[HN Gopher] Steve Wozniak announces private space company to cle...
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Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space
debris in orbit
Author : notRobot
Score : 673 points
Date : 2021-09-14 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
| trymas wrote:
| I always had this question, though maybe there's a simple answer
| why nobody is doing this.
|
| Why it's not mandatory to have some smallish engine attached,
| which at the end of satellite's life would lower the orbit enough
| until atmosphere picks it up and it will slow down significantly
| on it's own and burn up?
|
| Is it because most satellites will not fully burn and actually
| hit the ground, i.e. it's liability?
|
| Is it because of too great of a risk of crossing and colliding
| with a satellite in another orbit, i.e. liability again?
|
| Is it because "attaching smallish engine" which will fire at
| satellite's end life is actually really hard thing to do?
|
| Something else?
| stemlord wrote:
| Well there are other reasons for debris besides just satellites
| going out of commission. For example in 2007 China deliberately
| blew up the Fenyun-1C satellite for some kind of research
| purpose accounting for probably thousands of current pieces of
| debris up there.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| "Research" - they were testing their orbital targeting
| capabilities.
| gowld wrote:
| They do.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit
| colechristensen wrote:
| It depends on the orbit.
|
| The satellites we put in orbit will naturally have orbits which
| will decay in a matter of days to hundreds of millions of
| years. End of life is indeed a consideration for launch
| approval and many satellites do accelerate their decay with
| onboard thrust.
|
| Some satellites can't, would require too much thrust to get
| back to earth. Some push in to higher orbits to get out of the
| way for replacement satellites.
|
| Some satellites break in orbit and can't be controlled.
| modeless wrote:
| The engine is not the problem. It's the fuel. Large orbit
| changes take a lot. Lowering orbit is not easier than raising
| orbit, it takes the same delta-v.
|
| IMO what should happen is we should ban putting satellites in
| high orbits. Satellites in low orbit decay naturally within a
| few years due to atmospheric drag. Satellites in high orbit
| will stay there essentially forever. More importantly, any
| collision in high orbit creates a permanent debris cloud which
| will spread over time and pollute orbit forever, being
| essentially impossible to clean up even with sci-fi technology.
| A collision in low orbit creates a similar debris cloud but it
| will be naturally cleaned up in a few years or less.
|
| Putting satellites in high orbits made sense back when it was
| incredibly expensive to launch each satellite, because
| satellites last longer in high orbit and you don't need as many
| to cover an area. Also, stationary satellite dishes only work
| with geostationary satellites, and geostationary orbit is a
| very high orbit. But today we can use phased arrays to
| communicate with moving satellites without physically moving a
| dish, and SpaceX is about to drop launch prices through the
| floor with Starship, making it feasible to launch enough
| satellites to cover the Earth even in low orbit and replace
| them frequently. So to me, the space debris pollution risk of
| high orbit satellites can no longer be justified.
| jimbob21 wrote:
| > Lowering orbit is not easier than raising orbit, it takes
| the same delta-v.
|
| Why is this? From a layman's perspective it seems like
| gravity would be a massive form of help here and therefore
| lowering orbit should require much less fuel.
| modeless wrote:
| Orbit is unintuitive. Objects in orbit are not just
| floating up there. They are constantly falling under the
| influence of gravity, just as objects here on Earth. The
| reason they don't hit the Earth when they fall is that they
| are traveling _sideways_ at 25,000+ km /h. This is so fast
| that they _miss_ hitting the Earth, and simply fall
| forever.
|
| When a rocket launches to orbit, it only goes up a little
| bit, just to get out of the atmosphere, and then spends
| most of its time/fuel on going sideways to reach orbital
| velocity. If you watch a rocket launch you can see that the
| rocket starts to tip over and go sideways soon after
| leaving the pad. This is also why launching from a plane
| doesn't help you very much, because going up is the easy
| part of getting to orbit. A plane can't help you with the
| hard part of getting to 25,000 km/h sideways.
|
| For an object in orbit to stop missing the Earth as it
| falls, it must slow down that sideways velocity, and
| gravity doesn't help with that.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The FCC _is_ working on making orbital cleanup mandatory:
| https://www.fcc.gov/document/mitigating-orbital-debris-new-s...
| mlindner wrote:
| Yes but the FCC is going the wrong direction with that.
| Firstly it treats constellations differently than individual
| satellites which makes no sense from a statistical and
| mathematical perspective and it would also completely kill
| off the smallest of satellites that students learn with that
| are primarily launched by universities.
| Tajnymag wrote:
| Yes, please
| LightG wrote:
| Woz ... always cleaning up after belligerent billionaires.
| andjd wrote:
| Does anyone else see Wozniak as the headliner and shrug? He has
| no track-record of successful companies since Apple. Why is this
| news and why did it hit the front page of HN?
| ctdonath wrote:
| Because Woz.
|
| Even naysayers took time to read &/| post.
| toast0 wrote:
| With all due respect to Woz, having him headline your company
| is an admission of a scam. He's let his name get attached to so
| much garbage.
| ilamont wrote:
| 2020: _Wozniak's latest venture is called Efforce and aims to
| use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to make it cheaper
| and easier for companies to fund 'green' projects._
|
| https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/apple-co-founde...
|
| 2017: _Steve "Woz" Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer and
| inventor of the Apple II computer, announced on Friday the
| launch of his latest startup, Woz U._
|
| https://www.inc.com/business-insider/steve-woz-wozniak-apple...
| zohch wrote:
| > Does anyone else see Wozniak as the headliner and shrug?
|
| I look at it and cringe. Would be much more credible without
| his name on it.
| newman8r wrote:
| I'd be interested in seeing a startup he's intimately involved
| with as a true cofounder. If he's just on board for name
| recognition/funding I'm less intrigued.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Every "space company" has to have a celebrity name attached to
| it, right? Even if they're not really a celebrity and no one
| remembers why they were famous.
|
| I'm cynical about the actual need for the proposed service, but
| I wouldn't begrudge Woz the opportunity to rent his name out
| for joy or cash.
| zohch wrote:
| > Every "space company" has to have a celebrity name attached
| to it, right?
|
| Do they? I only know of two with celebrity names attached,
| and at least four than do not.
| yunohn wrote:
| While I don't claim that Wozniak has any business running a
| space junk cleanup company - I am confused about your
| requirement that all founders must be serially successful ones
| for any of their ventures to matter.
| mlindner wrote:
| Someone who's serially unsuccessful is worse than someone who
| has no record.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Because it ends up as just noise. If there's no track record
| of execution, there's little hope if any that this will be
| fruitful in any capacity.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Does execution really matter? Elon Musk exists.
| mlindner wrote:
| ??? Execution on vision is the thing Elon Musk is most
| well known for, possibly more than anyone else in our
| current era.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I still admire the man for his accomplishments and the role he
| played in shaping the modern world of computing. But I also
| recognize that his current role is to provide brand recognition
| for longshot companies.
| eplanit wrote:
| I do. I respect the guy, but this seems like a "me too" (the
| traditional meaning, as in someone trying to assert "Hey, I'm a
| player, too"). It's a worthy cause, but I think his major
| contribution may be his celebrity cache.
|
| Musk has a name re: Space based on accomplishments, hands down.
| Branson's move extends the Virgin enterprises, and Bezos has a
| similar business plan and track record as Branson. But now
| comes Woz, older and much later to the game, and with no
| background of experience.
|
| His name, face, and personality will bring in investors,
| though, I'm sure.
| edm0nd wrote:
| His name will get headlines and PR no matter what he is doing.
| Just a fact in the tech biz for being who he is.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| This is a good visualizer that shows the growing problem:
|
| http://stuffin.space/
| skohan wrote:
| It seems like a nice idea, but doesn't cleaning the ocean seem a
| bit more pressing?
