[HN Gopher] The world must cooperate to avoid colliding satellit...
___________________________________________________________________
The world must cooperate to avoid colliding satellites and space
debris
Author : divbzero
Score : 244 points
Date : 2021-08-19 08:21 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| nix23 wrote:
| >hundreds of e-mail alerts arrive each day warning of potential
| space smash-ups
|
| Oh, so they could trow the Fax-machines out? Well done!
|
| Is Email not a bit unreliable for for such a topic?
| bawana wrote:
| Why is everyone worried about all that junk? It's reaction mass
| for getting out of orbit or getting back to earth. It's mostly
| aluminum which melts easy. Just build a solar furnace in space
| that has a big 'catcher'. Make aluminum ingots. And shoot them
| off a spaceship which has a giant electromagnet. As you know,
| pulsing the electromagnet creates eddy current in the aluminum.
| This force has been used to weld metal
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950711980945202...
|
| The ingots fly back to earth and burn up in the atmosphere.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think the issue is that actually collecting all those bits
| (if we needed to quickly clean up our orbits) would be
| extremely expensive. You'll need to adjust delta-v hundreds of
| times to match orbit and collect all these bits and pieces.
|
| Basically - imagine dusting your place - except you're doing it
| in a car and you need to stop precisely over each dust mote to
| collect it. You're going to waste a whole lot of effort on
| manuvering and what to do with the junk once you've got it is
| actually a relatively simple problem[1].
|
| 1. You probably want to consolidate all the little bits of junk
| into one big bit of junk that, at some point in the future, you
| can scrap for orbital construction.
| flerchin wrote:
| Kessler syndrome is a real thing, but this reads like FUD.
| cletus wrote:
| Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world
| uniting behind any cause. The solution to any of these problems
| will be economic and out of necessity and never because of
| altruism.
|
| Want to reduce fossil fuel usage? It'll only happen when cleaner
| alternatives are cheaper.
|
| Climate change? Nothing will change here until there's an
| economic reason for carbon sequestration.
|
| This may seem depressing but there's an important lesson here:
| any sense of urgency is almost always overblown. Things really do
| have a way of resolving themselves.
|
| Oh and as for space debris, yes it's a problem but space is also
| really big. Like the US also put a bunch of copper up in space
| [1] that's still there.
|
| How could this resolve itself? It'll end up resolving itself when
| launch costs are sufficiently cheap. We've made a ton of progress
| in the last few decades. IIRC SpaceX cost of getting payloads
| into LEO is like 20x cheaper than 20 years ago but it's still
| north of $1000/kg.
|
| But what does the situation look like when the cost gets below
| $10/kg? That's not as unrealistic as you may think. A lot of
| attention is given to space elevators. I think these are likely
| infeasible (eg they rely on discovering a sufficiently strong
| material that doesn't exist yet).
|
| But orbital rings [2]? These require no magical material and
| would be completely game-changing. If you have something like
| that just hang things off them to pick up passing space debris.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/08/project-west-ford/
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world
| uniting behind any cause.
|
| What about CFCs?
|
| > It'll only happen when cleaner alternatives are cheaper.
|
| Seems like there's a pretty strong economic incentive for spare
| faring countries not to ruin space.
| celticninja wrote:
| Except the pandemic shows us that we can. It's not perfect but
| it was at least a good effort in terms of global cooperation.
| Bar a few outliers.
| cletus wrote:
| Here's an alternative view: we may never reach herd immunity
| with Covid-19 and it may be something we just always have to
| deal with in large part because a significant percentage of
| the population won't get vaccinated because of side effects
| that, if they exist at all, are less than 1 in 1,000,000
| likely to cause problems.
|
| A large number of people have shown they're quite willing to
| let millions of people die rather than do something that's
| less risky than taking a bath.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >any sense of urgency is almost always overblown. Things really
| do have a way of resolving themselves.
|
| This is just another way of saying "Nobody does anything until
| there are bodies on the ground"
|
| The point is to at least attempt to resolve the issue before
| there are any bodies on the ground. And often at the very least
| those efforts mitigate the number of bodies that do end up on
| the ground.
| kar5pt wrote:
| We already have economic reasons for all these things. Not
| having natural disasters and rising sea levels is an economic
| benefit. The problem is we don't have a _system_ that captures
| those benefits in a way that incentivizes actors to work
| towards them. The reason people don't care is because we have
| an economic system that incentivizes them not to care. There's
| nothing natural or unchangeable about this, we're just choosing
| not to do anything.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Fully agree with this. In previous years cooperative agreements
| happened via small opaque groups of people across the world who
| had a fairly strong hand in driving alignment. Of course this
| meant that it wasn't so democratic and so people have been
| pushing against these types of "small group" deals made in back
| rooms by powerful people.
|
| That has changed such that people do not trust these groups to
| make these deals on their behalf because there have been bad
| outcomes. Now there are many more players in the conversation
| with their own perspectives which, while good for increasing
| diversity of opinion, also make the system mostly grind to a
| halt, which allows for groups who want to exploit their
| perspective to have more time to gain ground.
| mc32 wrote:
| This seems a bit exaggerated. We have maritime law, telephony
| agreements, bern convention, international aviation regulations
| that were developed over time as the need became critical.
|
| I suspect similar will happen as space matures from frontier to
| settled.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| All those things were seeded in different eras. The world is
| different today. Look at something like the Internet.
| Completely unregulated, and in the span of a decade has torn
| societies apart and undone many cultural norms because of
| rampant tech conglomerates doing whatever they want. And
| there's virtually no will at all to do anything about it. The
| best the US can do is inept boomer Congressmen yelling at
| Zuckerberg why FaceBook doesn't work on their phones.
| mc32 wrote:
| We'll see. The internet is or was different. It was passing
| bits around the globe. Making it into a turnpike would have
| stymied development.
|
| Fragmentation seems to be emerging with some locales
| wanting or needing more local control of content. That will
| likely increase with the success of the GFC and its
| implementation in ex-USSR satellites as well as in Russia
| itself.
| cletus wrote:
| I think maritime law and safety is a good example of my
| point: the path to maritime law is paved in centuries of
| blood.
|
| And here's the kicker: this didn't even require global
| collective action. This required governments to police a
| narrow industry. That's so much easier and yet even then it
| took centuries.
| typest wrote:
| This is overly cynical. I agree that in general cooperation is
| very hard, and if things can be solved by a private entity,
| that is a good strategy. But the world has united behind causes
| before. A good example is the hole in the ozone layer. The
| world identified CFCs as causing this problem, and united
| behind the Montreal protocol. Now, the hole is shrinking and is
| expected to be closed by mid century [1].
|
| I emphasize this because international cooperation is important
| to solve many problems. Let's not misrepresent the situation
| and pretend it's impossible. It has happened before, and we
| would do well to make sure it continues to happen.
|
| [1]https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-
| tre...
| barbazoo wrote:
| I bet there wasn't a refrigerator lobby back then
| manipulating public opinion and lining politician's pockets
| like it is with oil, gas, etc.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| One science fiction thought is that inducing Kessler Syndrome on
| Earth would be a perfect way for a Moon or Mars colony to
| "declare independence".
|
| If Earthlings can't get off the planet, it doesn't matter how
| much money, people and power they have.
