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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

#191

Post by silent_cal »

ud_0 wrote: post #114
silent_cal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think there's anything wrong with curious nerds... you make a good point that a large portion of scientists are just that. But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free. It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services), while pretending to have a pure and noble interest in humanity, who are insufferable.

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

#192

Post by jvanderbot »

mc32 wrote: post #51
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?

There are small debris clouds, but also large uncontrolled spacecraft, like boosters. De-orbiting those could be a huge help, since a collision with a stray booster would create gobs of debris so those orbits may be completely avoided.

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

#193

Post by hosh »

laumars wrote: post #190
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…

There was a Korean movie about a vaguely similar topic: salvaging space debris that I enjoyed https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12838766/

That's a great movie!

There's also Japanese anime series set in the near-future sci-fi about a small company that cleans up space debris, called "Planet ES"

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

#194

Post by SonicScrub »

giantrobot wrote: post #121
SonicScrub wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> De-orbiting capability is just some extra delta-v onboard, and a de-orbit maneuver coded into the flight computer. It's not "just" some delta-v, it's the same amount of delta-v as the original perigee kick. Most satellites get their perigee kick from a booster stage from their launch vehicle that separates from the satellite and de-orbits. Every gram of mass of fuel and engine on a satellite is a gram less of paylo…

Yes, and it is still vastly more efficient to bring that delta-v with you than to use an entire other vehicle to come up to you provided by a third-party to de-orbit for you. Which is the case I was comparing and contrasting with in response to the parent comment. Evidently this is the case knowing that de-orbiting capabilities are built-in to many low-earth orbit satellites, although it (and any de-orbiting method) is prohibitively expensive for higher orbits

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

#196

Post by ud_0 »

silent_cal wrote: post #191
ud_0 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think there's anything wrong with curious nerds... you make a good point that a large portion of scientists are just that. But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free. It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services), while pretending to have a pure and noble interest in humanity, who are insufferable.

> But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free.

The only scientists who can afford to work for free would have to be independently wealthy, that's not very common. I don't think there is anything wrong with charging money for work, even if you do enjoy that work. Like any kind of work, research science has its share of 9-to-5ers who don't really care, but those people have their uses, too.

> It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services)

The core problem is really that often public money spent on science leads to results that are privately monetized and closed off from the public who funded it. That's why I believe SciHub is such an important institution, because it makes research results accessible to the public who funded them in the first place. However, funding for space-based data gathering (such as telescopes) has generally led to publicly-available data - the same cannot be said for, say, biomedical research.

I would argue that research is a public service, as long as it doesn't get immediately spun off into patent-encumbered "university-adjacent" enterprise (which I would argue is nothing less than legalized corruption). Of course the issue becomes: how do you prioritize science funding and how do you balance it against other public services?

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

#197

Post by edm0nd »

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?

His name will get headlines and PR no matter what he is doing. Just a fact in the tech biz for being who he is.

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

#198

Post by vladTheInhaler »

hosh wrote: post #193
laumars wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Korean movie about a vaguely similar topic: salvaging space debris that I enjoyed https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12838766/

That's a great movie! There's also Japanese anime series set in the near-future sci-fi about a small company that cleans up space debris, called "Planet ES"

Its actually called Planetes, which means "wanderers", and was the term the ancient Greeks used for the "wandering stars", i.e. other planets. I cannot recommend it highly enough! It starts out pretty slapstick, but if you're looking for something more thoughtful, just stick it out until after the ninja episode. I promise it's worth it.

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

#199

Post by silent_cal »

ud_0 wrote: post #196
silent_cal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything wrong with curious nerds... you make a good point that a large portion of scientists are just that. But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free. It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services), while pretending to have a pure and noble interest in humanity, who are insufferable.

> But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free. The only scientists who can afford to work for free would have to be independently wealthy, that's not very common. I don't think there is anything wrong with charging money for work, even if you do enjoy that work. Like any kind of work, research science has its share of 9-to-5ers who don't really care, but those people have their uses, too. > It's the ones who…

I agree with pretty much everything you say. I just think that space travel's place in the prioritization of science funding is way too high. They are "eating for free" on the glory days of NASA.

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

#200

Post by myself248 »

SonicScrub wrote: post #38
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…

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.

Except orbits are neither that precise nor that static, without active control.

Look up the "Gabbard diagram" of any orbital collision. Some of the debris ends up in rather elliptical orbits, with an apogee considerably higher than the orbit of either object that went into the collision. That means it presents a risk to satellites even in higher orbits.

Also, orbits decay. The atmosphere doesn't just stop at a line; there's thinner and thinner wisps of gas out there, ever so slightly dragging on orbiting objects. So higher orbits slowly get lower, and lower orbits rapidly get lower still, until the orbit turns into an entry trajectory.

The properties of the exosphere are fickle and change rapidly, influenced by the solar wind and other forces. So while it's certain that orbiting objects experience drag, it's very uncertain how _much_ drag.

An object in an elliptical orbit spends some of its time with a very low perigee and thus a lot of atmospheric drag and thus its orbit changes rapidly in ways that're hard to predict, even if its apogee is high enough that it also crosses orbits of interesting things that're trying to avoid it. And the less predictable it is, the harder it is to avoid.

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