| ddxxdd wrote:
| If the mechanism doesn't involve powerful neodynium magnets, then
| they will end up creating even more space debris.
| amelius wrote:
| This might also be of military-strategic interest: if you can
| clean up debris, you can probably also clean up enemy spacecraft.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Wonder why he visited AMOS, and in what capacity? It's a cool
| place to visit, but unless Woz has the appropriate clearances,
| he's not likely to get much out of his visit.
| academia_hack wrote:
| He's building an ASAT weapon. The debris story is just PR spin.
| danpalmer wrote:
| "Private space company"
|
| I give it a year before a SPAC buys them for billions and makes
| them public. It's crazy how much demand there is for space
| companies at the moment.
| silent_cal wrote:
| This space stuff is such a waste. There is enough garbage on the
| surface of the earth to worry about. Just nerd grifting IMO.
| [deleted]
| ctdonath wrote:
| The space stuff moves a lot of terrestrial stuff off-planet.
| Telecommunications has physical impact, much of it still wired
| and strung/buried across very long distances, or otherwise
| occupying space for lots of grounded towers. Sending that
| garbage (rhetorical or literal future) up solves your "worry
| about" for that industry. Yeah it matters.
| ud_0 wrote:
| _> There is enough garbage on the surface of the earth to worry
| about._
|
| Every single time there is anything happening with space
| flight, there is at least one comment saying "We should
| literally solve every single problem here on Earth first before
| even thinking about anything related to space". This seems like
| a pretty shallow code for _space flight should not happen,
| ever_.
|
| I've been wondering about the people who make these comments
| for a while, and your seems to follow a similar blueprint. I
| have some questions, maybe you can answer them.
|
| What motivates this? Are you worried about Earth getting
| deprioritized? Is the perception that we must decide between
| tackling social problems/climate change and gratuitous space
| adventures? Are these comments a way of saying that humans
| should never venture beyond Earth or that we're just not ready
| yet? Even if you believe actual humans should never go to
| space, do you still believe we should have infrastructure there
| to support Earth?
| silent_cal wrote:
| I didn't mean to make it code - space flight is a complete
| waste of money. As far as I'm concerned we've already proved
| our point with regard to space travel, and can now afford to
| spend those bajillions of dollars on planet earth instead of
| satisfying the curiosity of nerds.
| leetcrew wrote:
| space flight by humans may be pointless for the foreseeable
| future, but satellites are anything but. gps and satellite
| imagery have immediate practical utility, just to give two
| examples.
| ud_0 wrote:
| But this specific endeavor is about protecting our orbital
| infrastructure, it has nothing to do with curiosity. We
| depend on satellites. Yes, the byproduct will be that
| orbital cleanup also protects science equipment and access
| to space in general, but that's not the main purpose.
|
| What do you think falls under "the curiosity of nerds"?
| Isn't that all of science? Or just cosmology? Or space-
| based platforms?
| silent_cal wrote:
| I don't think there's anything wrong with curious
| nerds... you make a good point that a large portion of
| scientists are just that. But the authentic ones are
| willing to do it for free. It's the ones who are always
| whining about how they need constant boatloads of public
| funding (which is supposed to be spent on public
| services), while pretending to have a pure and noble
| interest in humanity, who are insufferable.
| ud_0 wrote:
| _> But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free._
|
| The only scientists who can afford to work for free would
| have to be independently wealthy, that's not very common.
| I don't think there is anything wrong with charging money
| for work, even if you do enjoy that work. Like any kind
| of work, research science has its share of 9-to-5ers who
| don't really care, but those people have their uses, too.
|
| _> It 's the ones who are always whining about how they
| need constant boatloads of public funding (which is
| supposed to be spent on public services)_
|
| The core problem is really that often public money spent
| on science leads to results that are privately monetized
| and closed off from the public who funded it. That's why
| I believe SciHub is such an important institution,
| because it makes research results accessible to the
| public who funded them in the first place. However,
| funding for space-based data gathering (such as
| telescopes) has generally led to publicly-available data
| - the same cannot be said for, say, biomedical research.
|
| I would argue that research is a public service, as long
| as it doesn't get immediately spun off into patent-
| encumbered "university-adjacent" enterprise (which I
| would argue is nothing less than legalized corruption).
| Of course the issue becomes: how do you prioritize
| science funding and how do you balance it against other
| public services?
| silent_cal wrote:
| I agree with pretty much everything you say. I just think
| that space travel's place in the prioritization of
| science funding is way too high. They are "eating for
| free" on the glory days of NASA.
| Razengan wrote:
| "Only do shit that immediately improves my own life."
| decremental wrote:
| The issue with space debris is that on our current trajectory,
| at some point in the future, there will be so much debris
| traveling so fast that future space exploration will be
| impossible because we'll never get anything off the planet. Not
| to mention we won't be able to have satellites. Possibly a nerd
| grift but the issue is important.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Then we should stop shooting junk into outer space. I don't
| see why this is so complicated.
| HyperLinear wrote:
| Its called the Kessler syndrome. Small fast moving debris
| crashing into larger fast moving debris destroying it
| creating even more smaller fast moving debris that keeps
| crashing into more debris etc etc etc.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > The issue with space debris is that on our current
| trajectory, at some point in the future, there will be so
| much debris traveling so fast that future space exploration
| will be impossible
|
| The issue is keeping things in orbit not space exploration.
| Realistically going through is never going to be a problem.
| The worst that might happen is that you need some monitoring
| and manoeuverability on-board of your spacecraft but it's not
| insurmountable. Even near Earth, space is that big.
|
| Staying there with a lot of debris flying around really fast
| that could become impossible.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The problem is the statistics.
|
| _Your_ launch will be very unlikely to be hit by debris,
| but _one of_ the 86400 manned spaceflights per day will be
| hit. And now you've lost not only the 200 souls onboard but
| also a portion of the city that the suborbital spacecraft
| was on a trajectory towards as the punctured hull falls
| short of the landing pad.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| If we were able to economically produce and sustain 86400
| manned spaceflights per day cleaning space junk wouldn't
| be an issue.
|
| The problem is the viability of technology we actually
| rely on nowadays: global positioning, weather prediction,
| surveillance and satellite communication. Space
| exploration is pretty low on the list of reasons people
| should worry about debris in orbit.
| croon wrote:
| Space debris is exponential. It only takes one piece getting a
| good hit on a satellite to create thousands more.
| h2odragon wrote:
| > one piece getting a good hit on a satellite to create
| thousands more.
|
| ... and then what happens? Most of those pieces retain their
| location and momentum. "Blowing up a satellite" converts it
| into a cloud of smaller particles in the same orbit, possibly
| with some random spray, but this is not quite like billiard
| balls without friction.
| myself248 wrote:
| I don't think that's true.
|
| Initially the particles are in roughly similar orbits to
| the two bodies that initially collided, but not precisely
| the same. Over time (exactly like billard balls without
| friction), those minor divergences mean they cover very
| wide areas.
|
| Look up the "Gabbard diagram", which is a great way of
| depicting the outcome of a collision. There's a spray of
| different orbits, with some properties that resemble the
| original objects, but diverging significantly from them.
|
| Edit: Here's an AMAZING 3d animated Gabbard diagram, that
| shows not only the altitude and period, but also the right
| ascension of each object. You can see the debris from the
| Fengyun booster sweeping around the whole planet, crossing
| the orbits of other objects:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePuvJDVNJd0
|
| Even if they did stay in the same orbit, a thousand objects
| in the same orbit presents a thousand times more collision
| risk than one object in orbit. But because the collision
| changes the momentum of all the objects involved, it's much
| worse than that -- the results end up all over, and some of
| them are too small to track but still large enough to do
| damage. Those are the ones you really have to worrry about.
