[HN Gopher] Senators Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900k Pieces ...
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Senators Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900k Pieces of Orbiting
Junk
Author : T-A
Score : 71 points
Date : 2022-09-15 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.commerce.senate.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.commerce.senate.gov)
| LightG wrote:
| How about space companies pay the f@cking cost of their
| externalities?
|
| An estimate is made for the total cost of clearing significant
| space junk.
|
| Space companies pay a fee per launch. Amount gets pooled.
|
| Pool pays for it estimated total cost.
|
| But no .... no one wants to pay for their sh!t ... just like here
| on Earth.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Debris can be caused by defunct companies that put sats up when
| this all wasn't a concern.
|
| Also, deorbiting a sat at end of life is one thing, but
| deorbiting debris from an accidental collision (or an
| intentional one, just not intended by the sat's owner!) is a
| completely different thing. Companies do plan for end of life
| sat deorbiting, but it's hard to ask them to plan for
| unintentional collision debris deorbiting.
|
| Paying for debris cleanup could be a thing that new sat
| deployment could be required to have covered, but without first
| knowing the cost of debris cleanup, it's hard to charge enough.
| Debris cleanup has never been done, so we don't know the cost
| of it! Also, if the government were the escrow agent, you know
| the money would just be spent, so the escrow would have to be a
| private entity.
|
| Lastly, a lot of debris in orbit is due to anti-sat missile
| testing by nation states, so you're really asking _them_ to
| clean up their debris.
|
| But ranting is more fun?
| rr888 wrote:
| Does the US government have any authority on this? I thought
| there were a dozen countries launching satellites now.
| azernik wrote:
| This is specifically funding for R&D.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| What authority do you think this bill is claiming that would be
| impacted by other countries launching? You can read it here:
| https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/...
|
| It's establishing (assuming it gets passed and signed) the work
| for a demonstration program on active debris removal from
| orbit. It's not imposing the US government's will on anyone
| else.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Having the world's most powerful military gives them de facto
| authority. :)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Space is "international waters". Any country has the right to
| remove dangerous debris from the ocean or from space.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Anyone remember the Hanna Barbera cartoon where Yogi and the gang
| are trying to find the "perfect place" free of pollution? They
| eventually end up in space, thinking this must be it, only to see
| it becoming more cluttered and full of junk. They finally decide
| to go back home and clean it up, because they won't find the
| perfect place, they have to make it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Essentially the same plot line as Dr. Seuss' "I Had Trouble In
| Getting To Solla Sollew".
| zackees wrote:
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Giant lasers! Pew pew pew.
|
| _cue Tears for Fears_
| CyanBird wrote:
| Planetes is coming one day closer to becoming reality, I am all
| for this
|
| And ofc having a cleaner leo is also a good thing on itself ofc
| 1-6 wrote:
| How about all the drug debris in SF. Why not take care of matters
| closer to home?
| romellem wrote:
| _Why solve this problem when there are other unrelated problems
| I care about?_
| supernova87a wrote:
| So:
|
| Study the issue, publish debris catalog, fund pilot programs to
| deorbit debris, encourage agencies and other countries to develop
| standards about debris...
|
| Everything except "generate less debris".
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Other Washington companies like SpaceX, Amazon's Kuiper
| Systems, and Stoke Space Technologies are also looking for new
| ways to reduce debris from accumulating in space in the first
| place or have been threatened by debris.
|
| Good news! Concurrent efforts can work concurrently! Reducing
| future debris is already an area of active work.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793236 <- Posted two
| days ago.
| m0llusk wrote:
| There have been moves to get nations to sign on to a ban on
| antisatellite weapons. The largest recent contributions to
| space debris have been tests of antisatellite weapon systems.
| So that is at least being attempted, but it is a separate track
| based mostly on foreign relations.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| This recent article actually discusses reducing debris more
| quickly. [1] Are you suggesting fewer launches?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793236
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 2 ways to reduce orbital debris: get rid of stuff that's
| already there, and generate less. This law seems to me like it
| would tackle both.
|
| More stringent deorbiting standards and better methods for
| satellites to commit sudoku will reduce the amount of
| satellites that become debris.
|
| But that doesn't change the fact that the majority of debris in
| orbit today comes from 2 sources: the Chinese ASAT test and
| leaky Soviet nuclear reactors. The proposed ASAT test ban helps
| that from being an issue, but you still need a way to clean up
| the existing debris (other than waiting decades or centuries)
| Ferrotin wrote:
| How on earth would a leaky Soviet reactor create orbital
| debris?
| thatcherc wrote:
| Commenter is probably referring to this incident[1] where a
| sodium-cooled nuclear reactor on a Soviet satellite ended
| up spraying a bunch of small beads of sodium into Earth
| orbit. The number and density of the beads makes them a
| long-lived hazard.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
| Cyphase wrote:
| I think you mean seppuku, not sudoku. :)
| zardo wrote:
| > encourage agencies and other countries to develop standards
| about debris...
|
| > Everything except "generate less debris".
|
| What else would the standards be about?
| findingaway wrote:
| If you've looked at our environmental efforts over the last 50
| years. The trends should be pretty obvious :-) The scam that is
| recycling exists as an industry mostly to allay the fear of the
| populace, not address the issue. It's a nice side benefit that
| sometimes companies can save on costs for certain products.
