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

[Matt Johnson]

Cole, can you imagine the reaction when an obsolete Russian military
satellite is taken down by a frozen turd from the ISS. The diplomatic
repercussions would be huge.

The idea is amusing though.

--
Matt Johnson



On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 4:19 AM, cole santos <cksantos85 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>> >>
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>
>