11–20 of 40 posts
As we launch more and more cheaply and frequently, the few thousand miles above Earth become littered more and more, even with all deorbiting or parking provisions.
What I'm waiting for is orbital unlauch vehicles. That is, spacecraft that methodically collect and comoactify space debris. As we launch more and more cheaply and frequently, the few thousand miles above Earth become littered more and more, even with all deorbiting or parking provisions.
What I'm waiting for is orbital unlauch vehicles. That is, spacecraft that methodically collect and comoactify space debris. As we launch more and more cheaply and frequently, the few thousand miles above Earth become littered more and more, even with all deorbiting or parking provisions.
Most satellites are on orbits that will eventually decay due to atmospheric drag.
Toward the bottom: > How to make Plutonium [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sh5XZo5wRE ] tl;dw: First get a few gallons of a (radioactive, poisonous, pyrophoric) transuranic element called neptunium. I'm glad this didn't turn out to be an easy DIY video, since that would probably cause, you know, the end civilization. It's a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox: A civilization advances until someone posts simple…
Could we be at the very beginning of a Cambrian explosion for space exploration? Exciting times.
Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to b…
While I agree with your general point, do we completely understand the opportunity that space launch/travel/exploration provides yet?
The opportunity may be exponentially bigger than we currently understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to b…
> They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. While I agree with your general point, do we completely understand the opportunity that space launch/travel/exploration provides yet? The opportunity may be exponentially bigger than we currently understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most satellites are on orbits that will eventually decay due to atmospheric drag.
While this is technically true for all satellites, what's important is the timescale on which their orbits will decay.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With Kessler syndrome looming it may be the wrong kind of excitement
Low earth orbit satellites decay very quickly. Without extra boost most satellites launched by these rockets will reenter within a year or two. On a wider note, I find the dramatic pessimism of our times rather unfortunate. It seems every technical advance is now met with some prediction of doom. I miss when technical forums were optimistic.
Toward the bottom: > How to make Plutonium [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sh5XZo5wRE ] tl;dw: First get a few gallons of a (radioactive, poisonous, pyrophoric) transuranic element called neptunium. I'm glad this didn't turn out to be an easy DIY video, since that would probably cause, you know, the end civilization. It's a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox: A civilization advances until someone posts simple…
Ehhh, everyone (relevant) already knows the general process for making highly enriched uranium or Pu-239, and how to make a bomb with it once they get it. The issue is that actually implementing those things takes a ton of infrastructure, and until relatively recently that infrastructure was extremely visible. As gas centrifuges have replaced gaseous diffusion as the primary method of enrichment, though, the amount o…
The processes are all difficult from a chemical engineering standpoint. Most of the materials involved are toxic or radioactive or corrosive or flammable or several of the above.
Enrichment plants are smaller now. They used to be city-sized; now they're the size of a large WalMart.[1] But not garage-sized.
Incidentally, there's a huge glut of depleted uranium in uranium hexaflouride solution form. Hundreds of thousands of tons. This is what uranium enrichment plants have left over after they've separated out the good stuff, which is under 1%. There's not enough demand for depleted uranium to run it through the chemical process to get metallic uranium out. Potentially it could be used in breeder reactors, if there were any that worked well.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@32.43377912,-103.07864954,1041...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low earth orbit satellites decay very quickly. Without extra boost most satellites launched by these rockets will reenter within a year or two. On a wider note, I find the dramatic pessimism of our times rather unfortunate. It seems every technical advance is now met with some prediction of doom. I miss when technical forums were optimistic.
I havent researched the orbital dynamics much here, but wouldnt it be possible for the satellite fragments resulting from a collision at orbital speeds to have much greater speeds, possibly ending up in elliptical orbits with lower total drag? Seems like just waiting for orbits to decay after a Kessler syndrome like event wouldnt be feasible.
It is possible for small fragments to potentially be moved to higher orbits (with counter balancing mass being moved lower) But the conservation of momentum prevents the vast majority of fragments from suffering this fate.
Baring exceptionally bad luck a collision in LEO would usually decrease the time before the orbit decays. Remember a debris field has more surface area than an intact satellite.