71–80 of 83 posts
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You can deorbit debris without physical contact, but you could argue the method results in a weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
Anything that can deorbit debris can be used as an anti-satellite weapon almost by definition.
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Yes, a decade ago, a lot has changed since then.
If ESA is "lacking innovation" I wonder what your favorite space agency innovated compared to them in the past decade. But yes, let's keep polluting more and more the low-Earth orbit to make sure we cannot send any more satellites ever again! You are lacking intelligence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can deorbit debris without physical contact, but you could argue the method results in a weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
Anything that can deorbit debris can be used as an anti-satellite weapon almost by definition.
The way a laser broom works is imparting an extremely miniscule bit of momentum every time the object is in line of sight of the laser. Over time you lower its orbit enough for atmospheric drag to take over. For small debris, like baseball sized chunks of insulation, it takes months to deorbit the objects. For something the size of a satellite it would take an order of magnitude longer than the life expectancy of the satellite, and that's assuming it does no station-keeping.
Laser brooms are great because they can deorbit a lot of debris in parallel, which is great if your goal is to slowly clean up an orbit. They are pretty much the worst option for deorbiting a specific object quickly which is a hard requirement for any anti-satellite weapon.
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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.
One problem with the Kessler Syndrome is that it's a runaway phenomenon, though one that evolves more slowly than most people appreciate. A few bad actors could trigger events which slowly start to seriously degrade at least low-to-mid Earth orbital ranges.
Geosynchronous orbits are possibly less susceptible as the entire orbital ring is large, though geostationary orbital space, strictly along Earth's equator, is more constrained. The Starlink approach of putting comms satellites in very low Earth orbit, which clears fairly quickly, possibly mitigates this in two ways (it makes geosync less critically necessary, and de-orbits satellites quickly). But LEO is still where higher orbits eventually decay to, and might itself be affected with time as well.
The lax regulatory problem, which invokes another underappreciated economic principle, Gresham's Law, is one that's appeared elsewhere and has proved hard to counter. I'd suggest not underestimating its possible noxious effects.
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> 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.
> Nowhere near enough thrust for this.
Of course there is.
If solar sail probes can change their orbits over time (which they can), then they already have enough thrust. There's no static friction to overcome, so there isn't a minimum thrust that you need to reach.
As long as you can continue to apply thrust over time, then you have a solution. It doesn't matter if it takes 6 hours, 6 weeks or 6 months. Even a single probe moving the right piece of debris prevents tens of thousands of more pieces being generated. Imagine what three of them could do, or twenty...
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…
Additionally, all the propellant-less solutions are low-thrust (or ground-based, which is another thing entirely). It's absolutely possible to orbit match, dock, and deorbit an object, but whatever low-thrust device you're using is going to deorbit as well. Maybe it's possible to launch a bunch of small devices like this to do cleanup, but it's not necessary or worthwhile.
This is a great example of a solution that sounds fun and interesting to a problem that's easy to understand at a surface-level. It gets attention and funding, but the real unsexy stuff (tracking, monitoring, collision avoidance) is where the money should go.
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As a spacecraft integration engineer, I assure you it is not.
Are there regulations regarding this? If not, then it's not that big of a problem.
I don't understand how a lack of regulation would mean something isn't a big problem. It could for sure use much more regulation, as it is such a large problem.
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Are there regulations regarding this? If not, then it's not that big of a problem.
There are regulations around de-orbiting your spacecraft at end-of-life, and there are international agreements around weapons in space that refer to the generation of debris. I don't understand how a lack of regulation would mean something isn't a big problem. It could for sure use much more regulation, as it is such a large problem.
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Anything that can deorbit debris can be used as an anti-satellite weapon almost by definition.
It would be an incredibly ineffective weapon. The way a laser broom works is imparting an extremely miniscule bit of momentum every time the object is in line of sight of the laser. Over time you lower its orbit enough for atmospheric drag to take over. For small debris, like baseball sized chunks of insulation, it takes months to deorbit the objects. For something the size of a satellite it would take an order of ma…
I don't see much of a limit to scale. Satellites can only dissipate so much heat so you don't even have to deorbit it to be successful, you just need impart enough energy to overheat the satellite or disable key parts.