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| If I was writing a science fiction... space debris is a wonderful
| way of imprisoning a planet. Just put a bunch of junk in orbit,
| now no one can get out. Only a Han Solo type with asteroid
| avoiding skillz and a taste for danger.
|
| Maybe a built-in step in the intergalactic civilisation process
| is launching a bunch of satellites, letting them crash, and
| forming an orbiting wall. This gives baby civilisations a few
| millennia to grow into their newfound power as the space debris
| forms into rings, allowing launches again.
| lttlrck wrote:
| There's a great sequence in Wall-E when he leaves Earth and
| breaks through the debris field. Not as you imagined but cool
| nonetheless.
|
| https://youtu.be/RmG5tUCrrsA&t=60
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Space junk, like everything else in orbit, moves at speeds
| measured in kilometers per second. There is no asteroid weaving
| that lets you dodge a pea-sized steel fragment approaching you
| at 16 kilometers _per second_.
| dalbasal wrote:
| You obviously have met my friend Han.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| But I heard Han Solo made the Kessler Run in 12 picoparsecs!
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > 12 picoparsecs
|
| That's... a length. About 230 miles or 370 kilometers to be
| exact. ;)
| jawilson2 wrote:
| This is the plot of part of the Timothy Zahn Admiral Thrawn
| Books (Last Command). He cloaks something like 30 small
| asteroids and puts them in orbit around a rebel planet, but
| makes it appear like he might have released 100's. No one can
| enter or leave the planet until they are cleared, and they have
| no idea how many there are.
| uCantCauseUCant wrote:
| There is another book fallen dragon, were the descendants of
| a californian colony, "lock up the sky". Santa Chico is the
| name of the planet.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Dragon
| PeterisP wrote:
| Obviously people _can_ enter or leave the planet as long as
| they 're willing to take a risk of dying equal to [space
| covered by 100s random orbits] / [total surface of planet],
| which is nonzero but small. If you're launching straight up,
| thousands of such asteroids would leave you with 99% chance
| of success - the trouble is that with modern standards we
| generally don't consider 99% good enough - e.g. for space
| shuttle, 2 out of 135 crashed, getting almost 99%, and that's
| considered not ok; but if you really _need_ to (as opposed to
| launches just for PR and science) then you can definitely get
| out of planet 90%+ of the time.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Seems inevitably we'll eventually get unsustainable levels of
| junk up there.
|
| Anyone have creative ideas for how to clean all this crap up
| someday with "deep tech"?
| emtel wrote:
| A sanguine take from Casey Handmer of the JPL:
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/space-debris-p...
| detritus wrote:
| Fascinating, thank you! The graded tungsten particulate cloud
| idea is particularly clever.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| At this point I don't have much faith that there is any
| existential scenario that would unite the world in cooperation.
|
| The fact that this isn't existential or even comprehensible to
| lets say 80% of the world's population, tells me we as engineers
| and designers need to plan for our technologies to be able to
| operate despite an inevitable cascading space collision.
| rob74 wrote:
| When I read "avoid a catastrophic space collision", I thought
| about an asteroid hitting the earth and endangering life itself.
| Compared to that, a "catastrophic collision that knocks out one
| or more satellites key to their safety, economic well-being or
| both" sounds rather like an inconvenience. Of course, it could be
| "catastrophic" too, but there is catastrophe, and then there is
| catastrophe...
| bluGill wrote:
| We can't grow enough food to support our population without
| GPS, so either this leads to mass starvation or we go back to
| 98% of the population becoming subsistence farmers. I'd guess
| the former - not enough people will be willing to work that
| hard until it is too late - we are out of food in the middle of
| winter and thus won't get more for a few months. (it would be
| possible to force some people to starve in early winter thus
| saving enough food for the rest)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > We can't grow enough food to support our population without
| GPS
|
| Can you justify this?
|
| Edit: I mean can you provide an authoritative source or a
| plausible argument for believing this?
| davidhyde wrote:
| Maybe you're right. As the general population uses less and
| less of their creative brains at some point they will be
| incapable of coming up with an alternative to gps (today
| someone would most likely have the cognitive capability to
| erect positioning beacons on their farm).
| bluGill wrote:
| It isn't just making an alternative, it is rolling it out
| as well.
| [deleted]
| zz865 wrote:
| And add to that "The world must cooperate..." you know it'll
| never happen.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| There is so much military hardware up there, military
| hardware disguised as civilian, satellites that were launched
| successfully but publicly described as a failure/"useless
| orbit".
|
| The article is essentially asking that all countries need to
| share the location of their nuclear subs because the Ocean is
| getting crowded.
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| Taking a step further, any nation could deliberately send a
| weaponized fleet to destroy satellites and then follow up
| with a ground strike.
| Qem wrote:
| Kessler syndrome itself could probably be weaponized as the
| cheapest superweapon ever. Say you rule over a small
| country, under risk of invasion by a much more powerful
| country, that relies heavily on GPS guided missiles,
| aircraft and ammunition. Probably it would not be very
| expensive to pick a couple fat satellites at the right
| orbital plane, blow them with small missiles able to reach
| orbital altitude, and let the resulting debris scattershot
| start a chain reaction to take down every GPS satellite in
| existence, rendering low to medium Earth orbit useless for
| centuries as a byproduct. Those smart ammunitions would be
| crippled overnight, forcing the more powerful country to
| risk old style boots-in-the-ground invasion, with much
| degraded technical support.
| lutorm wrote:
| Antisat weapons aren't exactly simple, either, though.
| It's only been successfully done a few times.
| Intercepting something at orbital velocity isn't trivial
| (unless you have the capability to actually launch
| something into a similar orbit and effect a gradual
| orbital rendezvous.)
