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Space station to move to avoid debris

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Space station to move to avoid debris - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

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MOSCOW - The Russian space program's Mission Control Center says it will move the International Space Station into a different orbit to avoid possible collision with a fragment of debris. Mission Control Center spokeswoman Nadyezhda Zavyalova said the Russian Zvevda module will fire booster rockets to carry out the operation Thursday at 07:22 a.m. Moscow time (0322 GMT). The space station performs evasive maneuvers when the likelihood of a collision exceeds one in 10,000.
For those of you that crave for a change of pace in the news. :D
 
The Earth is that neighbor with the broken down cars and pink flamingos in the yard.
 
Space junk is becoming a very serious issue. There is an unbelievable amount of crap floating up there. Some young entrepreneur (I would do it if I had the funds) should launch a space corporation paid by contracts from various governments to salvage the debris in orbit.

I think they would have it space travel weren't so expensive. I don't think critical mass has been reach on a venture like that yet.
 
Space junk is becoming a very serious issue. There is an unbelievable amount of crap floating up there. Some young entrepreneur (I would do it if I had the funds) should launch a space corporation paid by contracts from various governments to salvage the debris in orbit.

Most of these things are tiny and moving extremely fast.
 
Most of these things are tiny and moving extremely fast.


But if a capture craft were in the exact same matching orbit as the debris, they'd be moving at the same speed and their velocity relative to each other would be zero.
 
Space junk is becoming a very serious issue. There is an unbelievable amount of crap floating up there. Some young entrepreneur (I would do it if I had the funds) should launch a space corporation paid by contracts from various governments to salvage the debris in orbit.

I would like to know what young entrepreneur would have the funds?
 
The USA is responsible for 73% of the space junk in orbit around the earth.

THe bulk of the orbiting satellites and devices are military in nature
 
Space junk is becoming a very serious issue. There is an unbelievable amount of crap floating up there. Some young entrepreneur (I would do it if I had the funds) should launch a space corporation paid by contracts from various governments to salvage the debris in orbit.

How about an engineering approach and use the problem instead of fighting it. What I mean is to accept that the amount of space debries will keep rising exponentially with time. (Especially with some future war.) That way, we could just put all/any junk into orbit for future mining when/if becomes useful. Also, a ring/sphere of dense enough reflective debry may reduce future energy costs too as reflecting sun-light into the night sky. After that, we all can use the 4 Lagrangian points for space work, where the kinetic stability minimizes the likelihood of collisions too. (A great benefit.)
 
Why don't we take all that space debris;


And push it somewhere else!
 
Space junk is becoming a very serious issue. There is an unbelievable amount of crap floating up there. Some young entrepreneur (I would do it if I had the funds) should launch a space corporation paid by contracts from various governments to salvage the debris in orbit.

Get a contract from the United Nations to do it.
 
Get a contract from the United Nations to do it.
Not a bad idea.

Most of these things are tiny and moving extremely fast.
Of course they are, but speed is relative, you get your craft moving to near the same speed and it becomes exceptionally easier.

I would like to know what young entrepreneur would have the funds?

Elon Musk, the creator of Pay Pal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX.
How about an engineering approach and use the problem instead of fighting it. What I mean is to accept that the amount of space debries will keep rising exponentially with time. (Especially with some future war.) That way, we could just put all/any junk into orbit for future mining when/if becomes useful. Also, a ring/sphere of dense enough reflective debry may reduce future energy costs too as reflecting sun-light into the night sky. After that, we all can use the 4 Lagrangian points for space work, where the kinetic stability minimizes the likelihood of collisions too. (A great benefit.)
Although yes, I do think we should be using the Lagrangian points for staging areas, there's a bit of a problem with your scenario. How would you even get to any of them without damaging your spacecraft? All 5 points in the Earth-Moon system are located quite a good bit further than any orbits that space junk would be located in.

Absolutely no offense, but it seems like your idea is to be lazy. I don't see any tangible benefits to cluttering up our low earth orbits with debris.
 
Expending enormous amounts of fuel per two-inch piece of debris.

http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery/beehives/LEO1280.jpg

Two things:
- Once you get the craft up to the speed of the debris, most of that momentum can be maintained. You don't start from zero with every new object. In fact, most objects within near the same orbit and size are probably going at close the same speed.
- Solar power works much better in space outside of our atmosphere. The entire ISS is powered by solar panels. Such a salvage robot would more than likely use that as a power source, expending pretty much zero fuel.
 
Two things:
- Once you get the craft up to the speed of the debris, most of that momentum can be maintained. You don't start from zero with every new object. In fact, most objects within near the same orbit and size are probably going at close the same speed.
- Solar power works much better in space outside of our atmosphere. The entire ISS is powered by solar panels. Such a salvage robot would more than likely use that as a power source, expending pretty much zero fuel.