| quintaindilemma wrote:
| Meanwhile, in possibly related news from Cupertino, a local
| station reports that a BFI garbage truck inexplicably fell from
| orbit and has struck Apple headquarters, demolishing the area out
| to a radius of a square mile.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Just read a manga with this topic. but who will pay for the
| removal? Governments? Not in the interest of private companies to
| clean up debris. I guess if they all pay, then it's a go.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| "Wheels of Zeus" ('WoZ') - I like it already
| vasco wrote:
| At some point I guess the world will have to regulate orbits
| similarly to how we regulate the electromagnetic spectrum
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction
|
| Once you're assigned an orbit space I would assume it'd be your
| duty to keep it "clean" and as such owners of orbits would need
| to either do their own cleanup or contract companies like this.
|
| That being said it feels like a company like this is 50 to 100
| years too early, but what do I know.
| whatshisface wrote:
| We do regulate orbits. Up until now there have been no cleaner
| companies so we'll see how that plays in to regulation. "Who
| will pay for it?" is indeed an interesting question.
|
| It is not too early because the mess produces more mess through
| collisions, meaning that the sooner you catch it the less
| expensive it is to fix. Waiting until the problem is directly
| painful is humanity's normal operating procedure, but it's also
| like waiting until your cancer is stage 4 before getting it
| looked at.
| SahAssar wrote:
| The big difference from EM is that if you turn of your
| transmitter the "junk" disappears while space junk can persist
| for a long time in any orbit that is not extremely close. It is
| also very unknown how much it will cost to clean up the junk
| and how spread out it will be (both because space-cleaning is
| new and that space accidents tend to spread out). It sounds
| great to have those requirements conceptually but it is also
| extremely hard to even start to think about what those
| requirements would be and how to enforce them globally.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| From a strict physics perspective, I tend to think you are
| right, but from a messy human perspective I think orbital
| cleanup companies stand to do a lot of good even if they never
| retrieve more than a token satellite or two.
|
| Being able to say "You just made a $200M mess," priced on the
| cost of cleanup, is a lot more powerful than just being able to
| say "You made a mess." A concrete price tag is a boon for
| regulation, for liability & enforcement, and even for space
| startups explaining to their investors why yes, they do have to
| include fuel budget for the viking funeral, and no, they can't
| just decide not to, because the alternative is a $200M cleanup
| fee.
| wongarsu wrote:
| https://archive.is/9YLSb
| sleepybrett wrote:
| https://myanimelist.net/anime/329/Planetes
| comeonseriously wrote:
| I am of mixed opinion on this. On the one hand, okay, there's a
| lot of debris that needs to be cleaned up. On the other, services
| like this can only encourage space companies to be sloppy.
| areoform wrote:
| A few weeks ago, on the launch of the amazing company Turion
| Space, I wrote this comment, which I believe still applies here,
|
| -
|
| Congratulations on the launch! I am excited for what you're
| building. I also love your website. :)
|
| This comment isn't meant to be negative. What you're doing is
| exciting and amazing. Nothing anyone says should detract from
| that. However, I have broader questions and (market) skepticism
| after being around people starting such companies.
|
| Most of the questions here are deal with the technical. But I
| think you folks will solve that and then some. For those who
| aren't as familiar with the field, autonomous rendezvous,
| docking, and servicing has been possible for 15+ years. DARPA's
| Orbital Express mission autonomously rendezvoused, docked, and
| replaced a target vehicle's flight computer in 2007,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Express .
|
| My questions mostly revolve around the business side, who is
| going to pay for it and why?
|
| Here is my current understanding of the issue:
|
| Orbital debris removal is a tragedy of the commons problem which
| makes who pays for it and why muddled in the best of
| circumstances. The market situation right now is not the best of
| circumstances. Currently, to the best of my knowledge, there is
| no single stakeholder who is impacted enough to unilaterally take
| action. It isn't a pain point - yet. Most of the valuable orbits,
| like the sunsynchronous orbits do not have enough debris to
| degrade service. The most valuable orbit - GEO - is managed
| actively to avoid service degradation through debris.
|
| The debris that does exist is mostly from the Chinese Anti-
| Satellite weapons test + the Cosmos + Iridium conjunction event.
| This debris is concentrated around the 750km to 850km,
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Distribution-of-cataloge...
| and these orbits aren't valuable enough for this to be a concern,
| as of now.
|
| There is some concern around the mega-constellations, but
| SpaceX's constellation will be at around the 550km mark. If the
| worst does happen, and we have a cascade, then all the debris
| will be deorbit itself in less than a decade. And it - most
| likely - won't significantly impact any other services except in
| a +-20km altitude of the cascade. Kuiper will be at 630km, so
| that is likely to take longer (the orbital lifetime for an object
| w.r.t. altitude is an exponential one), but it is manageable.
|
| OneWeb's constellation is more worrying at 1,2000km, but AFAICT,
| they won't send up enough assets for it to be a significant
| concern. Space is big after all.
|
| Furthermore, no country has - so far - ever, without express
| permission, rendezvoused, docked, and altered the orbit of an
| object by another country. Someone involved with UNOOSA put it to
| me this way, you can look all you want, but you can't touch. You
| can come close to another country's satellite, you two can peak
| at each other, take photos of one another, try and measure the
| other's payload etc. But you can't do a hard (or soft) capture of
| one another, because that is a declaration of war. IANAL, but
| short of getting a contract with the Chinese Govt. you can't
| actually address the largest source of space debris - it would be
| an act of war. For debris where the ownership is muddled or the
| organization is no longer extant, the "how much are people
| willing to pay for this" factor doesn't seem to eclipse the "will
| this cause diplomatic incident/spark a war" factor. It doesn't
| seem like a profitable beehive to poke.
|
| As far as I can see, there isn't a single stakeholder with an
| orbital debris hair on fire problem right now. All of my friends
| who have started a company around debris have ended up pivoting
| into the satellite servicing market, much in the same way as you
| indicate. However, even there there are concerns that make the
| problem domain difficult for a successful business to operate in.
|
| The hard capture business is the national security business. You
| can see that with Momentus. I am unaware of any other industry
| where such a thing happens, but the DoD explicitly had the
| company remove its Russian CEO and had him divest all of his
| assets before allowing the company to proceed with operations,
|
| > In-space transportation company Momentus says its Russian co-
| founders are now "completely divested" from the company as it
| reaches a national security agreement with federal agencies.
|
| > In March, Momentus announced that Kokorich and Brainyspace LLC,
| the company owned by Khasis and his wife, had put their shares
| into a voting trust and would divest them within three years. The
| move, the company said, was in response to correspondence from
| the Defense Department in January "stating Momentus posed a risk
| to national security as a result of the foreign ownership and
| control of Momentus by Mikhail Kokorich and Lev Khasis and their
| associated entities."
|
| https://spacenews.com/russian-co-founders-out-of-momentus/
|
| More privately, I have noticed that all of the startups that have
| made a viable autonomous rendezvous, docking, and servicing
| system seem to go dark. I'm guessing this usually coincides with
| substantial DoD interest and money. As they seem to be the
| largest (and perhaps only) customer right now.
|
| I would be surprised if Turion Space, as an American company,
| would be allowed to - legally or otherwise - to service Chinese
| assets. Based on personal experience, I just don't see that
| happening short of something extraordinary. Servicing European
| assets might also fall under some fairly onerous restrictions.
|
| Maybe companies launching smallsats and cubesats might hire you
| for extending the service lifetime of their missions, but if
| launch costs truly decrease, then it might be cheaper for them to
| send up a new mission with better tech than have you service it.
|
| Is my understanding of the market correct? If so, this brings me
| back to my original question, who is this for? And why will they
| buy it?