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| If only there was some sort of United Nation organization
| that wasn't constantly undermined and turned into theater...
| the-dude wrote:
| That doesn't sell.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Adjective inflation. Yet another consequence of the advertising
| business model.
| dalbasal wrote:
| "the advertising business model" or the modern world more
| broadly?
|
| One way or another, there's a lot of short attention span
| razzle dazzle these days. Maybe adjective inflation is just
| positively correlated with the volume of media or even of
| people trying to talk to each other.
|
| It's hard competing with impending asteroid collision.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I follow many people online because I care what they have
| to say. Because I have read their works before and find
| their ideas insightful.
|
| Not because they write clickbait headlines.
| relativ575 wrote:
| How did you know about those to follow in the first
| place?
|
| They are known because 1) they care to publish their
| opinion, and 2) they tell others about their work.
|
| 2) is also known as marketing, a.k.a. advertising. We're
| often told it isn't enough to do good work to advance our
| career, we have to tell others about it as well. How well
| you present your story has big impact on how far reached
| and well received your work can be.
|
| Bottom line is, you are influenced by
| marketing/advertising, whether you want to admit it or
| not. You following someone is for sure not solely because
| of the quality of their work.
| dontreact wrote:
| Let's say this business model were banned or didn't exist.
| Getting people to choose to read your articles instead of the
| billions of other things they could be doing with their time
| on the internet would still be critical if you want to get
| them to subscribe.
|
| I think it's less to do with the business model of
| advertising but rather I think both that business model and
| the tendency towards inflating adjectives are both caused by
| there simply being too much information, entertainment etc.
| for us to make a reasonable decision of what to pay attention
| to. We've exceeded our own human capacities to process and
| choose between different streams of information.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Agreed. Social media's the prime example. Take Youtube's
| monetization. Creators are plugged into a payment per view
| world. That's definitely an aggravating factor, but the
| competition for attention is there in a similar form with
| or without the ad model.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think another cause that we do not notice or just take
| for granted is the way our language itself is designed, it
| almost seems deliberately designed to support imprecision,
| ambiguity, confusion, etc. without it being obvious the
| speaker had that intent.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| That might be true, but I think if a business doesn't rely
| on views/advertising to fund itself, it has more room for
| creating a quality brand and attracting subscribers that
| way. As opposed to writing clickbait headlines.
|
| This is essentially what the Financial Times does.
| FiberBundle wrote:
| As far as I understand this actually would be a catastrophe.
| One collision creates a lot of debris, which then again
| increases the probability of further collisions and so on. You
| have an exponentially increasing probability of further
| collisions once you have one. In the worst case this could make
| rocket launches and satellites in orbit impossible.
| thih9 wrote:
| I think what GP meant is that this kind of catastrophe (i.e.
| worst case not being able to make rocket launches or use the
| orbit) is still better than an asteroid crashing into the
| earth and perhaps causing an extinction event.
| nautilius wrote:
| Sure, anything is less catastrophic than an extinction
| event. Where's your threshold? Tsunami in Indonesia?
| Tsunami in Fukushima? Hurricane Katrina? Do those count as
| catastrophes?
|
| The problem isn't that we're no longer able to launch new
| rockets - it's that anything in space comes to a standstill
| when it gets destroyed. How about GPS is suddenly no longer
| usable, with planes in flight and ships somewhere on the
| ocean? Weather satellites allow no more observation, with
| no more forewarning for hurricanes, and no reliable
| planning of routes by either plane or ship. What will be
| the impact of both on modern agriculture? No more satellite
| based communication, etc.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Where's your threshold?
|
| I meant world scale extinction event like
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous-
| Paleogene_extinct... . A layer of sediment literally
| everywhere, etc.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We will find fallbacks. Humanity as a species is
| surprisingly resilient.
|
| > How about GPS is suddenly no longer usable, with planes
| in flight and ships somewhere on the ocean?
|
| Anything over land can be replaced by antennas sending
| out a signal from a known location, and receivers can
| triangulate their position from that. In-flight planes
| can use landmark plus compass based navigation, as well
| as (already existing) ground based navigation beacons,
| and pilots are trained on how to deal with all
| instruments gone dark scenarios. Ships can sail along
| land and use sextant navigation on the open seas
| (actually, the US Navy re-introduced training sailors in
| sextant use in 2016, to account for a no-electronics
| scenario!).
|
| > Weather satellites allow no more observation, with no
| more forewarning for hurricanes, and no reliable planning
| of routes by either plane or ship.
|
| The worst loss will be for everything over the open sea,
| but land based weather documentation will still be
| possible.
|
| > What will be the impact of both on modern agriculture?
|
| Not too much, technically we can gather everything
| agriculture needs from the ground, it's just way more
| effective and cheaper to observe from space.
|
| > No more satellite based communication, etc.
|
| That would not be a big loss, there exist (long forgotten
| outside of amateur radio) technologies to deal with that.
| macintux wrote:
| You're correct that all of these are addressable in
| isolation, given time, with some loss of utility.
|
| However, if we experience a catastrophic problem in
| space, we'll have to deal with all of them
| simultaneously, with extreme time pressures.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The scenarios where losing GPS would cause immediate
| issues (naval and air transport) have built in that
| possibility in their training for ages.
| headmelted wrote:
| For anyone that didn't know, this is essentially the premise
| of the movie Gravity.
| mLuby wrote:
| Gravity strikes a good balance between realism and getting
| the point across to orbital-mechanics-unsavvy audiences.
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| I mean, it definitely showed how _fast_ and destructive
| space debris can be. But I wouldn 't say it really
| achieved a significant amount realism.
| mLuby wrote:
| and that the debris is a cloud, and that it comes around
| again (which is very non-intuitive for us--explosions and
| shrapnel generally don't hit from the same direction more
| than once)
| arglebarglegar wrote:
| maybe we need something like this to learn how to be more
| careful before launching garbage everywhere we go
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
|
| The degree of exponential growth is still in question but the
| fact that it will be exponential, and will cause a huge
| headache eventually if left unchecked is pretty much
| accepted.
|
| However, enforcement would run into the same problem that
| enforcing any resource in the international commons runs
| into, such as overfishing, oceanic/atmospheric pollution,
| etc.
|
| Since it requires coordinated collective action of every
| space launching nation, it would require something like the
| UN security council to really punish nations that defect from
| the agreed upon program. which opens another can of worms.
| pohl wrote:
| Your last sentence is depressing. We can't even muster
| enough e pluribus unum to combat a pandemic within the one
| nation that holds that motto on its great seal.
| roenxi wrote:
| There was an unparalleled global knee-jerk and the sort
| of global coordinated economic reorganisation we've never
| seen before in the entirety of history. The politics of
| the situation are still roiling under tensions and
| stresses that haven't been seen in decades. A vaccine has
| been rolled out roughly a quarter of the worlds
| population in 18 months. Vastly more efforts are hurtling
| through the economic system as humanity reorients its
| social and technological bearings. Never before has there
| been such a bleak future for the humble coronavirus.
|
| The situation is neither pro- nor anti- our ability to
| organise at a mass level. This has been a remarkable 2
| years to be alive and we've seen a level of urgent
| response that has never been achieved before, ever. With
| 3 years to prepare, anything is possible for this Kessler
| business.
| khuey wrote:
| Dealing with space debris doesn't require individual
| action from hundreds of millions of people though. It
| requires the governments of eleven countries with orbital
| launch capabilities (counting the ESA as one) to work
| together.
| [deleted]
| ycombobreaker wrote:
| 11 Countries? The UN Security Council has five permanent
| members and they don't always work together (any one of
| the five can veto resolutions against its own exonomic
| interest).
