Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad news for you: The moon steals tons of our atmosphere every year ... Far more gets lost past that.
Bad news for all of us, to be frank.
Is it? Does it actually matter? Serious question.
Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
111–120 of 264 posts
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#112Where's the careers page? I want in!
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#113I'm very skeptical of the technical challenges associated with this problem (business model and financing aside). The amount of delta-v required to perform maneuvers to repeatedly "dock" with different pieces of space junk, and then again to de-orbit is very high. You MIGHT be able to de-orbit on the order of magnitude of ~10 pieces of low-earth orbit debris per mission. Maybe. If you're really good. And low-earth or…
>Higher orbit junk is what really matters, and will require much more delta-v to reach, and then again to de-orbit after "docking".
Wait, why? The lower orbit stuff traverses less space so it's easier to make it more dense and hazardous to space travel through that space.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mak…
I didn't mean to make it code - space flight is a complete waste of money. As far as I'm concerned we've already proved our point with regard to space travel, and can now afford to spend those bajillions of dollars on planet earth instead of satisfying the curiosity of nerds.
But this specific endeavor is about protecting our orbital infrastructure, it has nothing to do with curiosity. We depend on satellites. Yes, the byproduct will be that orbital cleanup also protects science equipment and access to space in general, but that's not the main purpose.
What do you think falls under "the curiosity of nerds"? Isn't that all of science? Or just cosmology? Or space-based platforms?
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mak…
I didn't mean to make it code - space flight is a complete waste of money. As far as I'm concerned we've already proved our point with regard to space travel, and can now afford to spend those bajillions of dollars on planet earth instead of satisfying the curiosity of nerds.
space flight by humans may be pointless for the foreseeable future, but satellites are anything but. gps and satellite imagery have immediate practical utility, just to give two examples.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you are moving with the almost the same speed and in the same direction as the debris, then there is a very small impact.
I imagine orbital velocities of debris is all over the place. It sound like you would need a magic source of thrust for all that delta-v to match orbits and whatnot.
The closest we have to that would probably be solar sails. Considering that cleanup usually isn't time sensitive it could be a very cheap and effective solution.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#117Earlier 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.
I am by no means a rocket scientist, but wouldn't a de-orbiting requirement be as simple as including a few small chemical thrusters with a dedicated fuel source reserved for de-orbiting?
I have no idea how much force it takes to actually move a given amount of mass out of orbit, and I assume it is different depending on the height of that orbit. So maybe doing this would simply add too much weight in the form of fuel storage to be feasible. In my head though, orbits are fragile and it shouldn't take a lot to nudge something into a death spiral towards the atmosphere.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#118Reminds me Planetes [0], one of my favourite animes. Hard sci-fi (near future) about a crew working on a satellite debris cleaning business. Great show!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
edit: quxbar beat me to it, glad I'm not the only one... The part where they stop by the Moon colony and have fun just bouncing around is pretty great.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#119So 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?
Maybe not hunting nets per say, maybe just a huge trawling net, or some sort of trawling-foam since we're in space. As high velocity objects begin to hit it, the foam will gain speed, but overtime, with presumably random speed-object collisions, the foam and its captured contents should have their speed reduced to 0 and fall. Doesn't need to be in foam or net form, but it does need to be a massive-entanglement-object, or MEO for short.
Re: Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad news for all of us, to be frank.
Is it? Does it actually matter? Serious question.
I dont think it matters in the timespan of our species probable use for this planet.
However. Don't let that stop you from donating to my just launching "venture NGO" to study the feasibility of protecting the earth's atmosphere by wrapping it in a big paper sack: which will sequester carbon, preserve our Precious Planetary Gasses, shade us from the Sun's evil ultraviolet rays and other harmful radiation, and vastly stimulate the economy. We expect to raise $2 billion to commence the first study sometime in 2084.
Interesting links:
https://www.space.com/earth-atmosphere-extends-beyond-moon.h...
and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
suggests that the changing composition of the atmosphere at ~600 million years is probably a more immediate problem