|
| I believe that you can succeed. But I don't know if the market
| exists yet for you to succeed.
|
| -
|
| Space Debris feels like the sitcom startup idea of the space age.
| It's a problem everyone outside of the space thinks exists, but
| most people in the space know that it doesn't yet exist. At least
| not in the way that it can be solved by a private entity - so
| far.
|
| I might be wrong and I would be extremely happy if it turns out
| that I am indeed wrong.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| All good points.
|
| _> The hard capture business is the national security
| business._
|
| This one is what makes it particularly messy. Everything in
| space is somehow related to defense and natsec, even if it
| doesn't seem so to an outsider. Even with hypothetical
| agreements in place, touching defunct space assets is just a
| huge can of worms, even with a laser beam. And anything that
| can capture a satellite is an outright military tech.
|
| Same goes for on-orbit refueling and servicing, although these
| are a bit easier since they typically deal with functioning
| satellites.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how they are planning to earn
| money. The only ones willing to expend resources on space cleanup
| right now seem to be ESA (the European Space Agency).
| loonster wrote:
| Maybe they will also become an insurance company to insure
| satellites from spatial debris.
| eatmyshorts wrote:
| I think that will change very quickly when we have a collision
| in space. I imagine SpaceX, for instance, would be pretty
| interested in cleaning up space junk if two of their LEO
| satellites collide.
| mlindner wrote:
| > would be pretty interested in cleaning up space junk if two
| of their LEO satellites collide.
|
| SpaceX satellites are passively de-conflicted. Which means
| that the orbits are planned such that the satellites never
| can be at the same place at the same point in time. But yes
| SpaceX does care a lot about debris in their orbital shell.
| myself248 wrote:
| the point of SpaceX putting things into LEO (which we should
| really call SLEO or something, because it's super-low) is
| that the orbits are self-clearing on a reasonable timescale,
| months or single-digit years.
|
| GEO is likewise not a problem because things out there are
| really far apart and they generally don't cross each other's
| orbits.
|
| MEO (where GNSS services live) is the real danger. Thankfully
| there aren't a ton of objects there, but deorbiting the dead
| ones should be a very high priority on anyone's list.
| eatmyshorts wrote:
| How much money would SpaceX lose per day in that event? I
| imagine the thread of a cascading set of collisions becomes
| more likely after the first one, also. I think SpaceX would
| be very interested in clearing debris as soon as possible
| in the event of a collision. Months or single-digit years
| likely would cost SpaceX many billions.
| JBorrow wrote:
| Pretty sure that SpaceX is enough of an environmental
| disaster already that they won't care.
| tomrod wrote:
| What do you mean?
| tecleandor wrote:
| Probably one of these themes:
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-risky-
| rush-fo...
|
| https://qz.com/1971751/a-flood-of-spacex-satellites-
| started-...
| mlindner wrote:
| If you don't know anything, don't open your mouth to make
| it clear to everyone.
| cobrabyte wrote:
| How so?
| academia_hack wrote:
| If they can make this tech viable, DOD will buy it as an ASAT
| weapons capability with essentially a blank check. Debris
| removal is a fantasy veneer slapped on to space weapons
| development for investors.
| ndr wrote:
| They might be betting on some upcoming regulation.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| They should lobby for a law requiring companies to deorbit
| satellites after EOL.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Requiring de-orbiting at EOL would destroy their business no?
| Also EOL de-orbiting works great for low-altitude orbits, but
| becomes exponentially more difficult with higher orbits. It
| is pretty much impossible with the very valuable
| geostationary orbital slots.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| How valuable are geostationary slots these days? LEO swarms
| have eaten some of the GEO lunch. What are the niches where
| LEO swarms aren't a workable replacement?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Communications over a specific geographic region and
| budget for only one bird and/or only one launch.
|
| That's pretty much most of the world's nations'
| telecommunication needs. SpaceX has put up at least half
| a dozen satellites for small nations meeting these very
| common requirements.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense: if sovereignty is a driving
| requirement you can't just piggyback on the big LEO swarm
| deployments, but a single geostationary satellite covers
| exactly the territory that you care about. Now I
| understand. Thanks.
| ttymck wrote:
| If you require the company to perform a service, one that
| they may not want to perform or be very good at, it's
| possible they will subcontract the work.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I am by no means a rocket scientist, but wouldn't a de-
| orbiting requirement be as simple as including a few small
| chemical thrusters with a dedicated fuel source reserved
| for de-orbiting?
|
| I have no idea how much force it takes to actually move a
| given amount of mass out of orbit, and I assume it is
| different depending on the height of that orbit. So maybe
| doing this would simply add too much weight in the form of
| fuel storage to be feasible. In my head though, orbits are
| fragile and it shouldn't take a lot to nudge something into
| a death spiral towards the atmosphere.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| This works great for a small-subset of the space-debris
| problem: satellites in low-earth orbit that have reached
| their end-of-life. For example, Starlink satellites
| maintain a small reserve propellant for their maneuvering
| thrusters to be executed at EOL. This activity will
| likely be mandated by regulatory bodies in the coming
| years (and definitely should be). However performing this
| task becomes much more difficult to do as orbits get
| higher. The higher the orbit, the more fuel is required
| to perform a de-orbit, and the more fuel is required to
| lift THAT fuel into the orbit in the first place.
| Propellant requirements scale exponentially with
| increased mass. Beyond a certain orbital altitude, it
| becomes prohibitively expensive.
|
| In addition, the bulk of the space-junk problem is not
| defunct satellites, but fragments from previous
| collisions, and stage-separations (screws, scraps, paint-
| chips, etc). Satellites (even defunct ones) are easily
| trackable, and have known trajectories. Random 10 cm
| pieces of metal are not.
|
| While mandating EOL maneuvers for low-earth satellites is
| definitely a solution to part of the problem, it is not
| the full solution.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Orbits are circles or ellipsoids, not spirals.
|
| It takes a ton (possibly literally) of propellant to
| change your orbit from a circle in GEO to an ellipse that
| intercepts the atmosphere. If you don't have enough,
| you've not put it in a deorbiting spiral, simply an oval
| that will stay up for about as long as the original
| satellite's circular orbit.
|
| Rocket scientists work in terms of 'delta V', meaning an
| amount of energy gives you a particular change in
| velocity. GEO to LEO takes on the order of 6 km/s
| (oversimplifying because orbital mechanics are
| complicated), meaning you need a rocket engine that's
| capable of accelerating your satellite from 0 to 13,400
| miles per hour.
|
| That's really expensive and difficult.
| mnd999 wrote:
| I'm guessing they be planning on offering their services to
| carry out said de-orbit.
|
| Lobbying for regulation mandating a service you provide is
| a pretty tried and tested business model. Every company IT
| audit I've ever had the pleasure of participating in works
| the same way.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| The most efficient way to de-orbit the satellite is to
| design it with de-orbit capability built in. Satellites
| already have maneuvering thrusters with propellant and/or
| "kicker" stages to maneuver them in their destination
| orbit. De-orbiting capability is just some extra delta-v
| onboard, and a de-orbit maneuver coded into the flight
| computer.
|
| "Space-tug" like services from a third-party would be
| vastly more expensive. The only use case would to de-
| orbit a satellite that for some reason failed to de-orbit
| itself.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > De-orbiting capability is just some extra delta-v
| onboard, and a de-orbit maneuver coded into the flight
| computer.
|
| It's not "just" some delta-v, it's the same amount of
| delta-v as the original perigee kick. Most satellites get
| their perigee kick from a booster stage from their launch
| vehicle that separates from the satellite and de-orbits.
|
| Every gram of mass of fuel and engine on a satellite is a
| gram less of payload.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Yes, and it is still vastly more efficient to bring that
| delta-v with you than to use an entire other vehicle to
| come up to you provided by a third-party to de-orbit for
| you. Which is the case I was comparing and contrasting
| with in response to the parent comment. Evidently this is
| the case knowing that de-orbiting capabilities are built-
| in to many low-earth orbit satellites, although it (and
| any de-orbiting method) is prohibitively expensive for
| higher orbits
| C19is20 wrote:
| Under what/ which/ whos jurisdiction?
| inasio wrote:
| Reminds me Planetes [0], one of my favourite animes. Hard sci-fi
| (near future) about a crew working on a satellite debris cleaning
| business. Great show!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
|
| edit: quxbar beat me to it, glad I'm not the only one... The part
| where they stop by the Moon colony and have fun just bouncing
| around is pretty great.
| [deleted]
| ape4 wrote:
| Woz being the good guy again
| Roritharr wrote:
| I wish sometimes I were young enough and less financially
| constrained enough to allow myself to work for such a company.
| The thrill of working on something like this with people like
| this must be immense.
| qutreM wrote:
| I wonder how much those space debris are worth from a recycling
| standpoint.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Maybe he is just trolling the "private space flight pioneers"
| juanani wrote:
| Well thank the heavens that some billionaire found a way to grow
| their pockets by cleaning up the other billionairs' trash. What
| could we have ever done without them?
| born-jre wrote:
| first clean up the plastic in sea :D
| quxbar wrote:
| Great hard sci-fi manga series using this concept:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
| slothtrop wrote:
| I remember this, pretty well done
| jedgardyson wrote:
| As a note, the manga is a lot less "hard" but no less enjoyable
| than the anime. For the anime they had a bunch of space folks
| consult to fix things up so if the space faring details bother
| you watch that.
| mlindner wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? The manga I remember being
| quite accurate (though it's been a decade at least since I
| last read it). The anime diverges drastically story wise from
| the manga (the main characters are even different).
| theshrike79 wrote:
| There was a hard-scifi manga/anime about this almost 20 years
| ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
|
| "The story of Planetes follows the crew of the DS-12 "Toy Box" of
| the Space Debris Section, a unit of Technora Corporation. Debris
| Section's purpose is to prevent the damage or destruction of
| satellites, space stations and spacecraft from collision with
| debris (so-called "space debris") in Earth's and the Moon's
| orbits. They use a number of methods to dispose of the debris
| (mainly by burning it via atmospheric reentry or through
| salvage), accomplished through the use of EVA suits."
|
| Basically space garbage men =)
| crabmusket wrote:
| This series was great. Had me from the opening with the shuttle
| and screw.
| [deleted]
| shantara wrote:
| What is their business model? This is far from first space debris
| cleanup company, but regardless of their technical capabilities,
| all of them are useless until the regulations introduce a
| requirement for the launch providers and satellite owners to
| clean their mess.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Lobby for pigouvian taxes on the creators of space junk and
| contract to fix the problem, getting paid out of that fund?
| klausjensen wrote:
| I googled it so you do not have to...:
|
| "A Pigovian (Pigouvian) tax is a tax assessed against private
| individuals or businesses for engaging in activities that
| create adverse side effects for society."
| ggggtez wrote:
| Presumably, government contracting.
|
| Your satellite crashes? Pay us to clean it up.
| panzagl wrote:
| Given that the largest source of man-made debris is Chinese,
| I don't see that happening.
| shantara wrote:
| Why would I pay a cleaning company instead of spending a lot
| less money on moving the satellite into a graveyard orbit
| before it runs out of propellant?
| libertine wrote:
| Because accidents will start to become more common, and the
| more stuff we keep putting up there, more often they will
| occur.
| piker wrote:
| or don't, and leave it there?
| mirekrusin wrote:
| You'll be sued for domino effect that crashed everything?
|
| But seriously, I have no idea how cleaning operations will
| look like. There are tens of thousands small piecies flying
| around at high speed. Every time I think about it my brain
| gives back cartoon scenes only as solution to cleanups.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Has anyone quantified how serious, if serious this issue is?
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I'm very skeptical of the technical challenges associated with
| this problem (business model and financing aside). The amount of
| delta-v required to perform maneuvers to repeatedly "dock" with
| different pieces of space junk, and then again to de-orbit is
| very high. You MIGHT be able to de-orbit on the order of
| magnitude of ~10 pieces of low-earth orbit debris per mission.
| Maybe. If you're really good. And low-earth orbit junk isn't the
| major issue since it will de-orbit naturally in a reasonable
| time-frame. Higher orbit junk is what really matters, and will
| require much more delta-v to reach, and then again to de-orbit
| after "docking".
|
| Allow me to blindly speculate here: a space-junk company is going
| to take one of the two following paths:
|
| 1) Perform low-earth orbit missions to de-orbit a few pieces here
| and then there, use the good PR to drive funding (let's just
| assume they can make the finances work via getting governments to
| pay for it or something). It will technically work, but it will
| only deorbit pieces that would naturally decay anyways at a
| meaninglessly low-volume. But the PR will be good and regulatory
| capture will ensure their investors get paid. The real problem
| will remain.
|
| 2) Go after the really big pieces in higher orbits. These pieces
| tend to be well-tracked and aren't really a large problem, but
| all the same outcomes in option 1 will occur. Investors will get
| paid, and of course, the real problem won't be solved.
|
| Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I see space-junk removal
| companies largely relying on the general public's lack of
| knowledge on how orbits work to drive PR. Maybe Kerbal Space
| Program 2 will go viral enough to fix that problem? We can only
| hope
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Maybe instead of de-orbiting debris they could collect it into
| a small number of well-known locations. Instead of 10k pieces
| of space junk to avoid in a particular orbit you could just
| have one or two. Might have less demanding delta-v requirements
| that way.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Maybe we can get the gov to use the reverse engineered alien
| antigrav tech we've had for decades to good use as a win for
| America and the world?
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Highly plausible analysis. Hopefully Woz is above the PR stunts
| and has a real plan for addressing the future problem (it's not
| really a problem yet, but it will be).
| microtherion wrote:
| Woz the last 40 years has launched one PR stunt after the
| other (although, to be fair, I believe he has also done a
| fair amount of good things quietly in the background in the
| same time).
| Beached wrote:
| not likely that they will have one craft that is used to
| deorbit multiple items. more likely there will be one craft
| with 100 micro/cub satellites in orbit. once junk identified,
| mother craft ejects micro sat, micro sat performs one single
| burn to rendevu with junk over a very long period of time.
| passively connects to it somehow, like magnets or or something,
| then once connected, then does a single. deorbit burn to change
| the trajectory of the junk to deorbit significantly faster than
| normal. sacrifice itself with the deorbit
| shantara wrote:
| The most realistic solution for space junk deorbiting I've seen
| is the recently tested electromagnetic tether ("Terminator
| tape"). It is a passive solution that does not require an
| external spacecraft, and could be activated by a satellite
| operator when a satellite reaches the end of its lifespan.
| Perhaps, such system should be made mandatory, maybe even going
| as far as adding a dead man switch for its automatic activation
| in case the satellite becomes uncontrollable and stops
| responding to the commands from the Earth.
|
| But even with this solution removing high orbit debris still
| remains a hard problem.
|
| https://www.tethers.com/deorbit-systems/
|
| https://spacenews.com/tethers-unlimited-terminator-tape-smal...
| bagels wrote:
| There are on the order of... 10s of thousands of intentional
| satellites.
|
| There are millions of pieces of debris.
|
| It's useful for preventing future debris from dead satellites
| perhaps, but doesn't address the large number of existing
| objects which are currently the problem.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| This would work great for defunct satellites, but does
| nothing to solve the bigger space-junk danger: random bits
| and pieces of things from stage separations and previous
| collisions that are difficult to track. Definitely a step in
| the right direction, but it won't solve the largest threat.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| They shouldn't be difficult to track by an object in space
| with a laser I would think?
|
| edit: curious why the downvotes? Would a device in space
| with a LIDAR type of device not be very well suited to
| tracking small objects that are difficult to identify with
| cameras from earth?
| bagels wrote:
| It's difficult and expensive.
|
| Ground based radar is the best way.
| everyone wrote:
| This is the most promising idea I've heard of...