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| The UN Security Council isn't meant to be a politically
| nimble engine for progressive economic change; it's meant
| to prevent a shooting war between those major powers.
| Judging the UNSC by the standard of that design intent
| and purpose, the UNSC has been quite effective, a few
| regional proxy wars could have been _much_ worse for
| everybody on this planet. We can call it a failure if
| /when America and China start WW3 and cover everybody
| else in fallout, but that hasn't happened yet. So far,
| the United Nations Security Council is working well.
| bt1a wrote:
| I'm not convinced that the latter is any easier than the
| former.
| Retric wrote:
| Kessler syndrome is still limited to a range of orbits.
| Very low earth orbit everything simply de orbits so fast
| it's not a significant issue.
|
| Geosynchronous orbit is quite packed, but everything is
| moving in the same direction which prevents the kind of
| exponential cascade that's so concerning. Above
| geosynchronous orbit's graveyard stays clear simply because
| little has the energy to reach that altitude.
| retrac wrote:
| Yes, it's my understanding that, in practice, Kessler
| syndrome would most probably mean no geosynchronous
| satellites. It's slightly reassuring that that isn't as
| horrifying a proposition as it was thirty years ago.
| Recent advances would allow things like geonavigation and
| telecommunications to be supported with Starlink-style
| low orbit networks, even in that event.
|
| Regarding simply transiting through our ex-satellite
| rings, I don't think there is consensus. Would it make
| launches beyond LEO practically impossible, or just
| theoretically risky in the way that blindly navigating
| the asteroid belt is? (You _could_ hit something, but it
| 's so little matter dispersed over so much space it'll
| probably just be extremely fine dust the shielding can
| handle. Probably.)
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| GEO is only above the equator, i.e. launches beyond it
| shouldn't be seriously affected if there was a debris
| belt, unless it reaches a significant density beyond a
| narrow belt.
| mLuby wrote:
| To some degree that's true, though collisions will likely
| create cones of debris that extend significantly above
| and below the initial orbits, and those shards could
| smash satellites in those higher or lower orbits, thus
| continuing the chain reaction.
|
| For example: two satellites collide head-on at an
| altitude of 300km, creating two debris clouds that extend
| from 250km to 350km. Each of those catches another
| satellite, one at 260km and another at 320km, which
| fragment into debris clouds reaching from 200km to 370km
| (all numbers made up).
|
| Higher orbits, like geosynchronous, have a lot more space
| to work with and much slower relative velocities than low
| Earth orbits.
| Retric wrote:
| That debris cloud is an abstraction, actual post
| collision orbits of individual objects are what matters.
|
| At 300km satellites experience significant drag and need
| regular boosts to maintain orbit. After collision
| individual objects orbit will almost always include it's
| altitude at the point of impact and generally expends
| above and below that point. So while yes the cloud
| extends to higher orbit, everything would deorbit from
| your example extremely quickly.
| samstave wrote:
| Why the fuck do we not have a system to
| harvest/kill/detonate already deployed satellites??
|
| Thats pretty fucking simple science, is it not?
| ashes-of-sol wrote:
| It's not.
|
| First, it's not just satellites. There's hundreds of
| thousands of pieces the size of a marble that'll cause
| catastrophic damage. And even more smaller pieces, even
| millimetre long bits of paint have caused damage to
| vessels.
|
| Second, harvesting (presuming you mean recovery) or just
| killing (presuming you mean de-orbiting with atmospheric
| burn up) require expending deltaV. There has been some
| interesting proposals for using laser ablation or tether
| based systems, but nothing that I know of that has gone
| past a paper proposal.
|
| Detonating just adds to the problem.
| samstave wrote:
| Thanks for the reply... perhaps a good policy would be to
| not allow any launch off-planet without a recovery /
| disablement plan?
| vkou wrote:
| AFAIK, all modern satellites launches require a plan for
| decommissioning them when they reach EOL.
|
| The problem is 'What happens when the plan fails due to
| design errors/bugs/accidents/breakages/etc'.
|
| Recovery of a satellite is incredibly expensive.
| samstave wrote:
| Space Satellite Recovery Startups are back on the menu
| boys!
|
| We need both space junk recovery and ocean plastic
| recovery robots.
|
| Recall that startup that tried to launch the ocean
| plastic/garbage gyre bot and it failed and no mega-corp
| tried to save them.
|
| if anyone should be forced to help on this effort, it
| should be amazon/bezos
| ctdonath wrote:
| Well, ycombinator _is_ a place to change the world by
| incentivizing profit for doing so. Get some creative
| actuaries to run the numbers, sell satellite collision
| insurance, and fund a for-profit orbital janitorial
| service to improve profit margin on premiums.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| That's how I read it too!
| hourislate wrote:
| According too this article it seems it could very well create
| some serious issues.
|
| https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite...
| everyone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
| shreddit wrote:
| "The world" is also a bit of a stretch if you mean a handful of
| countries
| bolangi wrote:
| Putting satellites in low orbits will help, since everything in
| those orbits will eventually decay.
| quadcore wrote:
| There is a YC startup from a recent batch that want to salvage
| and solve that.
| nikkinana wrote:
| No they don't, asshole.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > The Californian company SpaceX alone has launched some 1,700
| satellites over the past 2 years as part of its Starlink network,
| which provides broadband Internet, with thousands more planned.
|
| None of which are high enough in orbit for this to be an issue.
| They have a lifespan of 5 years or so before they fall and burn
| up in the atmosphere. Why was it included in the article? In the
| first paragraph nonetheless.
|
| None of the other mega constellations are a problem either, they
| are mega constellations because they are in VLEO. You need more
| satellites to cover the Earth when they are lower, but they will
| also all fall back down, posing no long term threat.
|
| Either the author is unaware of what he is writing about, or has
| malicious intent, either way, it doesn't instill trust in the
| article if there's no distinction of which type of orbit the
| satellite is in.
|
| Sure we should be careful with satellites in more fixed
| positions, but the top paragraph seems like a hit piece against
| SpaceX, and slightly against the other companies wanting to do
| satellite constellations (although no name drop)
| z3rgl1ng wrote:
| Periodic reminder that Starlink's 12k cluster will only support
| ~500k users[0] at a minimum $1bn cost to taxpayers[1].
|
| [0]
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200928/09175145397/repor...
