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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

So slowing it down just makes them drop? Huh...

[Eagleon]

Ninja'd!

You can get KSP directly from their website, no steam involved.

Think of an orbit kind of like a battery for kinetic energy. The more energy, the more speed, and the higher the orbit. If you slow down an object, its orbit dips lower, and slow it down enough, it will start brushing against the atmosphere, which will slow it down further due to drag and eventually cause it to deorbit.

Basically, objects try to fall straight down, but orbit is what happens when they're moving sideways fast enough to miss the planet when they do. They keep falling on this "miss," until gravity slingshots them back towards what they're orbiting around and they miss again.

More than that, you can speed it up and still achieve a decaying orbit. Push it along the current vector, you accelerate it, and it reaches a higher orbit along one lobe. But push it against any other vector, and some part of the orbit will dip even if it's going faster, because the orbital path is -turning-, and if any part of that path hits the atmosphere, you've achieved a decaying orbit. It's counterintuitive, but you can actually fall out of orbit by going faster the wrong way

[x2yzh9]

Hypotheticaly speaking, for space debris just have drones fly in orbit with onboard automated computing systems that angles themselves to shoot the debris away from the earth, or at least towards it and into much smaller fragmented pieces. however, I wonder if over a long period of time it would mess with the atmosphere? That's just a conjecture however.

[WillowLuman]

Ninja'd!

You can get KSP directly from their website, no steam involved.

Think of an orbit kind of like a battery for kinetic energy. The more energy, the more speed, and the higher the orbit. If you slow down an object, its orbit dips lower, and slow it down enough, it will start brushing against the atmosphere, which will slow it down further due to drag and eventually cause it to deorbit.

Basically, objects try to fall straight down, but orbit is what happens when they're moving sideways fast enough to miss the planet when they do. They keep falling on this "miss," until gravity slingshots them back towards what they're orbiting around and they miss again.

More than that, you can speed it up and still achieve a decaying orbit. Push it along the current vector, you accelerate it, and it reaches a higher orbit along one lobe. But push it against any other vector, and some part of the orbit will dip even if it's going faster, because the orbital path is -turning-, and if any part of that path hits the atmosphere, you've achieved a decaying orbit. It's counterintuitive, but you can actually fall out of orbit by going faster the wrong way

Yes, direction is important, as is where on the orbit you apply the acceleration.

Hypotheticaly speaking, for space debris just have drones fly in orbit with onboard automated computing systems that angles themselves to shoot the debris away from the earth, or at least towards it and into much smaller fragmented pieces. however, I wonder if over a long period of time it would mess with the atmosphere? That's just a conjecture however.

You'd need a lot more space junk than we currently have to create a noticeable effect if you burn it all up. Much larger volumes of rock disintegrate in the atmosphere all the time.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Making them into smaller pieces would not be good at all.

IIRC a paint chip hitting a space ship/station in orbit can crack a window, an object the size of a marble can breach the hull and depressurize a part of a ship.

[WillowLuman]

What you really want to do is just have them reenter. Throwing them out of our system might take more energy, and they'd still be floating around out there to potentially cause problems in the future.

[wierd]

It always surprises me how people get so concerned over an RTG burning up in the atmosphere.

Really though, the danger of atmospheric pollution from space exploration should be from the excessive amounts of hydrazine fuel burnt to ORBIT things, not the resulting high atmosphere dust and vapor trails from deorbiting spacecraft. Hydrazine fuel is far more environmentally dangerous than a few hundred pounds of metal burning up.

[WillowLuman]

Definitely. That stuff is incredibly toxic. And we get around 15,000 tons of natural space dust entering the atmosphere every year anyway.

[Rez]

There's the legal problem there of essentially developing an anti-sat laser. Not to mention the engineering problems of lasing through that much atmosphere while still retaining the power to vaporize.

I think I've mentioned that we need mad (though benevolent) scientists/entrepreneurs to push space development.  Obviously, they would need island fortresses and hordes of redshirts to protect them from the special forces of nation-states. XD

Seriously, though, there's no avoiding space development becoming a serious issue.  Launch sites and satellites are already critical military and economic assets and an elevator, once we build it, will be a nexus of supreme economic power.  It's no good kicking the can and pretending that economic development of space won't necessarily carry important military and political effects.  I think keeping our orbit clean is a cause for humanity's good and well worth the effort of convincing chronically paranoid nations to buy into it (or at least to not invade Poland or start WWIII over it).


Twinkling is not a new optics challenge and other optics applications have had to address it.  There are ways to mitigate air heating, though obviously you can't negate it.  These aren't impossible problems for the idea.

[Rez]

Has anyone seen the news about the very high plumes over Mars?

Neat.

[i2amroy]

Note on the laser through the air thing, but one of the more common ways to handle it is just to use a double laser pulse. The first laser loses tons of energy before it reaches the target, but it ionizes a path through the air on the way (and shows up as a brilliant beam). The second laser is fired right on the tail of the first one, and passes through the ionized air without any real resistance (and is thus invisible) before it hits the target with the majority of it's energy intact. It's the same method that the government was using in these prior to their cancelation.

[Graknorke]

Also that has the benefit of sort of ensuring that the laser stays in a tight-ish beam along the ionised air.

Seriously I keep this site open at all times. It mostly uses decent science and also serves as inspiration for life goals.

[GiglameshDespair]

Has anyone seen the news about the very high plumes over Mars?

Neat.

I do wonder what it is.
'Tis a mystery.

[Dorfs R Fun]

Those plumes over mars are cool. We have no clue yet.

In other spacetatstic news.

1.5 gigapixel picture of the Andromeda galaxy (that's 1.5 billion pixels)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/20/nasa-largest-picture-andromeda-galaxy/22052513/

[Morrigi]

Has anyone seen the news about the very high plumes over Mars?

Neat.

I do wonder what it is.
'Tis a mystery.

The Moon Nazis colonized Mars back in the 70's to build a vast space armada in order to re-take Earth once and for all, and now they've finally finished. Invasion fleet in 30 minutes.
/shitposting

But seriously, it's an odd development. Is there any info regarding what the plumes are composed of?