Ugly Truth of Space Junk 185
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the hands-off-my-junk dept.
from the hands-off-my-junk dept.
fysdt writes "Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space — human-made orbital debris — is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of 'solutions' sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter. What may be shaping up is an 'abandon in place' posture for certain orbital altitudes — an outlook that flags the messy message resulting from countless bits of orbital refuse. US General William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, underscored the worrisome issue of orbital debris during a presentation at the National Space Symposium on April 12, 2011. In a recent conference here, Gen. William Shelton, commander of the US Air Force Space Command, relayed his worries about rising amounts of human-made space junk."
Re:Read the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Read the article, their expertise is in understanding the dynamics of the problem and the threats the problems raise.
It's like saying an oncologist can't treat cancer because he didn't make up the chemotherapy drug, thus he isn't an expert.
He's working for THEM (Score:5, Insightful)
He's just trying to clear a nice approach eliptical for the mothership to come down and enslave mankind. Don't listen to a word of it. Space junk makes intraorbital navigation hazardous, and that hazard is our best unnatural defense against the alien overlords.
--
Toro
Which I for one do not welcome!
Re:A solvable problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Without constant effort stuff tends to come down and the smaller the faster.
Not necessarily true. It's all dependent on the atmospheric drag that the object generates and what orbit it was launched into (on purpose or accidentally) to begin with. Some LEO junk will at this rate stay up for millions of years.
Come up with some sort of armor for microscopic stuff to embed into
Unfortunately the problem there is that armor inevitably adds weight, and every pound is precious in the design of a satellite. Until we have some orbital launching mechanism more efficient than our current chemical-based rockets, it will always be an inefficient tradeoff to take on the extra weight of armoring a satellite versus the likelihood of there being an impact that the armor would mitigate.