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ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

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Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#51

Post by dredmorbius »

naikrovek wrote: post #41
spartanatreyu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. This is wrong because it's based on a flawed assumption. That assumption being: Propellant is required to deorbit debris, and the rocket equation makes launching all that propellant prohibitively expensive. And while we can't do anything about the rocket equation, we don't actually nee…

I would think that solar sails in such an environment would be as bad of an idea as walking through a thick hedgerow in a silk dress. The dress would not survive unscathed, and neither would the solar sail.

A solar sail isn't a pressure vessel, fuel tank, electronics bay, or other sensitive instrument. It can take considerable abuse before being substantially degraded, let alone failing.

Space debris impacting on a solar sail would all but certainly simply punch neat holes through it. Much as accumulating dust slowly degrades the light-gathering capability of a large reflector telescope, a modestly-perforated solar sail would lose a very small fraction of its effectiveness. But you could probably lose a heck of a lot of surface area before those effects became significant. Strength of the sail itself is probably a minimal concern, though a design with periodic reinforcing threads (themselves having a cost of increased mass) might be more than sufficient to address any strength compromise.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#52

Post by dredmorbius »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #34
rzimmerman wrote: post #3

Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…

> Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. This is wrong because it's based on a flawed assumption. That assumption being: Propellant is required to deorbit debris, and the rocket equation makes launching all that propellant prohibitively expensive. And while we can't do anything about the rocket equation, we don't actually nee…

What about ablation and/or ablative thrust using lasers?

You'd need to fuel a laser platform, but it could target debris over a huge region. The goal would be to both reduce size and to gently nudge smaller debris to lower (and atmosphere-intersecting) orbits.

(As mentioned in another comment, linking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom>, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051533>.)

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

panick21_ wrote: post #48
spartanatreyu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. This is wrong because it's based on a flawed assumption. That assumption being: Propellant is required to deorbit debris, and the rocket equation makes launching all that propellant prohibitively expensive. And while we can't do anything about the rocket equation, we don't actually nee…

The actual solution is reducing cost to orbit. That reduces propellant cost. And more importantly, just having laws that require people to deorbit sats and force them to pay for deorbit if they fail to make something deorbit. > 2. Propulsion-less drone satellites. Nowhere near enough thrust for this.

Absent regulation, decreasing cost-to-orbit has the more likely consequence of increasing overall launches, satellites, and hence, orbital flotsam.

The Jevons Paradox strikes again.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#54

Post by anonfornoreason »

ggm wrote: post #24
sunjieming wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to NASA: If the debris is 800k can take centuries and geostationary objects on the high end (~36000km) can take thousands of years. Most of the debris is in LEO so it could take decades to centuries for the debris to clear out

So the killer move would be to launch a fleet of sats above the debris field, and then launch self-destructive sats into the persisting space dense enough to make launch and persistence in that field hard. Take command of the high space and make the low ground indefensible.

Just read a fiction book that had this as the premise in a war between china and the USA. China took the high orbits and blasted the low. Personally I thought it was a a very interesting twist!

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#55

Post by etrautmann »

panick21_ wrote: post #48
spartanatreyu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. This is wrong because it's based on a flawed assumption. That assumption being: Propellant is required to deorbit debris, and the rocket equation makes launching all that propellant prohibitively expensive. And while we can't do anything about the rocket equation, we don't actually nee…

The actual solution is reducing cost to orbit. That reduces propellant cost. And more importantly, just having laws that require people to deorbit sats and force them to pay for deorbit if they fail to make something deorbit. > 2. Propulsion-less drone satellites. Nowhere near enough thrust for this.

Like a space superfund cleanup?

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#56

Post by try_the_bass »

shakna wrote: post #30
rzimmerman wrote: post #3

Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…

Starlink have a number of debris problems, including pieces hitting the ground, so I wouldn't say that they're actually following through with their good practices.

Yeah, none of that is true.

Starlink doesn't have a debris problem thanks to the low orbit. Any debris generated deorbit on time-frames of a few months to a free years. Starlink also has 0 reported Earth debris strikes that I can find.

Where do you get this misinformation from?

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#57

Post by XorNot »

dredmorbius wrote: post #52
spartanatreyu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. This is wrong because it's based on a flawed assumption. That assumption being: Propellant is required to deorbit debris, and the rocket equation makes launching all that propellant prohibitively expensive. And while we can't do anything about the rocket equation, we don't actually nee…

What about ablation and/or ablative thrust using lasers? You'd need to fuel a laser platform, but it could target debris over a huge region. The goal would be to both reduce size and to gently nudge smaller debris to lower (and atmosphere-intersecting) orbits. (As mentioned in another comment, linking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom >, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051533 >.)

You don't need to put a laser in space to do this.

You build a ground based laser, and fire it at objects when they're approximately directly overhead. Pushing upwards on the object basically rotates it's orbit so one side of it will not be lower into the atmosphere.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#58

Post by Log_out_ »

rzimmerman wrote: post #3

Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…

Ground based laser evaporation to slow debree down?

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#59

Post by dredmorbius »

XorNot wrote: post #57
dredmorbius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about ablation and/or ablative thrust using lasers? You'd need to fuel a laser platform, but it could target debris over a huge region. The goal would be to both reduce size and to gently nudge smaller debris to lower (and atmosphere-intersecting) orbits. (As mentioned in another comment, linking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom >, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051533 >.)

You don't need to put a laser in space to do this. You build a ground based laser, and fire it at objects when they're approximately directly overhead. Pushing upwards on the object basically rotates it's orbit so one side of it will not be lower into the atmosphere.

Which should simplify the problem several ways. Thanks.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#60

Post by aaron695 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #53
panick21_ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual solution is reducing cost to orbit. That reduces propellant cost. And more importantly, just having laws that require people to deorbit sats and force them to pay for deorbit if they fail to make something deorbit. > 2. Propulsion-less drone satellites. Nowhere near enough thrust for this.

Absent regulation, decreasing cost-to-orbit has the more likely consequence of increasing overall launches, satellites, and hence, orbital flotsam. The Jevons Paradox strikes again.

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