[SpaceProgram] We’ve Already Passed the Tipping Point for Orbital Debris - IEEE Spectrum

[cole santos]

Space based ablation with a laser would be best. Small bursts of
an extremely high powered laser would vaporize one side creating a small
amount of thrust, if fired repetitively it would deorbit the object
eventually.

On the other side of things waste from the iss could be ejected as
projectiles frozen into optimal shapes
for pushing objects. Toilet to ice-cube maker, to canada arm mounted with
steam powered cannon. Projectiles impact objects over and over until they
deorbit.

Anything large should be sent to the local hackerspace in that orbit...

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Matt Johnson <railmeat at gmail.com> wrote:

> The BBC has a report of another idea for capturing space debris. It is
> to harpoon old satellites and drag them down:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19803461. This seems
> like an idea that might be testable on a small scale. Perhaps it is
> relevant to SpaceGAMBIT.
>
> --
> Matt Johnson
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Matt Johnson <railmeat at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think the typical human behavior has been to move on to a new area
> > once one becomes polluted. I am not sure how that would work in near
> > earth orbit.
> >
> > Here is an article from 2/12 about a Swiss university effort to use a
> > picosatellite to remove an older picosatellite:
> > http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2032/1 This is an 11 million
> > dollar effort so a bit too expensive for SpaceGAMBIT, but it is an
> > interesting and useful idea and a lot cheaper then most things in
> > space.
> >
> > --
> > Matt Johnson
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:23 AM, Jerry Isdale <isdale at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/weve-already-passed-the-tipping-point-for-orbital-debris
> >>
> >> Interesting article from IEEE - although we are not seeing the major
> fallout
> >> from this overpopulation yet, the effects will rise as time goes on.
> >> Perhaps some of our (SpaceGAMBIT) relatively near term effort could be
> on
> >> addressing this problem.  We need to clean up our local area before we
> go
> >> off trashing the rest of the solar system, and galaxy!
> >>
> >> Jerry Isdale
> >> isdale at gmail.com
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram
> >>
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