• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Space station to move to avoid debris

ab9924 said:
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?)
Click to expand...

Have you ever tried to shoot a bullet with another bullet?

If by some miracle you managed to hit the object, you'd probably just fragment it further and now you have a bullet flying around in orbit. Bullets kill things because they poke a hole in them, they don't actually impart a lot of kinetic energy onto the target, and metal fragments aren't terribly concerned with having a hole in them.
 
Deuce said:
Have you ever tried to shoot a bullet with another bullet?

If by some miracle you managed to hit the object, you'd probably just fragment it further and now you have a bullet flying around in orbit. Bullets kill things because they poke a hole in them, they don't actually impart a lot of kinetic energy onto the target, and metal fragments aren't terribly concerned with having a hole in them.
Click to expand...

Now I ran out of cheap ideas.

We would need something like a space vacuum-cleaner, by possibly bending space to make the debries fall out of orbit and onto it or into the atmosphere.
 
Deuce said:
The stuff is traveling in all different directions. You'd be expending more fuel than all the world's space programs have to date.
Click to expand...

I know you probably missed it, but in post 19 I explained the concept of ion thrusters and how they are essentially fueless. They use energy from either solar or nuclear power and a small amount of gas that must very rarely be replenished.
 
Last edited:
Here is my highly technical, detailed schematic on how to remove space debris.

superbrilliantgeniusidea.jpg
 
RabidAlpaca said:
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.
Click to expand...

I am afraid newtons law is still in effect. Some propelent is going to have to be expened to move or alter trajectories. Solar power would just be a way to add energy to the propelent. There are ways that dont use the traditional propelent method, but they would not be practical at this point for that type application. I as the resident rocket surgeon thought you should know. The rest of your post is fairly accurate. Just the part were solar panels would be the prime motive force was off.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
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.


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.


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.


Was this condescending statement, which made an assumption about my knowledge of space necessary? Did it add to the conversation in some way?
Click to expand...

Hey Alpaca ole pal ole buddy, Ion thrusters are definately not fuelless. Take it from your resident rocket surgeon. They are lower fuel use relitively speaking. Ion thrusters work by electromagneticly expeling ionized gases out the nozzell at exceptionally high velocity. They come in several varieties they can have very high thrust potential, or very low thrust potential, or somewhere in between. They can and for the most part do at this point in time use exotic gases for their propelent, xenon for one such gase. The gases are relitively rare and hense expensive. There are other type improved versions with better delta v potential that dont use exotic gas that are being developed. They are not in general use yet. That said wiseone is right on the mark when it comes to making vector changes in LEO.

Alright boys and gurls this is right up your resident rockets surgeons alley. The way I would do it is use a laser mounted on a satelite with a fairly large delta V reserve. Laser would be solar powered by charging an ultra capicter bank. Laser would be mounted such that the resulting beam would be projected on a gimble mirror and focusing assembly for tracking targeting and termination phases. Satelite would be injected into orbit such that would be able to bring its laser to bear on orbital debrie probably higher orbit. Satelite would target, confirm target and then if the target is under a certain size vaporize it, if its over a certain size vaporize just part of the debree to alter is trajectory into a dergrading orbit. Lasers work much better in space as there is little atmoshpere to interfer with the beam. Use the sun to charge and power it and use your delta V reserve to position the satelite better to alter the orbit of larger debree. 1 to 2 megawatts for the laser should be sufficent for our purposes. the best type laser for this type work would be a pulse type laser. The lasing action would be very short bursts 1 millisecond or so. The object is to put a lot of energy on the target in a very short span. We therefor take advantage of free energy to do our work for us and minimize the manuvering hence fuel nessarry to complete the task at hand. Thats my idea.
 
Last edited:
PirateMk1 said:
Hey Alpaca ole pal ole buddy, Ion thrusters are definately not fuelless. Take it from your resident rocket surgeon. They are lower fuel use relitively speaking. Ion thrusters work by electromagneticly expeling ionized gases out the nozzell at exceptionally high velocity. They come in several varieties they can have very high thrust potential, or very low thrust potential, or somewhere in between. They can and for the most part do at this point in time use exotic gases for their propelent, xenon for one such gase. The gases are relitively rare and hense expensive. There are other type improved versions with better delta v potential that dont use exotic gas that are being developed. They are not in general use yet. That said wiseone is right on the mark when it comes to making vector changes in LEO.

Alright boys and gurls this is right up your resident rockets surgeons alley. The way I would do it is use a laser mounted on a satelite with a fairly large delta V reserve. Laser would be solar powered by charging an ultra capicter bank. Laser would be mounted such that the resulting beam would be projected on a gimble mirror and focusing assembly for tracking targeting and termination phases. Satelite would be injected into orbit such that would be able to bring its laser to bear on orbital debrie probably higher orbit. Satelite would target, confirm target and then if the target is under a certain size vaporize it, if its over a certain size vaporize just part of the debree to alter is trajectory into a dergrading orbit. Lasers work much better in space as there is little atmoshpere to interfer with the beam. Use the sun to charge and power it and use your delta V reserve to position the satelite better to alter the orbit of larger debree. 1 to 2 megawatts for the laser should be sufficent for our purposes. the best type laser for this type work would be a pulse type laser. The lasing action would be very short bursts 1 millisecond or so. The object is to put a lot of energy on the target in a very short span. We therefor take advantage of free energy to do our work for us and minimize the manuvering hence fuel nessarry to complete the task at hand. Thats my idea.
Click to expand...

I knew it used the exotic gases, but I wasn't really classifying that as fuel directly in this case. I considered it as a facilitator for the electricity from the solar panels. It clearly gets used up, but from what I understand it can go for a very, very, very long time without being replaced. I only know a bit about ion thrusters because I did a project on Lorentz force in college. I was however studying rail gun technology and not thrusters. :p

I'm definitely not a propulsion expert, I'm an electrical engineer. Just bringing my 2 cents to the table. Great post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom