Space-junk expert on why NASA should clean up space -- and how

[Kadie]

Space-junk expert on why NASA should clean up space -- and how
September 2, 2011 | 5:21 pm

Space might seem infinite, but the area around Earth is getting seriously cluttered. This week, a report from the National Academies urged NASA to start thinking seriously about cleaning it up.

It turns out there's a swarm of space junk swirling around our planet. Scientists are tracking roughly 22,000 pieces of satellites, rockets and other spacecraft that humans have sent into space without any plan to bring them down.

And it's starting to get dangerous out there. A small fleck of paint that falls from a spacecraft might seem minor, but it isn't -- especially if that fleck is moving at 10 kilometers per second.

"At that speed, it has the kinetic energy of a hand grenade going off," said Donald J. Kessler, a retired senior scientist for orbital debris research at NASA. He was chairman of the National Research Council committee that wrote the report.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/space-junk-expert-on-why-nasa-needs-to-clean-up-space.html

[Taverner]

1. Is the space junk useless as scrap metal?

Being exposed to all that radiation?

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Kadie.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Space janitors!

Outsourcing on steroids.



I hope that's not the plan. :(

[TheMightyFavog]

6. There was an anime along these lines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Need to contact AATIS, aliens against trash in space asap. They'll know what to do. n/t

[FarCenter]

5. This mostly affects military satelites in low earth orbit

Not really a problem.

[Desertrose]

7. Time for Mega Maid....

[Motown_Johnny]

8. ROFL @ the "and how" part

Any thoughts on how we can clean it up?

Well, it will probably be 10 or 20 years before anything actually operational takes place. There is so much development to be done and a lot of ideas on how to do it and a lot of them are off the wall and dead on arrival. One of my favorites right now is the use of tethers — essentially, really long pieces of string that are electromagnetic and could grab objects and put them in a lower orbit so they would eventually fall down to earth.







Translation = no freaking idea how to clean it up and don't ask again until after I have retired.



I would love to see how much energy it is going to take to electromagnetically grab an object moving at mach 7 (or faster).