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/07/spa...
| deeviant wrote:
| You must not be familiar with US broadband outcomes. If
| starlink actually services 500k user for only 1bn it will
| probably be the best ROI the US has recently gotten in terms
| of rural broadband access relief funds.
|
| Also your link:
|
| > Starlink currently has 650 satellites in orbit, with 12,000
| planned by 2026. But even at full capacity the researchers
| estimate the service won't be able to service any more than
| 485,000 simultaneous data streams at speeds of 100 Mbps.
|
| These are not even Starlink's official numbers but some
| estimate by some researchers without any first hand knowledge
| of Starlink's tech plan. Moreover, it assumes 485,000
| _simultaneous 100 Mbps_ , a ridiculous standard, no
| reasonable engineer would define the max user limit of a
| system to be how many user can use maximum bandwidth
| simultaneously because that is not how network usage happens
| in real-world use.
|
| My mother has had at&t dsl in the a rural town, the only
| broadband provider in the area, it delivers 2 Mbps *at best*
| aka when it works at all, even if Starlink delivers 20 Mbps
| with be a massive quality of life improvement.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I don't see how your FUD is relevant to this discussion of
| space debris, please stick to discussing the article.
|
| Please see other reply to you why those articles are FUD,
| they explained it much better than I could.
| z3rgl1ng wrote:
| Ah, the relevance is that SpaceX is producing a ton of
| extra objects in space.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I have a dumb Kessler syndrom question, but I don't really have
| the physics to answer it myself.
|
| I've been told that worrying about the longer-term implications
| of systems like Starlink aren't so terrifying because these
| satellites are in LEO. Specifically, the time for that kind of
| junk to de-orbit is on the order of 5 years, so the worst case
| scenario for this junk is to wait it out.
|
| However, if we get a good set of bouncing space junk, how does
| that affect this? The vectors generated from the parts two
| colliding small object might be in any direction, including
| outward?
|
| My physics isn't that great, so I am left with this question:
|
| is it worth thinking about the small bits of junk re-orbiting
| other junk? Would that push out the timeline of being able to
| simply wait out a incipient Kessler syndrome?
| TTPrograms wrote:
| Kerbal Space Program intuition tells me that the worst case is
| that you produce a high velocity piece of debris aligned
| perpendicular to radial vector, e.g. aligned with the existing
| orbit. I think this is a fairly unlikely direction to transfer
| energy in a head-on collision (by conservation of momentum
| arguments). That debris would then traverse a fairly elliptical
| orbit with frequent passes at the same altitude, likely
| resulting in relatively rapid de-orbit. The main risk would be
| inducing chain reaction at higher altitudes during those few
| passes, which seems unlikely.
|
| Any other debris trajectory induced by collision would hit
| lower altitudes in less than one orbit time (either going
| outwards and thus on a much more eccentric orbit, resulting in
| lower altitude pass in less than one orbit time, or going
| inwards and immediately passing at lower altitudes). So that
| debris seems likely to deorbit even more quickly, indicating
| your intuition is correct.
|
| This all makes sense once you grok why craft need two separate
| boosts to transfer to a higher geocentric orbit.
|
| Of course there's a transition point where satellites are so
| dense that even these short-lived trajectories are sufficient
| to induce a self-maintaining chain reaction of debris. I
| suspect that's unlikely - the probability of a collision
| occurring in one or two orbital periods seems negligible.
| beecafe wrote:
| Basically when you modify an orbit with a single impulse -
| short rocket burn, bumping into something, etc - the resulting
| orbit will still intersect that point (unless you reach escape
| velocity). So those pieces should return to that piece of LEO,
| although they could still be spending large amounts of time far
| from there.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| On a global perspective the interests of too many people don't
| align to reach any sensible consensus by conventional means. We
| see it with the pandemic, we see it with global warming and we
| saw it in general with every conflict and wars.
|
| How can we make this happen?
| Lex-2008 wrote:
| Are you describing what is also known as "Tragedy of the
| commons"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| protoman3000 wrote:
| The "Tragedy of the commons" is a situation where choices
| based on self-interest converge to a negative outcome. I
| would not characterize our situation on global level like
| that.
|
| The difference is that in our world people do express desire
| to cooperate, also on a global scale, but reaching consensus
| seems like an intractable or practically unsolvable problem.
| Everybody knows that cooperating lies in their own self
| interest, but what does it effectively mean to cooperate?
|
| It begins at different levels. For example, before we even
| begin to see disagreement on how to do the the things we
| want, we already have no consensus on what to do in the first
| place.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Arguably it is exactly like the tragedy of commons - the
| original analogy is common pastures getting overexploited
| as noone wants to limit their cows so that the pasture
| isn't overcrowded; and in this analogy noone wants to limit
| their satellites so that the space isn't overcrowded..
| guerrilla wrote:
| "A resource arrangement that works in practice can work
| in theory." - Elinor Ostrom
|
| Good thing that old thought experiment isn't based on
| empirical evidence from the real world as the first woman
| to win a Nobel Prize in economics showed us [1]. In both
| cases, it's in all participants interest as the GP said
| but there are some further conditions that Ostram
| outlined. It turns out in the real world, those
| conditions are met more often than not and can clearly
| met in this case.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Research
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| More like the prisoner's dilemma, no?
| dgb23 wrote:
| Just yesterday I was ranting on hn about how we don't value
| solving the big problems. But I don't know the answers.
|
| As an individual I try to learn and improve minimizing my
| negative impact and working towards a sustainable business. But
| that is so small and insignificant in comparison to solving
| problems like these.
|
| Maybe we have to think very long term and improve the
| effectiveness and reach of education. Maybe the hope is that
| future generations are smarter and more empathetic than us.
| 7952 wrote:
| Yeah the biggest problem is human cooperation. We will put
| feet on mars before we ever come close to solving that. And
| curiously space exploration is something that does seem to be
| able to inspire people to work together. Lack of cooperation
| in everything else is why we can't have nice things.
| mistermann wrote:
| For one, I don't think humanity has developed
| thinking/communication styles and models that are
| sophisticated enough to engage in sufficiently cooperative
| behavior at scale.
|
| For two:
|
| > But I don't know the answers.
|
| Very few people are able to do what you just did: realize
| that they do not actually know something (see: politics,
| covid, any culture war topic, etc). This is actually a
| sophisticated skill, and to say that we do not teach it would
| be a massive understatement.
|
| > Maybe the hope is that future generations are smarter and
| more empathetic than us.
|
| My concern is that even if they are much smarter at what we
| teach, if we're not teaching the skills that are needed
| (which may not be definitively known yet), we would still
| fail.
|
| It seems entirely possible to me that humanity is a dead
| species walking, but we are simply not able to properly and
| broadly conceptualize that to the degree necessary to wake up
| and change course.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Orbits aren't stable.
|
| If they were, worrying about "kessler syndrome" and "we cant
| pollute space!" would make more sense. But they're not. Stuff put
| in orbit _will_ fall (or possible escape), and its a real job to
| find an orbit where that doesn 't happen _quickly_.
|
| Just like "COVID isn't smallpox".
| bayesianbot wrote:
| Sure, but when two objects collide and transform into 1000
| objects, a lot more than two of them will find semi-stable
| orbits. And by semi-stable I mean it doesn't have to be stable
| as like with satellite, it just have to stay up there for years
| to be a problem.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You'd have to have a lot of energy to knock something from
| VLEO to GEO.
