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ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

payloadspace.com

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Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#61

Post by panick21_ »

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.

There already is some regulation. But I agree that companies that launch should be responsable for deorbit.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#62

Post by dredmorbius »

panick21_ wrote: post #61
dredmorbius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There already is some regulation. But I agree that companies that launch should be responsable for deorbit.

Depending on how far costs fall, one potential problem would be an equivalent of "flags of convenience" in sea-based shipping. Small countries with little or "favourable" (e.g., short-term profits) regulatory regimes could sustain at least some launch capability. Unless there's some way of reining in that activity, I see the problem manifesting to at least some degree.

Even now, getting launch-capable countries on board with restrictions is a likely problem. The US, EU, and Japan perhaps not so much, but of Russia, China, India, Pakistan (potentially), and North Korea, rather more plausibly.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#64

Post by RCitronsBroker »

theK wrote: post #15
thijson wrote: post #4

I guess talking about Kessler Syndrome is worth while here. A chain reaction where one collision, leads to more, which leads to more. It may be a slow motion chain reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome We definitely do need a way to clean things up, it is a shared resource. Unfortunately that means it suffers from tragedy of the commons.

One more good reason to start strengthening the idea of global governance?

absolutely not. Wehret den Anfängen.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#65

Post by N19PEDL2 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Tangentially related: Could this be weaponized? What's stopping a malicious actor from purposely creating a lot of debris in orbital space for the purposes of knocking communications down? Is there a plan in place?

Any country that has the technological capability to do so also has its own satellites in orbit, so it would end up harming itself too.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#66

Post by extraduder_ire »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #27

> The agency has already set debris mitigation rules for its partners on ESA missions A rule they just violated on the return-to-flight of Ariane 6. I also hate the cover photo. That's not the actual size of the debris.

I think they fully expected the second stage of Ariane 6 to be able to deorbit itself. Other than spacex, it's pretty unusual for testflights of big orbital rockets to be put on a suborbital trajectory. e.g. the first flight of SLS went around the moon.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#68

Post by grues-dinner »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #54
ggm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

[dead]

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#69

Post by thijson »

pjscott wrote: post #49
1oooqooq wrote: post #40

any chance it will take down Elon ISP star Link and we will have a dark LEO for astronomy again? (fingers crossed)

Those de-orbit in just a few years because of how exceptionally low they fly. SpaceX’s business plan is to just be so efficient at launching things to orbit that it doesn’t matter if they lose a huge number of satellites each year to planned atmospheric drag. It’s a pretty bold way of combating space junk, but it seems to be working out for them, and the FAA has looked over the math and given their blessing. Worry ab…

Also it reduces latency of communication to the ground.

Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris

#70

Post by panick21_ »

dredmorbius wrote: post #62
panick21_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already is some regulation. But I agree that companies that launch should be responsable for deorbit.

Depending on how far costs fall, one potential problem would be an equivalent of "flags of convenience" in sea-based shipping. Small countries with little or "favourable" (e.g., short-term profits) regulatory regimes could sustain at least some launch capability. Unless there's some way of reining in that activity, I see the problem manifesting to at least some degree. Even now, getting launch-capable countries on bo…

True but the solution for that is to punish those companies in the domestic market of the people who signed up.

There was US company that tried to launch on an Indian vehicle not following all the regulation and they got fucked hard.

Of course countries like Russia are simply not gone follow these rules anyway.

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