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac.
| ..
| legutierr wrote:
| So the solution is to eject our atmosphere into space in
| order to eliminate space junk?
|
| Space junk constantly increases over time, so more and more
| pulses are required to clear out the junk, so more and more
| of our atmosphere is ejected into space for this purpose.
|
| There is absolutely no way that this could go wrong.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Bad news for you: The moon steals _tons_ of our
| atmosphere _every year_... Far more gets lost past that.
| legutierr wrote:
| Bad news for all of us, to be frank.
| spiderice wrote:
| Is it? Does it actually matter? Serious question.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I dont think it matters in the timespan of our species
| probable use for this planet.
|
| However. Don't let that stop you from donating to my just
| launching "venture NGO" to study the feasibility of
| protecting the earth's atmosphere by wrapping it in a big
| paper sack: which will sequester carbon, preserve our
| Precious Planetary Gasses, shade us from the Sun's evil
| ultraviolet rays and other harmful radiation, and vastly
| stimulate the economy. We expect to raise $2 billion to
| commence the first study sometime in 2084.
|
| Interesting links:
|
| https://www.space.com/earth-atmosphere-extends-beyond-
| moon.h...
|
| and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
|
| suggests that the changing composition of the atmosphere
| at ~600 million years is probably a more immediate
| problem
| fragmede wrote:
| Unless you plan to live forever, it's not a problem for
| you or your great great great great great grandchildren
| either. GP was pointing out that neither the Moon not the
| Earth _care_ about human life and will do just fine
| without us.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I doubt much, if any, of the air in those pulses would
| actually reach escape velocity.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Page last updated 2011 according to the footer. Has there
| been any results of the project, and is it still active?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I remember a idea to use lasers to burn up space debris. Would
| you be able to just launch somd kind of weapons platform to
| handle space debris rather than trying to attach and slow them
| down?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Unless you vapourise the debris, you just turned it into
| chunks of smaller debris, travelling at the same velocity.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If you can ablate the leading surface (if the object is not
| spinning quickly, which honestly is unlikely) then the
| ejected plasma may push the perigee either into the
| atmosphere or at least to a higher-drag altitude.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| ...and this only works at LEO where, I hear, it is less
| of an issue.
|
| Though it seems maybe still an issue, judging by all the
| shenanigans that the ISS has to do to avoid being shot
| down.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Going after bigger pieces in higher orbit might not bring much
| of an immediate benefit, but it can reduce the amount of damage
| if such an object is hit and shattered into many pieces
| (Kessler effect comes to mind).
|
| So it might still be very worthwhile in the long term.
| dncornholio wrote:
| 3) Every space agency funds the space dedebree-ing because they
| will be able to send up more to space again.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| I'm no expert, but is that really a consideration for modern
| launches? I'm not aware of any space agency that is currently
| limited in what they can do by orbital debris. Maybe it
| changes the launch windows, or they adjust an orbit by a few
| km. But are missions actually being canceled such that they
| would fund someone to make those missions possible again?
| SonicScrub wrote:
| My analysis assumed funding would occur. Pathways 1) and 2)
| are on the table regardless of the funding. Easy access to
| funding does not in anyway preclude options 1 and 2
| iamnotwhoiam wrote:
| My understanding of the issue is that the biggest problems are
| a few well known defunct satellites in mid altitude orbit. We
| have no control over them so if two collide we are in big
| trouble. That almost happened last year. I think someone can
| make a big difference by targeting those first.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| A couple of ideas that come with little knowledge, so take it
| with a big grain of salt:
|
| 1. "Electromagnetic Missile" with trajectory who's apogee is
| just below the targeted space junk. Turn on the electromagnet
| when just below the space junk to drag down its trajectory
| slightly, or even down to a de-orbit trajectory. Obviously,
| this only works with satellites built with magnetic materials.
| It may just be my outsider's perspective, but non-orbital
| missiles seem much easier and cheaper than rockets that go into
| orbital trajectories. Handling the return of the missile is
| tricky, perhaps it can also self-detonate fairly high in the
| atmosphere.
|
| 2. Ion engines or space sails driven tugs for use in getting to
| the space junk. My understanding is ion engines have a really
| favorable specific impulse. An optional chemical engine could
| be used to quickly de-orbit the tug upon reaching the
| satellite. Another idea to speed up de-orbit without requiring
| the tug the whole way would be a spring that would "push" the
| junk once it reached it, throwing it into an orbit that would
| more quickly drop it into the atmosphere. Newton could be used
| to our advantage to also push the tug into a new orbit to reach
| the next junk satellite sooner.
|
| Obviously, arm-chair rocket scientist here, so feasibility of
| the above ideas can probably quickly be dis-proven.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Can you use the junk's energy to power the cleaner? Imagine
| this: the cleaner has a big spring on the back of it. The
| spring is slowly compressed using solar power. The orbiter
| grabs a piece of junk, and then launches it backwards. The
| cleaner now has gained some of the energy from the junk, and
| the junk has lost energy.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| What happened to the space broom/lasers idea. I guess could
| make things worse if the satellite "explodes".
| vsareto wrote:
| >Higher orbit junk is what really matters, and will require
| much more delta-v to reach, and then again to de-orbit after
| "docking".
|
| Wait, why? The lower orbit stuff traverses less space so it's
| easier to make it more dense and hazardous to space travel
| through that space.
| jmcomets wrote:
| With my very basic understanding of orbital mechanics, higher
| orbits require more dV simply because it's further from
| Earth.
|
| The more interesting bit is that subtle orbital adjustments
| require much less dV in higher orbits than in lower ones.
|
| I like to think of it like pushing a barrel uphill: it takes
| more effort if the slope is steep, but then once it's up
| there, it's a lot easier to get the barrel moving downhill.
|
| Anyways, the "de-orbit" cost follows the same rule of higher
| being more costly in dV, the big difference with an ascension
| being that the atmosphere slowing you down is what you want
| (aerobraking is the word, I think?). So the difference in dV
| between a high orbit and a low orbit descent isn't
| proportionate to that of the ascent, if that makes any sense.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Low orbit stuff gets naturally de-orbited after a few
| years/decades by stray air molecules from the Earth's
| atmosphere, so there's little point to manually cleaning it.
| Debris in higher orbits can take centuries or millennia to
| naturally de-orbit, so manual cleaning there makes more
| sense.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Maybe we should have global tax or mandatory insurance on
| shooting stuff in phase. Proceedings would be used to cover
| cleanup costs for accidents.
|
| Private companies would then compete on specific cleanup tasks.
| toss1 wrote:
| So many comments here focusing on de-orbiting. Of course for any
| new satellite, end-of-life de-orbiting should be a part of the
| initial design, engineering, & build.
|
| However, for existing dead satellites & debris that is above
| atmospheric decay in reasonable times, I wonder if it would
| actually be more effective/efficient (in terms of cost, delta-V,
| scheduling, etc.) to 'herd' the junk into a more out-of-the-way
| location for future use. It seems once on-orbit manufacturing
| starts, it'd be useful to have a lot o high-quality material up
| out of the gravity well, and all of that stuff has already had
| huge investment to get it to orbit in the first place.
|
| Any astro engineers have any insights?