|
| I don't see it being a possibility, but I could be wrong,
| maybe someone smarter than me can do the math...
|
| Space is vast, if you have debris with a lifespan of 5 years,
| you won't accumulate enough for it to be unavoidable, and the
| issue will literally solve itself.
| deites wrote:
| Nice post!
| mike_hock wrote:
| Maybe this is the solution to the Fermi paradox: Advanced
| civilizations tend to create runaway space debris collisions,
| preventing them from leaving their home planets.
| hosteur wrote:
| This is known as the Kessler syndrome. And it is not a good
| solution to the Fermi paradox by itself. Because it would only
| require a very small fraction of civilizations to avoid it to
| spread.
| [deleted]
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Also, Kessler syndrome doesn't keep you from leaving the
| planet, just from having satellites. When passing through a
| debris shell, as opposed to staying in it for years, the
| collision risk is very small.
| labster wrote:
| How deep are those debris shells anyway? If we had a
| collision cascade in LEO, would geosynchronous orbits be
| generally safe? They're pretty far apart, but I don't know
| for sure.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| I have no intuition for this, as it is not modeled in KSP
| :)
|
| I'm trying to imagine a collision cascade that would
| generate debris with a significantly higher apoapsis than
| the original satellites... perhaps a head-on collision
| between prograde and retrograde orbits that ends up
| "squirting" some debris at extreme velocity in the
| normal/antinormal direction? Alternately, an object on a
| highly elliptical orbit (probably already space junk)
| near its periapsis with max kinetic energy hitting a
| satellite prograde?
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Fermi tangent: I wonder if the Fermi paradox is a bit of a
| fallacy of reverse casualty in a similar vain to asking - how
| come we end up in the Goldilocks zone around a star? Because
| sentient life is not likely to appear in other conditions.
|
| Why are there no aliens making contact? Because if there were
| such aliens it would be a high probability that they wouldn't
| want to leave earth alone and then humanity wouldn't have a
| chance to evolve here.
|
| In other words, any surrounding aliens or non-aliens that
| have left earth alone for enough time for humans to have
| evolved are unlikely to suddenly want to make contact at any
| certain point of our development.
| bluGill wrote:
| The speed of light alone is enough to explain it. Aliens
| cannot get here, and so they don't know we exist. Even if
| you believe there is life elsewhere, odds are it is far
| enough away that they cannot detect us (not to mention
| radio hasn't make it 150 light year yet - which is a much
| smaller amount of stars).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The universe is 14 billions years old. That plenty of
| time for a civilization to spread around all the galaxy,
| at least.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| To be fair only some of that time is usable as you have
| to wait for the many conditions of life to happen. That's
| a lot of coincidences to wait for, then the long
| evolution process...
| [deleted]
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I doubt the Great Filter manifests the same way in every case.
|
| We are going to be stuck here for a long time because of
| climate change, but the quantity of stored carbon from early
| plants here is probably not common. Other earthlike
| civilizations might have to switch to solar/wind/wave
| electrical generation sooner, or they could just listen to
| their scientists and drown their plutocrats.
|
| We could also nuke ourselves.
|
| Kessler syndrome is hardly our biggest problem.
|
| Life always finds a way ... to take itself out.
| orwin wrote:
| > might have to switch to solar/wind/wave
|
| You mean our main power generation tools until the 1900s?
| guerrilla wrote:
| No, solar wasn't one and the other's have radically
| increased in efficiency and decreased in price.
| Filligree wrote:
| And it wasn't enough power.
|
| Economic development is largely built on increasing
| accessible power. We have alternatives to coal and oil
| _now_ , but back in the 1900s we didn't.
|
| Those are both made from dead trees, which for millions of
| years simply didn't rot; this simultaneously cooled the
| planet down, dramatically weakening hurricane patterns for
| all time until... now, while also storing millions of
| years' worth of solar power for our use. A lot of otherwise
| habitable planets very likely didn't go through that phase.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| > from early plants here is probably not common
|
| Why not? Seems like this is exactly what would regularly
| happen to plant-like life.
| minikites wrote:
| We already can't work together to avoid catastrophic Earth
| problems like climate change, why would we start cooperating in
| space?
| stOneskull wrote:
| planes fly around without crashing into each other. the
| agencies involved work together there.
| [deleted]
| StreamBright wrote:
| It is kind of funny how humans cannot exist without putting
| garbage all around the places they visit.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Could we have most things in space orbiting in the same
| direction? That would massively reduce the risk of collisions as
| their relative speeds would be lower, including any fragments
| resulting from a crash.
| Symmetry wrote:
| That's what we do for geosynchronous orbit, for example. But if
| you want a satellite to fly over the entire surface of the
| Earth to take pictures it'll have to be in a polar orbit and
| those all cross at the poles where the last major collision
| was.
| marcofiset wrote:
| How would you cover the whole planet if things can only go in a
| single direction? Things orbiting around a sphere must cross
| paths at some point in order to get global coverage.
| mLuby wrote:
| In general we do, because launching from west to east at the
| equator lets you use the Earth's rotation for a 465m/s speed
| boost. Launching the other direction means you need an _extra_
| 465m /s just to counteract the rotation you started out with.
| Polar orbits don't gain or lose much from the rotation since
| they're aimed over the planet's poles.
| [deleted]
| dormento wrote:
| My layman's understanding makes me wonder if we could solve this
| situation with a big-ass magnet in orbit, to slowly eat the
| debris.
|
| OF course there would be complications from the simple fact that
| it would need to be very big, incredibly durable (as to not
| generate more debris itself), hard to launch (probably too heavy)
| and taken into account in all the calculations going forward.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not that simple. Space is big. You just
| won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I
| mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the
| chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. And the valuable
| space in orbit is no exception. Take the entire surface area of
| the Earth, and then extrude it up into a volume roughly 800km
| high. That's the volume you need to clear (and that's just Low
| Earth Orbit). There is no magnet powerful enough to make even a
| dent.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| What if it was a billion smaller magnets? Over time they
| would clump up with other debris and other clumps, and the
| mass would make the orbits decay faster. This is my very
| uninformed idea, maybe magnets just have such short range
| that it's not feasible at all
| SonicScrub wrote:
| If you put a billion magnets in space haven't you just
| increased the space-junk problem by multiple orders of
| magnitude?
|
| Also, heavier objects decay slower than light ones.
| Atmospheric drag is the driver of orbital decay. If you
| increase an object's mass, you lower the de-acceleration
| provided by atmospheric drag. Drag force scales with
| surface area, which increases as the square of size,
| whereas mass increases with the cube. Therefore, increase
| the size, and mass increases at a faster rate than drag
| force. Therefore in general larger objects decay slower
| than small ones
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. This is one of those issues where in most folks heads
| near by space/orbit is small in comparison to the vastness of
| space and the universe. Which it is. However its still
| incredibly massive and difficult to comprehend just how big
| it is.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I wholly agree with the spirit of your post, but I thought
| LEO is not that problematic because there is still
| atmospheric drag there that will bring down rubbish in the
| matter of years.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Well the clean-up problem get's even more complicated with
| MEO and beyond as the amount of space becomes even larger.