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| I guess I'll take this time to shill for the mid-'00s TV show
| Planetes, which is basically about exactly this; cleaning up
| orbital debris in order to maintain safe space travel.
| ja27 wrote:
| Or 1977-78's Quark
| MishaalRahman wrote:
| Definitely the first thing I thought of when I saw the title
| Veedrac wrote:
| Debris removal is less an R&D problem than a market problem. The
| highest impact thing a government can do is put a price on debris
| removal, and then guarantee that price for existing debris for an
| extended period of time.
|
| Flight volume is an easily solved problem with the near future
| market, and that cost is the main reason junk isn't deorbited
| already.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Or combine it with a fine for creating debris?
| _jal wrote:
| I think it is past time to make launchers publish their plan
| for lifecycle management, and perhaps post bonds against
| them, in case they go bankrupt.
|
| Making sovereigns pay for trashing the commons is tricky for
| obvious reasons. But we don't have those problems with
| corporations.
| cma wrote:
| Throwaway LLC creates the debris and goes bankrupt from
| fines, main company does the cleanup.
| progbits wrote:
| > The highest impact thing a government can do is put a price
| on debris removal
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina...
| Veedrac wrote:
| Objects in space are merticuously tracked. It would be very
| hard to get away with something like that, and none of the
| relevant fliers would dare bet their business on trying.
| progbits wrote:
| I meant it bit of a tongue-in-cheek way, but for the sake
| of argument it wouldn't be hard for a clean up mission to
| have an "accident" and actually generate more debris for
| later missions to clean up. And it might not even be
| malicious, just side effect of more pressure to launch
| something to do the clean ups.
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying OP is wrong, it would probably
| work out fine. But this seems like a fun angle to consider.
| tomrod wrote:
| I can't find xboneslife's comment to reply to, so
| replying here
|
| > You can just put the same price on debris addition.
|
| Indeed. A small tax that matches the cost of debris
| capture payment + minor administrative overhead would
| encourage the outcome that junk isn't thrown into
| unrecoverable orbit.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You could always slip China a fiver to get them to blow up
| another satellite or five.
| IXxXI wrote:
| Aspiring asteroid miners should start with space junk in orbit.
| jwagenet wrote:
| We talk about all this junk polluting orbit, but I can't
| imagine it is dense enough to to efficiently fish for and
| return to earth.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup.
|
| If it were sufficiently dense to fish, it'd be worth more to
| collect and keep it in orbit -- that junk has a lot of high-
| grade materials and a lot of already-imparted momentum. Just[
| _] move it all into a few large objects that can be managed
| as large craft, and the debris problem is solved, and there
| 's a mineable resource already in orbit.
|
| [_] "Just" is doing some escape-velocity-class lifting there
| -- all that junk is in such massively different orbital
| planes and altitudes that silly amounts of DV are needed to
| fetch each one and then to pull it back to dock with the new
| orbital junkheap.
| el_don_almighty wrote:
| How much is removing 1kg from Low-Earth Orbit worth?
|
| Launch cost is ~$3,000 to $5,000 per kg
|
| What's the value of pulling it back down and what drives this
| value?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The value will be based on the value of the reduced risk of
| damage/loss from orbital debris and reduced cost from orbital
| adjustments to avoid debris (which uses fuel or mass which
| reduces the lifespan of the satellite). Once we end up with
| 100k or more LEO satellites it'll be very valuable to reduce
| the amount of debris at those altitudes.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's the cheap price of a cover story for capabilities with
| military applications.
| WJW wrote:
| You can't reasonably measure this by the kg. Pulling down a
| single 10000 kg satellite is fairly cheap; all you need to do
| is latch onto it and deorbit. This can be done with a single
| vehicle. Deorbiting 10k 1 kg fragments would be vastly more
| expensive. 1 million 10 gram fragments would be more expensive
| still.
| krastanov wrote:
| There are techniques with which deorbiting 1 million 10 gram
| fragments might end up being quite cheap. E.g. the use of a
| single laser-equipped base that selectively hits the debris
| to cause localized evaporation and thrust, disrupting their
| trajectory.
| godelski wrote:
| There's two fold for missions like this
|
| 1) Debris is dangerous to orbiting objects. So the value of
| bringing it down is more valuable than the per kilogram value.
| It is highly dependent upon potential damage it can do. Space
| debris is already causing damage to satellites and the ISS. As
| we place more objects in space this danger increase super-
| linearly.
|
| 2) If you can decommission debris you can decommission
| satellites. This has obvious military applications. In fact to
| properly do this you actually have to get pretty close to other
| satellites without colliding. By solving the debris problem
| you're solving a lot of the same problems you need for these
| military applications.
|
| So both incentives are valued far greater than the per-mass
| value of the trash.
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(page generated 2022-09-15 23:00 UTC)