| giantrobot wrote:
| > However, for existing dead satellites & debris that is above
| atmospheric decay in reasonable times, I wonder if it would
| actually be more effective/efficient (in terms of cost,
| delta-V, scheduling, etc.) to 'herd' the junk into a more out-
| of-the-way location for future use. It seems once on-orbit
| manufacturing starts, it'd be useful to have a lot o high-
| quality material up out of the gravity well, and all of that
| stuff has already had huge investment to get it to orbit in the
| first place.
|
| Basically none of that is practical. Moving anything in space
| requires fuel. Changing a satellite's orbit from A to B
| requires the same amount of fuel as going from B to A. Going
| from A to B and then back to A takes twice the fuel. If you
| pick up more mass at B, you actually need _more_ fuel to get
| back to A. You also need fuel to rendezvous with your fuel
| depot where you can get all the fuel for these trips.
|
| Every rendezvous has a probability of failure. The more
| rendezvous you perform the more likely it is something bad will
| happen. Satellites aren't usually super sturdy structures
| because they're optimizing for mass. So some satellite herder
| needs to spend a lot of extra fuel matching the target's spin
| rate and velocity so capturing it doesn't cause it to break
| apart.
|
| Then there's the orbital manufacturing. Even if you managed to
| capture hundreds of satellites and herd them into some holding
| orbit, you've got a bunch of heterogeneous parts clumped
| together. You'd need to disassemble a bunch of devices that
| weren't meant to be disassembled. Even if you get them
| disassembled they're a bunch of finished packaged parts.
| They're not going to be reusable so they'd need to be melted
| down. Now you need smelters and centrifuges and every other
| chain in recycling materials to base feedstocks.
|
| That's all an absurd level of complexity and danger compared to
| just de-orbiting a satellite. The costs don't even compare.
| Your proposal would be phenomenally expensive if it was
| practical. Satellite clean up is highly impractical and
| expensive but still orders of magnitude more practical and
| cheaper than the things you're talking about.
| toss1 wrote:
| Thanks! I hadn't considered the risks of multiple rendevous
| maneuvers -- probably more risky than shooting some kind of
| net around the target with a drag sail attached or something.
|
| Like a magnified version of most modern mfg, it just bugs me
| that the easiest way to deal with failures is to just trash
| the thing rather than reuse/repair.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I really thought this was going to be some kind of a joke, that
| woz was going to clean the space from tourists/ tourists trash.
| But kudos anyway to woz (again) for thinking on improving rather
| than just profiting
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Where's the careers page? I want in!
| mfer wrote:
| I hope he makes a trash compactor named Wall-E
| cletus wrote:
| So here's a potential business model for this: salvage rights.
|
| When ships sink, the owner generally still retains ownership of
| any property. Sometimes the location of the wreck is known.
| Sometimes it needs to be found. It can cost a lot of money to
| find a wreck and recover any property.
|
| So salvage rights are a principle of maritime law such that
| whoever does this is entitled to a reward commensurate with the
| value of the goods recovered (eg 10%).
|
| I imagine there are orbital slots that are essentially unusable
| because of space debris (eg Project West Ford [1]). If orbital
| slots are sufficiently scarce then these could have value. At
| some point it may become commercial to spend the effort cleaning
| up an orbit and making it available. Companies could then be
| compensated for the value they create this way.
|
| I do believe this will still require a dramatic decrease in
| launch costs, as in orders of magnitude more. But we'll see.
|
| My personal belief (and hope) is that the future of getting into
| orbit is orbital rings [2]. If so, that completely changes the
| game because cleaning up an orbit essentially becomes a problem
| of just holding up a giant "paddle" (for lack of a better word)
| that is fixed to a point on Earth (essentially) and just letting
| the debris hit it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
| izzydata wrote:
| I've seen this kind of things in many works of science fiction,
| but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it even for
| non-space related salvage.
| quelltext wrote:
| This is completely off topic but what accent is the narrator
| speaking?
|
| He pronounces "research" as "resorch"/"resauch", "greater" as
| "greator" etc. and in other regards it seems to flip between
| American to slightly British English.
|
| Never heard this accent before.
| me_me_me wrote:
| I was going to ask the same question, its so unusual but
| never heard it before
| walrus01 wrote:
| as a native english speaker I would guess dutch, norwegian,
| swedish or icelandic
| [deleted]
| robgibbons wrote:
| It's an American accent, but with rhotacism, a type of speech
| impediment. He sounds vaguely British at times because of the
| tendency for "R" to come out sounding like "W"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Arthur
| joshmarlow wrote:
| I actually have the same impediment but never knew the term
| `rhotacism` - thanks!
| quelltext wrote:
| Thanks a lot. I wasn't aware of this speech impediment and
| how it causes the vaguely British at times.
| werdnapk wrote:
| American, but he has a speech impediment.
| mLuby wrote:
| It's a speech impediment; he has trouble saying R's (and has
| improved as he's narrated more and more videos).
|
| Isaac's earlier videos would show Elmer Fudd with the message
| "Having problems understanding me? Turn on CC." Example:
| https://youtu.be/gOu3zGfP-TQ?t=40
|
| Source: I've watched lots of his videos and highly recommend
| them--mind expanding ideas!
| quelltext wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the context. I have to say I didn't really
| have a hard time understanding him. I didn't even consider
| the possibility that it was a speech impediment.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Even if someone solves the technical part (cheap recovery),
| there are multiple practical problems with salvaging.
|
| 1. Satellites don't have much to salvage at EoL, they are
| typically obsolete at this point, at least for their main
| purpose. Their components degrade as well - space is a fairly
| aggressive environment and they aren't designed to be reusable.
|
| 2. They often contain highly regulated components that have
| tight export restrictions.
|
| 3. They might contain state or trade secrets and recovering by
| a third party is highly undesirable.
| [deleted]
| spankalee wrote:
| I think the thing you're salvaging is the orbital itself.
| That has value and the salvager should get a percentage of
| that. This requires international regulation we don't have
| though.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| This could work, but would limit effectiveness to the orbits
| that MUST be very specific to work. For most satellites this
| doesn't matter. If 500 km is clogged, you design your mission
| to work at 505 km. I could see something like this working for
| geostationary orbits and sun-synchronous orbits as they require
| specific altitudes and inclinations, but not for much else.
| myself248 wrote:
| Except orbits are neither that precise nor that static,
| without active control.
|
| Look up the "Gabbard diagram" of any orbital collision. Some
| of the debris ends up in rather elliptical orbits, with an
| apogee considerably higher than the orbit of either object
| that went into the collision. That means it presents a risk
| to satellites even in higher orbits.
|
| Also, orbits decay. The atmosphere doesn't just stop at a
| line; there's thinner and thinner wisps of gas out there,
| ever so slightly dragging on orbiting objects. So higher
| orbits slowly get lower, and lower orbits rapidly get lower
| still, until the orbit turns into an entry trajectory.
|
| The properties of the exosphere are fickle and change
| rapidly, influenced by the solar wind and other forces. So
| while it's certain that orbiting objects experience drag,
| it's very uncertain how _much_ drag.
|
| An object in an elliptical orbit spends some of its time with
| a very low perigee and thus a lot of atmospheric drag and
| thus its orbit changes rapidly in ways that're hard to
| predict, even if its apogee is high enough that it also
| crosses orbits of interesting things that're trying to avoid
| it. And the less predictable it is, the harder it is to
| avoid.
| mcdonje wrote:
| An incentive appears to exist to wait for collisions every
| once in a while so that there's more junk at different levels
| to clean up, and to prove the need for cleaning up junk.
| kbenson wrote:
| Only because space debris are a negative externality at
| this time. If there was an (international) way to fine
| companies based on the trash they left in orbit, this would
| all be very straightforward.