| As for space-junk not being a problem in LEO, you are
| correct that space junk in LEO will de-orbit in a somewhat
| reasonable time-frame (on the order of a few years), but
| that's still problematic. It would still cause the
| destruction of 100s of billions of dollars worth of
| equipment, the ceasing of any operations dependent on LEO
| satellite equipment, and either increasing the risk or out-
| right blocking launches through LEO for a number of years.
| The fact that this would be temporary does not mean it
| isn't very bad.
| thangalin wrote:
| Stars in the Milky Way form a pancake-like disc 120,000 light-
| years across. In ~80 years our fastest space ships will hurl
| along around 900,000 kilometres per hour, assuming they can leave
| orbit. ;-)
|
| That makes 144 million years to travel across the galaxy. Now
| space-faring peoples probably won't have evolved near the disc's
| edge. So let's say it takes about 100 million years to fan out
| and colonize most of the galaxy's habitable planets.
|
| Our one data point on technologically advanced life indicates 4.5
| billion years for it to find a foothold after the dawn of a new
| solar system. Depending on the values you put into an E.T.
| calculator[1], there are between 4 and ~200 advanced alien
| civilizations loitering about. We know of many Sun-like stars
| that are ten billion years old in the Milky Way, twice as ancient
| as our star.
|
| One hundred million years barely registers on either a 5.5 or a
| 10 billion year scale. That scale affords aliens an enormous
| amount of time to have sown their seeds. Hence Fermi's Paradox
| and hence why a Kessler Cascade setback would be a footnote's
| footnote on these timescales. In short, a Kessler Cascade is
| important to avoid, but doesn't resolve Fermi's Paradox (it isn't
| a Great Filter).
|
| [1]: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/alien-civilization
|
| P.S.
|
| I describe a novel solution for Fermi's Paradox in my hard sci-fi
| book. Am looking for beta readers; see my profile for contact
| details.
| mikemoka wrote:
| an interesting take:
|
| https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/05/26/solving-space-junk...
| cynusx wrote:
| That would work and incentivize effective removal of space
| debris too.
|
| It may even be implemented by consensus as it would generate
| revenue for the taxman.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| In the US the first thing we need to figure out is whether the
| democrats or the republicans are to blame. Then we can decide if
| we are pro or against space collisions.
| pc86 wrote:
| The only thing lazier than people trying to hamfist partisan
| politics into unrelated discussions is people complaining about
| it before it even happens.
| etothepii wrote:
| Since space debris doesn't factor into the Insurance Underwriting
| pricing decisions at all of the space underwriters that I know it
| seems hard to believe this is a real problem.
| nabla9 wrote:
| _An actuarial modifier for underwriting OOS satellite
| insurance: Space debris mitigation_ , January 2021, The Journal
| of Space Operations & Communicator 18(01)
|
| >Insurers are already pulling out of the market for LEO due to
| the risks of collision and space debris. General market
| consensus indicates current premium volume about half of what
| it should be.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348151316_An_actuar...
| peanut_worm wrote:
| I feel as though there are more clickbait headlines than usual on
| HN lately
| jnxx wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > "Collisions are proportional to the square of the number of
| things in orbit," McDowell told Space.com. "That is to say, if
| you have 10 times as many satellites, you're going to get 100
| times as many collisions.
|
| Unfortunately, any collision also increases the number of things
| in orbit, by breaking up spacecraft. The collision between
| Kosmos-2251 and Iridium 33 generated 1,300 pieces of debris in
| orbit. The collision between Object 48078 from Russia's Zenit-2
| rocket and China's Yunhai 1-02 generated 37 known debris objects,
| and likely a lot more smaller untracked objects.
|
| This is likely to lead to Kessler Syndrome, a chain reaction of
| collisions once the density of debris fragments above a certain
| weight passes a critical density:
|
| http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/kessler/Critical%20Density%201...
|
| Unless satellites are brought back to Earth, the likely path of
| development is that Earth will get a layer of satellite debris
| which makes a a good part of satellite technology basically
| infeasible (and any spaceflight much more dangerous).
| PeterisP wrote:
| All the low earth orbits decay due to low but meaningful
| resistance from the thin atmosphere; satellites like the SpaceX
| Starlink essentially are continuously "brough back to Earth"
| unless they periodically boost themselves up to maintain orbit
| height.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| How quickly though? Given the size of the constellations that
| are currently being launched, could all of LEO become an all-
| destroying debris cloud, forcing us out of LEO for a year or
| so until it has decayed?
|
| Possibly not a disaster now, but once people start relying on
| Starlink & co, it could be.
| lutorm wrote:
| The orbital decay time depends on the ballistic coefficient
| of the body. This scales as mass/area, so is lower for
| small objects, meaning they decay faster.
|
| If the decay time for a Starlink satellite is a couple
| years, fragments from a collision will deorbit much faster.
| didericis wrote:
| If things got that bad I think there'd be increased incentive
| to invent something to clean it up. It's a very hard problem,
| but it doesn't seem impossible to deal with, I think it just
| requires fairly extreme intervention.
|
| I think most orbits naturally decay, too, so there'd be a time
| limit even if we couldn't clean things up.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It sounds like you're shrugging off the problem, ignoring the
| advice of experts who are suggesting we need to make changes
| now and deciding instead that you'll ask those same experts
| to fix the problem later when their predictions come true;
| allowing intuition, incentives to continue current behavior,
| and resistance to change to determine your course of action.
|
| But intuitions fail when it comes to how mind-bogglingly big
| and fast space is. The volume you might need to sift through
| has an area equal to the surface of the entire planet and a
| height of thousands of kilometers. The objects you're trying
| to grab are moving at >20,000 km/hr. Low orbits do decay
| naturally in a few decades, yes, but MEO and GEO orbits can
| take thousands to millions of years to decay.
|
| It's like being a war zone where bullets that are fired
| continue ricocheting through the air for decades, and these
| objects are moving ten times faster than a typical bullet
| (and may weigh hundreds of kg). We're laying a minefield and
| not even keeping track of where the mines are laid. The least
| we can do is to keep track of and share the satellite orbits.
| didericis wrote:
| I'm not shrugging off the problem, and people should be
| extremely wary to the point where I think it makes sense to
| portray the situation as if we would be locked to earth
| forever if it got out of hand so cleanup is never
| necessary.
|
| However I think people underestimate ingenuity and the
| ability to solve the cleanup problem if we really have to.
| I don't know how much effort has really be invested in
| hitting that cleanup problem as hard as possible, as most
| discussion about it currently is theoretical, and there
| isn't a lot of financial benefit to researching it.
