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Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

independent.co.uk

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Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#51

Post by mc32 »

cletus wrote: post #18

So here's a potential business model for this: salvage rights. When ships sink, the owner generally still retains ownership of any property. Sometimes the location of the wreck is known. Sometimes it needs to be found. It can cost a lot of money to find a wreck and recover any property. So salvage rights are a principle of maritime law such that whoever does this is entitled to a reward commensurate with the value of…

At the speeds those things whiz by, what sort of materials are there that can withstand impacts and not create more debris? Or do they try to do it via relative speeds and say let them hit the "paddle" at 50mph? And in that case, might it not be more effective to have hunting "nets" to collect the objects?

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#52

Post by SonicScrub »

mcdonje wrote: post #50
SonicScrub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could work, but would limit effectiveness to the orbits that MUST be very specific to work. For most satellites this doesn't matter. If 500 km is clogged, you design your mission to work at 505 km. I could see something like this working for geostationary orbits and sun-synchronous orbits as they require specific altitudes and inclinations, but not for much else.

An incentive appears to exist to wait for collisions every once in a while so that there's more junk at different levels to clean up, and to prove the need for cleaning up junk.

1) Be Space debris company

2) Setup shadow satellite corporation

3) Satellite corp launches satellite to valuable orbit, and intentionally separates into 2-3 easily caught pieces. "Oops! Our satellite failed"

4) space debris company cleans up the orbit quickly and easily, receives bounty from government agency

5) Profit

A little far-fetched maybe, but there's a good sci-fi short story wrapped up in there.

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#53

Post by jjoonathan »

vasco wrote: post #39

At some point I guess the world will have to regulate orbits similarly to how we regulate the electromagnetic spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction Once you're assigned an orbit space I would assume it'd be your duty to keep it "clean" and as such owners of orbits would need to either do their own cleanup or contract companies like this. That being said it feels like a company like this is 50 to 100…

From a strict physics perspective, I tend to think you are right, but from a messy human perspective I think orbital cleanup companies stand to do a lot of good even if they never retrieve more than a token satellite or two.

Being able to say "You just made a $200M mess," priced on the cost of cleanup, is a lot more powerful than just being able to say "You made a mess." A concrete price tag is a boon for regulation, for liability & enforcement, and even for space startups explaining to their investors why yes, they do have to include fuel budget for the viking funeral, and no, they can't just decide not to, because the alternative is a $200M cleanup fee.

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#54

Post by libertine »

shantara wrote: post #29
ggggtez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, government contracting. Your satellite crashes? Pay us to clean it up.

Why would I pay a cleaning company instead of spending a lot less money on moving the satellite into a graveyard orbit before it runs out of propellant?

Because accidents will start to become more common, and the more stuff we keep putting up there, more often they will occur.

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#56

Post by jjoonathan »

SonicScrub wrote: post #26
aero-glide2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should lobby for a law requiring companies to deorbit satellites after EOL.

Requiring de-orbiting at EOL would destroy their business no? Also EOL de-orbiting works great for low-altitude orbits, but becomes exponentially more difficult with higher orbits. It is pretty much impossible with the very valuable geostationary orbital slots.

How valuable are geostationary slots these days? LEO swarms have eaten some of the GEO lunch. What are the niches where LEO swarms aren't a workable replacement?

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#57

Post by ud_0 »

silent_cal wrote: post #10

This space stuff is such a waste. There is enough garbage on the surface of the earth to worry about. Just nerd grifting IMO.

> There is enough garbage on the surface of the earth to worry about.

Every single time there is anything happening with space flight, there is at least one comment saying "We should literally solve every single problem here on Earth first before even thinking about anything related to space". This seems like a pretty shallow code for space flight should not happen, ever.

I've been wondering about the people who make these comments for a while, and your seems to follow a similar blueprint. I have some questions, maybe you can answer them.

What motivates this? Are you worried about Earth getting deprioritized? Is the perception that we must decide between tackling social problems/climate change and gratuitous space adventures? Are these comments a way of saying that humans should never venture beyond Earth or that we're just not ready yet? Even if you believe actual humans should never go to space, do you still believe we should have infrastructure there to support Earth?

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#58

Post by SonicScrub »

mnd999 wrote: post #44
SonicScrub wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring de-orbiting at EOL would destroy their business no? Also EOL de-orbiting works great for low-altitude orbits, but becomes exponentially more difficult with higher orbits. It is pretty much impossible with the very valuable geostationary orbital slots.

I’m guessing they be planning on offering their services to carry out said de-orbit. Lobbying for regulation mandating a service you provide is a pretty tried and tested business model. Every company IT audit I’ve ever had the pleasure of participating in works the same way.

The most efficient way to de-orbit the satellite is to design it with de-orbit capability built in. Satellites already have maneuvering thrusters with propellant and/or "kicker" stages to maneuver them in their destination orbit. De-orbiting capability is just some extra delta-v onboard, and a de-orbit maneuver coded into the flight computer.

"Space-tug" like services from a third-party would be vastly more expensive. The only use case would to de-orbit a satellite that for some reason failed to de-orbit itself.

Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

#59

Post by yunohn »

andjd wrote: post #55

Does anyone else see Wozniak as the headliner and shrug? He has no track-record of successful companies since Apple. Why is this news and why did it hit the front page of HN?

While I don't claim that Wozniak has any business running a space junk cleanup company - I am confused about your requirement that all founders must be serially successful ones for any of their ventures to matter.
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