All of the momentum will be maintained, this is space there is no air resistance. Picking up debris piece by piece would require constant changes in speed and trajectory, even if the same orbit held several debris at the same speed they would not be in the same place. Your "garage truck in space" would match the speed of one piece, capture it, but then it would be going the same speed as all the other pieces in that orbit according to your theory, therefore it would never gain on any other piece without slowing down, and once it slowed down it would have to speed up again to capture a second piece.

Also you vastly underestimate the amount of space that is up there, even in low earth orbit.

Lastly, you can't use solar powered engines to move your spacecraft without some kind of fuel to go along with it. A battery, which is what the solar panels charge, doesn't generate force like burning fuel does, a battery won't be able to physically push a object.
 
The Earth is that neighbor with the broken down cars and pink flamingos in the yard.

See, this is why we need solar system HOA's. Sure, you won't be allowed to put up an innocuous satellite, or paint your moon whatever color you want. But it would keep the riff-raf out of the neighborhood.
 
Lets figure out how much space is really up, and lets start with the volume of the Earth:

Here's the formula for volume of a sphere, I realize the Earth isn't a perfect sphere but its the best we can do:
e678db0137d57dddf5d66f02a6fdf4ef.png
Volume of a sphere calculator

So all we need then is the radius of the Earth which Wikipedia tells me is 3963 miles. So input that into the formula and we get "260,711,882,973 cubic miles."

Now low Earth orbit is 1243 miles(2000km) above the surface, but lets stick with a smaller number for the sake of not creating massive numbers. We'll go with 370 miles because below that is the most crowded space, based off this wikipedia source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Orbitalaltitudes.jpg

So lets add 370 miles to our formula and do it again, that gives us "340,764,760,245 cubic miles." Now that's the volume of the Earth plus 370 miles extra into space, but that's obviously not the number we are looking for because it counts the Earth and its atmosphere where obviously there is no space junk. So looking at the last source we see Sputnik flew at an altitude of 133 miles, I don't know if there's anything below that but lets go with that number. So what we need to find is the volume of space in a sphere that is 4333 miles in radius(3963+370) from its outward most point along the radius (4333) to 133 miles below that (4200).

Using the sphere volume formula again a sphere of 4200 miles in radius is "310,339,088,692 cubic miles," subtract that from our volume of a 4333 mile radius sphere and we get:


30,425,671,553 cubic miles of space That's 30 billion, 425 million, 671 thousand, 553 cubic miles of space to clean of space junk. And thats not even every altitude of all satellites around Earth, if we were to count everything we'd find an area of space larger than the entire Earth.
 
All of the momentum will be maintained, this is space there is no air resistance.
Not quite. Although there is little resistance in most earth orbits, earth's atmosphere still produces drag. The lower the orbit, the higher the drag. The ISS has to periodically adjust their orbit due to degradation from atmospheric drag.

Lastly, you can't use solar powered engines to move your spacecraft without some kind of fuel to go along with it. A battery, which is what the solar panels charge, doesn't generate force like burning fuel does, a battery won't be able to physically push a object.
Then you are apparently unfamiliar with ion thrusters. Using the solar panels and battery banks, an ion thruster can provide propulsion for attitude and velocity changes and is for the most part completely fueless. It does however use a special gas for the process to work, but that musn't be replaced for a very, very long time.

Picking up debris piece by piece would require constant changes in speed and trajectory, even if the same orbit held several debris at the same speed they would not be in the same place. Your "garage truck in space" would match the speed of one piece, capture it, but then it would be going the same speed as all the other pieces in that orbit according to your theory, therefore it would never gain on any other piece without slowing down, and once it slowed down it would have to speed up again to capture a second piece.
Listen, this isn't rocket science. Well, I guess it is. There are a lot of ways for a craft to move around in orbit. The spacecraft could be equipped with ion thrusters on all sides in order to adjust it's position and speed. Ion thrusters do not provide a substantial amount of thrust, and are slow, but we're also not in a terrible hurry. In order to slow the spacecraft, instead of using just thrusters, sails could be opened to increase it's surface area, increasing drag by the atmosphere, slowing it relative to the space junk which mostly has a very very small surface area, and therefore very little drag. This of course would only be effective in LEO.

We can already track the majority of the space debris from satellites and earth-based radars. Furthermore the robots could be equipped with radar and other sensors to hone in on garbage.

There would not be one robot, there would be a swarm of robots moving about cleaning up our orbit. This is not out of the realm of possible for a corporation to do. There has been a recent birth of many private space corporations that have made great progress in leaps and bounds. There is even a company with serious plans for asteroid mining.