|
| If it starts preventing launches, then the incentives to
| hit the problem harder increase.
|
| It'd obviously be better not to be forced into figuring out
| whether that problem is solvable, my point is it's not set
| in stone that it's an unsolvable problem, and the
| incentives are currently such that I don't think we can
| consider possible solutions adequately explored.
| didericis wrote:
| I think we're also currently tracking most existing debris
| fairly comprehensively/that seems to be the part of the
| problem currently receiving the most attention, and
| rightfully so. As of right now tracking debris and trying
| not to create more of it seems like the best way forward
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| The probability of a collision in meo, heo, or geo are also
| much lower than leo, though, because the volume of these
| spaces are much, much larger. Low Earth orbits end around
| 2000km up. Meanwhile geo orbits are around 35000km. That
| means that a sphere drawn at geo altitude has a surface
| area around 300x as large, and the volume of a 2km space
| above and below these altitudes is 5000x as large.
|
| Not that it isn't something we should be concerned about,
| but especially the higher up you go the more that concern
| should be tempered by the sheer remoteness of the odds of a
| collision.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > That means that a sphere drawn at geo altitude has a
| surface area around 300x as large, and the volume of a
| 2km space above and below these altitudes is 5000x as
| large
|
| The size of a sphere at geostationary orbit altitude is
| essentially irrelevant, because the only reason you go to
| geostationary orbit is to be geostationary, i.e. in a
| narrow band at the equator. The other 99.9% of your
| sphere is completely unused.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I suppose, but in that case relative velocities between
| orbiters should be quite low as well.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _Low orbits do decay naturally in a few decades, yes, but
| MEO and GEO orbits can take thousands to millions of years
| to decay._
|
| Tens of years? Try tens of months. The ISS has a minimum
| mean altitute of 370 km, a max of 460 km, and within those
| parameters loses about 2 km per month. But the lower it
| gets, the faster it falls. When it's on the lower end of
| it's range, it falls about 3 km per month and that would
| accelerate rapidly if allowed to go lower. As it is, the
| ISS is boosted several times a year; five times this year
| so far: https://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx They
| can go as long as a few months without boosts, but not much
| longer than that. Not tens of years.
|
| The ISS is big and draggy, but the situation isn't much
| different for smaller satellites in similar orbits. Two
| test satellites for Starlink, Tintin A and B, were launched
| to about 500km in 2018. Both have subsequently burned up in
| the atmosphere after less than three years:
| https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=43216
|
| > _It sounds like you 're [...] ignoring the advice of
| experts_
|
| Heh, forgive me for this but it seems like you have some
| half-baked ideas about Kessler syndrome you gleaned from
| popsci media. The reality is not so simple, nor as extreme,
| as you've made it out to be. Your estimates for LEO are
| about an order of magnitude off.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| I wonder if there isn't already a team at SpaceX or something
| working on a few moonshot solutions.
| bell-cot wrote:
| SpaceX probably has several rough-draft plans for mopping
| up dangerous orbiting debris sitting in a filing cabinet
| somewhere.
|
| BUT - So long as SpaceX avoids being seen as "at fault",
| any Kessler sh*t-storms that occur are likely to prove huge
| opportunities for SpaceX, and huge problems for all of
| their competitors. Most debris-storm clean-up ideas require
| plenty of launches, to get the Wonder Widgets and Space
| Squeegees into orbit. Likewise the replacements for all the
| smashed satellites. Which replacements may be substantially
| heavier, due to beefed-up propulsion systems for debris
| dodging, armor protection around their vitals, etc.
|
| And guess what company is the world's miles-ahead provider
| of low-cost orbital launch services, with an easy path to
| oh-so-profitable scaling up?
| testplzignore wrote:
| This would be a great plot for a Bond film. I think
| Daniel Radcliffe would make for an interesting casting
| choice for Musk.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Um... Who would be the villain? What's his evil plan? My
| comment was analogous to "If COVID gets really bad, then
| Elan's Eatery has more outdoor seating and a better
| location for curb-side pickup than any other restaurant
| in town."
|
| (Yes, I know that "Moonraker" was an extremely profitable
| Bond film. No matter how idiotic the [cough][gag]science
| in it was, Hugo Drax _was_ trying to wipe out most of
| humanity.)
| datameta wrote:
| It's an appealing narrative but Kessler Syndrome is
| something that would stand in the way of Musk's primary
| mission of getting us set up on Mars. So even if one
| holds the belief that he is highly profit motivated
| beyond the scope of funding his main project, it should
| be evident that this would divert much needed resources
| and time that put a hamper on the Mars timeline.
|
| I highly recommend the Starbase tour with Everyday
| Astronaut, especially Part 3 [0], for perhaps the best
| existing look into his thought process and development
| philosophy. Throughout the tour he comes across as
| humble, ready to incorporate ideas and truly entertain
| questions from a studied layman. What also really speaks
| for him is how he is treated by his employees, how he
| treats them, and how involved he is with the ground level
| of the operation. It is evident to what deep level of
| urgency and importance he approaches the undertaking that
| SpaceX is and so I do not believe they would seek to
| profit from controlling Kessler Syndrome.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/9Zlnbs-NBUI
| diego_moita wrote:
| > The world must cooperate
|
| The world can't cooperate to block spread of covid, to end
| hunger, to avoid global warming, to end traffic of sex slaves, to
| curb nuclear weapons, to end chemical weapons and land mines, ...
|
| Heck, even in some "civilized" countries people can't collaborate
| to achieve mass vaccination...
|
| Do you really have any hope we will collaborate on organizing
| space traffic?
| krisoft wrote:
| > Do you really have any hope we will collaborate on organizing
| space traffic?
|
| Yes. It's a much simpler problem with a lot fewer agents.
| Furthermore all agents share the same incentives. It is in
| every satellite operator's best interest to not pulverize their
| sat by an other one.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think the concern is that some of those satellite operators
| might be totally subject to the will of some dumbass dictator
| or politician.
|
| I think of that Romanian dictator (Ceausescu) who let his
| totally uneducated wife design the subway system in
| Bucharest. It was completely non-sensical, but the engineers
| had their hands tied (although they did secretly build
| stations in anticipation of common sense coming along at some
| point.)
| uCantCauseUCant wrote:
| The world can collaborate on not firing upon each other with
| nuclear weapons. Our "great" sociopathic leaders - worry
| greatly - at least for their own asses. Which means,
| collaboration is possible, its just not desired by all those
| deranged minds in power.
| perihelions wrote:
| It was reported this week that there was a catastrophic collision
| back in March,
|
| https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite...
| hoseja wrote:
| Space is very, very big.
|
| The smaller the space is (lower orbits), the faster any debris
| decays and burns up.
|
| Whipple shields are a thing.
|
| I really don't see much potential for a catastrophe.
| nix23 wrote:
| Then this will be of interest for you:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-19 23:01 UTC)