravitty slingshots into a mercury collision?
A giant space death laser that cuts dangerous large debris into even more dangerous bits of small debris, but we also do nothing to secure the space laser, it's actually running on an extremely powerful wifi signal that literally every device on the planet can detect and connect to. Nobody botherered to set a wifi password for it so anyone can login and point the death ray at any target they like on the Earth's surface.
And when we learn that obviously we don’t have the means to get it all the way there and the giant trash bomb threatens to crash into Earth, we’ll just assemble a larger trash ball to fire at the original, knocking it back into orbit for another generation to deal with
How hard is it to route gravitty slingshots into a mercury collision?
It would be more cost effective to crash it into Jupiter than the sun. It takes a lot of Delta V to get an inner system intercept.
Tricky part is expensing energy to leave the Earth orbit. Probably less energy just to shove it somewhere behind or in front of the Earth with the Trojans. That's kind of the equivalent of the creek behind the Dollar Store.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
The easiest thing is actually to just yeet it out of the system.
Delta-v budgets are funny. It’s almost twice as large of a change in velocity to hit the sun as it is to just leave the solar system. (30 km/s or 70,000 miles/hour to reach the sun vs 17-18 km/s to escape the solar system)
And when we learn that obviously we don’t have the means to get it all the way there and the giant trash bomb threatens to crash into Earth, we’ll just assemble a larger trash ball to fire at the original, knocking it back into orbit for another generation to deal with
How hard is it to route gravitty slingshots into a mercury collision?
It would be more cost effective to crash it into Jupiter than the sun. It takes a lot of Delta V to get an inner system intercept.
A giant space death laser that cuts dangerous large debris into even more dangerous bits of small debris, but we also do nothing to secure the space laser, it's actually running on an extremely powerful wifi signal that literally every device on the planet can detect and connect to. Nobody botherered to set a wifi password for it so anyone can login and point the death ray at any target they like on the Earth's surface.
Also the laser is shaped like a dick.
Do we even need a giant space death laser?
Can't we just induce a charge on the debris with a not-death laser and then let the Earth's magnetic field deorbit the garbage?
Tricky part is expensing energy to leave the Earth orbit. Probably less energy just to shove it somewhere behind or in front of the Earth with the Trojans. That's kind of the equivalent of the creek behind the Dollar Store.
the problem with the trojan points for this is they're like the tops of hills, gravitationally, rather than the bottom of holes. Planets and stars are the valleys in the curvature of spacetime, trojan points are just the most level peaks of the hills between those depressions, so they're ok for setting up actively maintained orbital structures, but still kind of bad for leaving loose garbage in because it will eventually start sliding down the hillside.
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1. It would have to be huge, like 10+ miles wide. How to manufactures something like that and unfold it would be impractical.
2. The earth's exosphere is huge, even if we manage to manufacture something that's huuge, like 100 square miles, it still would only be able to sweep a tiny fraction of the space that is filled with junk.
3. 4. Kevlar, while tough would probably still get torn to shreds which means that this solution would probably create even more space junk than the junk removed and even if a 1x1 cm patch of kevlar might not have much mass, if it crashes into the ISS at 100kph it could still cause as much damage as an old bolt.
So, likely impractical. Has anyone else ever had any solutions?
that sounds like a cool job.
like Space Sweepers!
god, what a bummer our hypothetical future is.
-matching orbit with it to do anything to it directly takes a ton of energy because it's still got all the velocity it had that put it into orbit in the first place
-most of it is not really tracked and is hard or impossible to find, it doesn't have transponders to tell people where it is like working satellites do, events that create it tend to spew out clouds of very small pieces of debris in random vectors which makes it impossible to predict, etc.
and a fun fact about orbital mechanics: if a bit of debris intercepts and strikes you in low earth orbit from a perpendicular or opposite orbit from your own, the relative velocity is going to be approximately 17,000-34,000 MPH, because 17,000 MPH is roughly the velocity needed to maintain low earth orbit. Micrometeors also pose risks like this but we're making it more likely for such intersections to happen.
easy
Also the laser is shaped like a dick.
that's just that one episode of cowboy bebop
And when we learn that obviously we don’t have the means to get it all the way there and the giant trash bomb threatens to crash into Earth, we’ll just assemble a larger trash ball to fire at the original, knocking it back into orbit for another generation to deal with
How hard is it to route gravitty slingshots into a mercury collision?
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It would be more cost effective to crash it into Jupiter than the sun. It takes a lot of Delta V to get an inner system intercept.
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Tricky part is expensing energy to leave the Earth orbit. Probably less energy just to shove it somewhere behind or in front of the Earth with the Trojans. That's kind of the equivalent of the creek behind the Dollar Store.
Delta-v budgets are funny. It’s almost twice as large of a change in velocity to hit the sun as it is to just leave the solar system. (30 km/s or 70,000 miles/hour to reach the sun vs 17-18 km/s to escape the solar system)
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=43694&t=launching-a-rocket-to-the-sun
Just smother it in protomolecule
3rd*
We already did, just ask [UNPOPULAR CELEBRITY REFERENCE NOT FOUND ABORT/RETRY/FAIL].
Ah hah hah hah, got 'em.
Do we even need a giant space death laser?
Can't we just induce a charge on the debris with a not-death laser and then let the Earth's magnetic field deorbit the garbage?
the problem with the trojan points for this is they're like the tops of hills, gravitationally, rather than the bottom of holes. Planets and stars are the valleys in the curvature of spacetime, trojan points are just the most level peaks of the hills between those depressions, so they're ok for setting up actively maintained orbital structures, but still kind of bad for leaving loose garbage in because it will eventually start sliding down the hillside.