Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[monkey]

We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon, and we wait what?

Space fishing is booming!

[Strife26]

I'm actually just finishing up a fairly deep survey of the general space debris problem. Remediation techniques of the flavor of the Japanese type or the ESA e.deorbit type are interesting and could certainly help the field somewhat (of course, the field's current status is so ridiculously unhelped, throwing harsh language at envisat wouldn't hurt anything).

There's two major problems with the on-orbit removal plans, firstly they're innately limited in number. As SMJ mentioned, there's a ton of smaller stuff, and at orbital speeds, all of it starts at hitting like a bullet and only into bomb sized from there.

The second issue is the fact that space debris is still owned by the country (or successor country) of whomever put it up. The cosmos satellite that skoshed iridium 33 a few years back was still Russian property, even if it was defunct. And, for some strange reason, nations are real iffy about people practicing tentacle-based ASAT warfare on their stuff.


Once the presentation gets dropped online, I'll share it here.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

But wouldn't they want their spacecraft back? "I'll let you perform awful Cthulhu-ian acts on my spacecraft, just give it back afterward." Lol.

[Max™]

I think it goes back to the whole problem where nobody wants to fight a war in orbit, but lots of the laws and such up there would make more sense if certain things could be done, so we're stuck with a lot of weird throwbacks, like the whole "USSR owned stuff when the USSR doesn't even exist, so it's passed on to Russia but they don't care unless you want to screw with it" situation, and no Orion drives either.

[sneakey pete]

To be fair fully intact but out of control satellites aren't really the biggest issue, in terms of trying to get rid of them. if I recall correctly the only reason those two collided was calculation errors on their location. Its the smaller stuff that matters most. You can't track, it you can't avoid it. Not to say removing old ones isnt important.

[Strife26]

But wouldn't they want their spacecraft back? "I'll let you perform awful Cthulhu-ian acts on my spacecraft, just give it back afterward." Lol.

Well, the idea of bringing objects down is very much outside economic viability. Then you're at a survivable reentry for everything.

Not even a destructive reentry would be safe, because if the reentry managed to scatter Soviet-era chunks of a rtg across the world, the liability situation would be very complex, with blame possibly being assigned to Russia, the Japanese company, Japan, the country where the rocket was launched from, or the country that launched the kubo module of the iss.

Current international agreements basically have corporations doing whatever, provided they're overseen and authorized by their own country.

To say it's a clusterfuck without precedent to work from is  accurate.

[Strife26]

To be fair fully intact but out of control satellites aren't really the biggest issue, in terms of trying to get rid of them. if I recall correctly the only reason those two collided was calculation errors on their location. Its the smaller stuff that matters most. You can't track, it you can't avoid it. Not to say removing old ones isnt important.

You're partially correct. Exactly why the iridium-cosmos collision happened is a matter of blame that everyone has been happy to avoid (fourtunately, the iridium launched from Russia, so it could totally be considered a purely Russian matter from certain standpoints).

Unfortunately, conjunction assessment itself is a very imprecise science. Tracking objects over a certain size is mostly solved, with limitations based on limited assets. Predicting where they're going to be at point of closest approach is much more difficult. These days, the height of ca technology is probably a Rosary and a good Catholic doing Hail Maries.

And as an aside, the current level of conjunction analysis and data is almost entirely done via the American taxpayer, provided to anyone who has shit in space.

[x2yzh9]

Well, I feel politics is gonna have to play into this at some point. Conflicts in space are something that should be avoided, and that's one of the reasons I think the original outer space treaty was formed, so say Russia getting mad for another country clearing space debris could be, while seeming a minor thing, most definitely lead to effects. If japan's going to do this, they need to bring it to the United Nations and before the security Council as well.

This is all just my opinion, as well.

[Starver]

Of course, Japan has a history of rockets sent up to grab other nations' spacecraft...

[Strife26]

Well, I feel politics is gonna have to play into this at some point. Conflicts in space are something that should be avoided, and that's one of the reasons I think the original outer space treaty was formed, so say Russia getting mad for another country clearing space debris could be, while seeming a minor thing, most definitely lead to effects. If japan's going to do this, they need to bring it to the United Nations and before the security Council as well.

This is all just my opinion, as well.

For Japan (or a Japanese company, which is considered Japan under the authorize and oversee parts of the outer space treaty), their obligations for a deorbit mission that's targeting their own or unowned stuff would only be the duty to warn everyone if they were doing something dangerous to the space environment. The penalty for skipping this requirement is only the risk of getting called out on the international stage, which doesn't really matter. Here's looking at you, Fengyun.

[wierd]

More on the EM-drive

China says they have a prototype in space on their new Tiandong-2 space station that they are actively testing.  So far, they claim positive thrust results.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalpaper.stdaily.com%2Fhttp_www.kjrb.com%2Fkjrb%2Fhtml%2F2016-12%2F11%2Fcontent_357004.htm%3Fdiv%3D-1

[MetalSlimeHunt]

With the amount of academic corruption in China, including on the original EM drive paper, I remain skeptical.

[origamiscienceguy]

SpaceX finally figured out what went wrong. Scott Manley has a good video explaining it.

[Shadowlord]

What went wrong with what?

[origamiscienceguy]

Their rocket that excploded