|
| There's thankfully a very obvious repercussion to leaving
| stuff in orbit that anyone planning to put something in
| orbit can see in obvious ways, unlike the delayed and hard
| to account for impact on the climate any one company will
| have.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| 1) Be Space debris company
|
| 2) Setup shadow satellite corporation
|
| 3) Satellite corp launches satellite to valuable orbit, and
| intentionally separates into 2-3 easily caught pieces.
| "Oops! Our satellite failed"
|
| 4) space debris company cleans up the orbit quickly and
| easily, receives bounty from government agency
|
| 5) Profit
|
| A little far-fetched maybe, but there's a good sci-fi short
| story wrapped up in there.
| dotancohen wrote:
| 6) Shadow satellite corporation contracted to destroy
| Beidu navigation system.
| spockz wrote:
| Obviously the fix for this is to let the one that wants
| to have the satellite in that orbit pay for the cleaning
| of that orbit instead of some government.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I should still pre-emptively trash some valuable Sun-
| Synchronous orbits before anyone else launches. Incentive
| is still there!
| Zanni wrote:
| Well, if we're imagining dystopian science-fiction
| stories in this vein, let's say that the salvage company
| automates their cleanup with an AI approximately as
| sophisticated as YouTube. Now every satellite launch is
| subject to malicious "take down" requests from
| competitors along with the whimsies of the algorithm.
| genericone wrote:
| Given enough debris at different orbital heights, maybe Woz
| company can collect it at one location and use it as a launch
| platform, using the debris as the reaction-mass, then they can
| use solar power as the energy source to launch to higher
| orbits, rather than ejecting rocketfuel for thrust. Does this
| seem feasible? Given certain rocket trajectories, the debris
| could be made to fall back to earth, solving 2 problems at once
| - escape velocity energy needs as well as excessive space
| debris.
|
| *Using space debris as railgun payload, but the railgun (rocket
| ship) is what you want to accelerate.
| laumars wrote:
| There was a Korean movie about a vaguely similar topic:
| salvaging space debris that I enjoyed
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12838766/
| hosh wrote:
| That's a great movie!
|
| There's also Japanese anime series set in the near-future
| sci-fi about a small company that cleans up space debris,
| called "Planet ES"
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Its actually called Planetes, which means "wanderers", and
| was the term the ancient Greeks used for the "wandering
| stars", i.e. other planets. I cannot recommend it highly
| enough! It starts out pretty slapstick, but if you're
| looking for something more thoughtful, just stick it out
| until after the ninja episode. I promise it's worth it.
| thornygreb wrote:
| Reminds me of Salvage 1
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1), Andy Griffith goes
| to the moon in 1979!
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Thank you. I could not figure out the business proposition
| behind it from the release.
| mc32 wrote:
| At the speeds those things whiz by, what sort of materials are
| there that can withstand impacts and not create more debris? Or
| do they try to do it via relative speeds and say let them hit
| the "paddle" at 50mph? And in that case, might it not be more
| effective to have hunting "nets" to collect the objects?
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| if you are moving with the almost the same speed and in the
| same direction as the debris, then there is a very small
| impact.
| fsloth wrote:
| I imagine orbital velocities of debris is all over the
| place. It sound like you would need a magic source of
| thrust for all that delta-v to match orbits and whatnot.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| The closest we have to that would probably be solar
| sails. Considering that cleanup usually isn't time
| sensitive it could be a very cheap and effective
| solution.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| they might try out solar powered ion engines. Deep space
| one is powered by an engine of this type, see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_electric_propulsion
| gowld wrote:
| Everything in an orbit moves at exactly the same speed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_
| m...
|
| You can only collide with an orbiting object if one of you
| is changing orbits.
|
| It's very difficult to force to objects to meet in orbit
| with nearly the same velocity; it requires complex active
| maneuvering.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Maybe use lasers to ablate material on the debris, creating
| propulsion? Creates liability, though..
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There are small debris clouds, but also large uncontrolled
| spacecraft, like boosters. De-orbiting those could be a huge
| help, since a collision with a stray booster would create
| gobs of debris so those orbits may be completely avoided.
| genericone wrote:
| Maybe not hunting nets per say, maybe just a huge trawling
| net, or some sort of trawling-foam since we're in space. As
| high velocity objects begin to hit it, the foam will gain
| speed, but overtime, with presumably random speed-object
| collisions, the foam and its captured contents should have
| their speed reduced to 0 and fall. Doesn't need to be in foam
| or net form, but it does need to be a massive-entanglement-
| object, or MEO for short.
| gipp wrote:
| I'm probably under thinking this, but wouldn't the overall
| momentum of the debris be conserved so you'd have a bias in
| debris velocity in whatever direction the original objects
| were orbiting (presumably not random)?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I would assume that as the debris cloud became more
| biased in one direction, it would be more and more likely
| to encounter new debris coming in a different direction.
| Antipode wrote:
| At least at geosynchronous altitude it seems like it
| would be significantly biased in the direction of Earth's
| rotation, especially along geostationary orbit.
| uoaei wrote:
| Things that are not rigid and that distribute the force
| throughout the body (think of slapping a big slab of
| silicone).
| jon_richards wrote:
| Whipple shields
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield
| cletus wrote:
| First, a lot of space debris is small. I'm talking like
| flecks of paint. That's an issue at high speed and this has
| hit the ISS [1].
|
| Obviously there's the conservation of momentum to deal with.
| That fleck of paint has a decent amount of momentum but
| that's fairly easily absorbed by a couple of tons of material
| fixed to an otherwise rigid body.
|
| You'd probably attach it via cables and if, somehow, enough
| momentum was delivered to that "paddle" that it would tear
| off the cables would just let it go.
|
| If the paddle is fixed to the ring and is let go, it's just
| going to fall to Earth even with any added momentum, in which
| case it'll burn up in the atmosphere.
|
| The more dangerous debris is larger stuff. Like there are
| dead parts of rockets, even smaller stuff like bolts. These
| pose extra challenges but a lot of the same principles apply.
|
| [1]: https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0513/Space-
| debris-dan....
| deelowe wrote:
| I thought larger parts aren't as big of an issue in the
| majority of cases as most orbits aren't stable and they'll
| eventually fall to earth or be ejected into outer space.
| [deleted]
| failuser wrote:
| Crazy idea: can new satellites be assembled from the parts of
| old ones: the parts are already in orbit, you can't reuse
| chips, but you can reuse solar panels, wires, external walls,
| etc.
| delecti wrote:
| Even if you assume there are sufficient working parts in
| orbit to construct working satellites, doing that
| reconstruction in space would require gathering them together
| in space either by people (super expensive) or by a
| sufficiently flexible robot, in which case we're already
| sending up something, just send up the desired new satellite
| instead.
|
| Alternatively we could deorbit components without them
| burning up and assemble new ones down here, but that would
| also be vastly more expensive than just making new ones down
| here to begin with.
| dcgudeman wrote:
| Crazy idea: can new boats be assembled from the wrecks of old
| boats: the parts are already in the ocean, you can't reuse
| metal, but you could reuse masts, wood, and hulls, etc.
| Closi wrote:
| So you are saying it's possible?
| effingwewt wrote:
| Yea this thread hurts my brain, I legitimately can't
| tell.
|
| But I believe it would be, Water World style. Why not re-
| purpose scrap parts, you could even make other helper
| robots with the scrap.
|
| I'm reminded of Seveneves with the robots that make more
| robots tk make more and bigger robots. Man I'm gonna re-
| read that now.
| mlindner wrote:
| There's no way this works economically. You either need
| governments to pay for it or you spend your own money in a
| philanthropic way. Last I checked Woz doesn't have any money left
| as he gave it all away, so unless he found other people's money
| to bankroll it, they're going to depend exclusively on
| governments paying for trash removal. And despite the media's
| hoopla, orbital debris are an issue, but they're not a huge
| issue.
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