Also you vastly underestimate the amount of space that is up there, even in low earth orbit.
Was this condescending statement, which made an assumption about my knowledge of space necessary? Did it add to the conversation in some way?
 
Lets figure out how much space is really up, and lets start with the volume of the Earth:

Here's the formula for volume of a sphere, I realize the Earth isn't a perfect sphere but its the best we can do:
View attachment 67135790
Volume of a sphere calculator

So all we need then is the radius of the Earth which Wikipedia tells me is 3963 miles. So input that into the formula and we get "260,711,882,973 cubic miles."

Now low Earth orbit is 1243 miles(2000km) above the surface, but lets stick with a smaller number for the sake of not creating massive numbers. We'll go with 370 miles because below that is the most crowded space, based off this wikipedia source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Orbitalaltitudes.jpg

So lets add 370 miles to our formula and do it again, that gives us "340,764,760,245 cubic miles." Now that's the volume of the Earth plus 370 miles extra into space, but that's obviously not the number we are looking for because it counts the Earth and its atmosphere where obviously there is no space junk. So looking at the last source we see Sputnik flew at an altitude of 133 miles, I don't know if there's anything below that but lets go with that number. So what we need to find is the volume of space in a sphere that is 4333 miles in radius(3963+370) from its outward most point along the radius (4333) to 133 miles below that (4200).

Using the sphere volume formula again a sphere of 4200 miles in radius is "310,339,088,692 cubic miles," subtract that from our volume of a 4333 mile radius sphere and we get:


30,425,671,553 cubic miles of space That's 30 billion, 425 million, 671 thousand, 553 cubic miles of space to clean of space junk. And thats not even every altitude of all satellites around Earth, if we were to count everything we'd find an area of space larger than the entire Earth.

Good thing you're here to use your high school geometry to wow us and show that it's impossible. Is there anything constructive you have to add?
 
Although yes, I do think we should be using the Lagrangian points for staging areas, there's a bit of a problem with your scenario. How would you even get to any of them without damaging your spacecraft? All 5 points in the Earth-Moon system are located quite a good bit further than any orbits that space junk would be located in.

Absolutely no offense, but it seems like your idea is to be lazy. I don't see any tangible benefits to cluttering up our low earth orbits with debris.

Are you saying that the orbits of the space debries are like uniformly distributed around the Earth and not concentrated around the equator? Shouldn't inertial orbital kinetics modify all space junk to concentrate more around the equator?
 
Are you saying that the orbits of the space debries are like uniformly distributed around the Earth and not concentrated around the equator? Shouldn't inertial orbital kinetics modify all space junk to concentrate more around the equator?

No, space junk can not be uniformly distributed around the earth. It is also not concentrated around the equator either.

What you are referring to is geostationary orbit. It is the only orbit that is directly over the equator at all times. Geostationary orbit is at 35,786 km, and that is the perfect-looking ring you see on the picture that's pretty far out from the earth. The only junk that will be in geostationary orbit is that which breaks off from satellites in that orbit.

The space junk is all around the earth in a seemingly endless multitude of orbits. There is no "safe" escape from earth that contains no space debris as you have suggested. The more junk around the earth, the higher the chance of it impacting one of our crafts.

Debris-GEO1280.jpg
 
No, space junk can not be uniformly distributed around the earth. It is also not concentrated around the equator either.

What you are referring to is geostationary orbit. It is the only orbit that is directly over the equator at all times. Geostationary orbit is at 35,786 km, and that is the perfect-looking ring you see on the picture that's pretty far out from the earth. The only junk that will be in geostationary orbit is that which breaks off from satellites in that orbit.

The space junk is all around the earth in a seemingly endless multitude of orbits. There is no "safe" escape from earth that contains no space debris as you have suggested. The more junk around the earth, the higher the chance of it impacting one of our crafts.

Debris-GEO1280.jpg

This is an absolutely great picture.

The situation is worse than I thought.

Can we arm the space station with guns and shoot at these space junks? Although I begin to think that regular bullets won't really work very well, because they may fragment those debries even more. Even liquid drops impact as solids at those velocities.

In practice, is there a minimum weight/size limit for those debries, under which they can be officially ignored? If yes, then we can still shoot them until they fragment under that limit. (But wouldn't it suck that you have done good works in the harshest of environments, and then when you become a debry at the end, they even shoot at you?)
 
Two things:
- Once you get the craft up to the speed of the debris, most of that momentum can be maintained. You don't start from zero with every new object. In fact, most objects within near the same orbit and size are probably going at close the same speed.
- Solar power works much better in space outside of our atmosphere. The entire ISS is powered by solar panels. Such a salvage robot would more than likely use that as a power source, expending pretty much zero fuel.

The stuff is traveling in all different directions. You'd be expending more fuel than all the world's space programs have to date.
 
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