Should we be concerned about the garbage tip in space?

Run_to_da_hills

Two satellites collided during the week leaving a mess of thousands of fragments in space, I believe scrap from both these will continuously circle the earth for centuries.

Debris from previous space missions are also building up in space and circling the earth.

What could be the consequences of all this other than physical damage to military and telecommunications satellites? Should space now be treated with more respect?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302071.html

ChocolateSauce

It poses a risk for other things in orbit, particularly since their trajectories are going to be altered from those of the original satellites. I don't think there's any need to treat space with "respect"- it's an empty hole with nothing in it to respect. But there is a need to protect ourselves and our machines from damage caused by floating debris, and this will become more important as we expand into space.

Mahatma coat

I remember seein in some docco that the earth has the beginnings of a ring like Saturn, I suppose when all the junk eventually smashes itself to bits it will form a proper ring

ChocolateSauce

Mahatma coat wrote: »

I remember seein in some docco that the earth has the beginnings of a ring like Saturn, I suppose when all the junk eventually smashes itself to bits it will form a proper ring

Unlikely; the amount of mass in the rings of Saturn is enormous, far far more than we have thus far put into space, and possibly more than we will ever have orbiting the earth.

seanybiker

wouldnt worry bout it. Tis the crap on earth thats bad

Run_to_da_hills

seanybiker wrote: »

wouldn't worry bout it. Tis the crap on earth thats bad

But what if your favorite Sat TV gets knocked out of orbit? You will lose all your National Geographic, Discovery and footie channels. :eek:

Oldtree

I seem to remember an old futureistic science fiction story that contained the theme of so much space debris that the remaining humans could not leave the planet when there was impending doom for the earth. :rolleyes:

the Irish times article included:

"My worry is that that debris field is going to be up there for a while," said Gen James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former head of the military's space operations. "So we're going to have to play a little bit of dodgeball for many tens of years to come," he said.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0212/breaking58.htm

What about the older nucler powered russian satellites???!?! :eek: do you trust the mans word that this debris does not pose a threat to other russian space craft?

see also abstract The International Space Station and the Space Debris Environment: 10 Years On

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=922720&id=2&qs=Ntt%3Dspace%252Bdebris%26Ntk%3Dall%26Ntx%3Dmode%2520matchall%26N%3D4294964632%26Ns%3DHarvestDate%257c1

and this

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=694806&id=6&qs=No%3D20%26Ntt%3Dspace%252Bdebris%26Ntk%3Dall%26Ntx%3Dmode%2520matchall%26N%3D4294964632%26Ns%3DHarvestDate%257c1

Cheeble

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that there was a plan to collect up all the garbage from space and burn it in an incinerator at Rathcoole.

Kenno90

ye but most of those pieces will start to fall to earth and burn up in the atmosphere, although there is thousands of satellites and the fact there is very little collisions is a blessing

Latchy

Without stating the obious , how they hell can we sort out the garbage in space ( assuming their is the will to do so in the first place ) when we can hardly deal with how to dispose of our earthly garbage waste.? Turns out that a large % of uk recycled stuff ends up in landfill sites anyway , both there and abroad

EvilMonkey

Didn't the US shoot one down last year? I think it was leaking something possibly radioactive(or the didn't want anyone to find it ). Everyone was complaining about it.

Húrin

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

But there is a need to protect ourselves and our machines from damage caused by floating debris, and this will become more important as we expand into space.

Do you really believe in such a sci-fi idea of the future? This is almost as batty as the claim that GM food will solve world hunger. We can't expand into space without (at least) three things:

1. a lot of capital
2. a lot of cheap oil
3. the luxury of not having too many terrestrial problems to deal with

We're unlikely to have this combination again in this century.

Run_to_da_hills

Published in todays Sunday Times.

Briefing: Space junk: Dangerous debris

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5733633.ece

McSandwich

Some interesting visualisations here: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/11/space-debris-illustrated-the-problem-in-pictures/

Also interesting is that most of this 'junk' is very vauable, consisting of precious metals and radioactive material, though I'm sure the toilet flushings from every shuttle mission are hanging around somewhere up there too!

ART6

McSandwich wrote: »

Some interesting visualisations here: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/11/space-debris-illustrated-the-problem-in-pictures/

Also interesting is that most of this 'junk' is very vauable, consisting of precious metals and radioactive material, though I'm sure the toilet flushings from every shuttle mission are hanging around somewhere up there too!

That poses an interesting picture -- presumably such flushings would be solid in the low temperature of space, and traveling at 17,000 mph.....Getting shot by a s**t needs a bit of thinking about:) But seriously, if a speck of paint can have the same effect as a bullet, surely sooner or later putting satellites in orbit or astronauts on moon trips or ISS crew changes will become impossible? End of GPS, so ships and aircraft can't navigate, end of Satnavs in cars, no HDTV, end of world wide instantaneous communication and telephony. Sounds like someone needs to invent an orbiting street sweeper.

McSandwich

ART6 wrote: »

That poses an interesting picture -- presumably such flushings would be solid in the low temperature of space, and traveling at 17,000 mph.....Getting shot by a s**t needs a bit of thinking about:) But seriously, if a speck of paint can have the same effect as a bullet, surely sooner or later putting satellites in orbit or astronauts on moon trips or ISS crew changes will become impossible? End of GPS, so ships and aircraft can't navigate, end of Satnavs in cars, no HDTV, end of world wide instantaneous communication and telephony. Sounds like someone needs to invent an orbiting street sweeper.

Indeed, turd rock from the sun . I wonder if in the future recovery of precious metals from Earths orbit will be considered when terrestrial ressources are depleted?

robtri

Satellites are usually ok, later moderls anyway, as now a days when a satellite is running out of fuel, they normally re-direct the satellite from its orbit to burn up in the atmosphere, so no rubbish....

seanybiker

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

But what if your favorite Sat TV gets knocked out of orbit? You will lose all your National Geographic, Discovery and footie channels. :eek:

Dont watch footie so hopefully that channel goes away. If discovery goes ill go mental. Need me fix of fbi files

towel401

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

But what if your favorite Sat TV gets knocked out of orbit? You will lose all your National Geographic, Discovery and footie channels. :eek:

those satellites are higher up. i dunno if low earth orbit sats have much of a future. geosynchronous is where the **** is at, even if that means more lag and weaker coverage for satellite phones

Alun

towel401 wrote: »

those satellites are higher up. i dunno if low earth orbit sats have much of a future. geosynchronous is where the **** is at, even if that means more lag and weaker coverage for satellite phones

Satellite phones need to have global coverage, that's their whole raison d'etre, and you'd need either some pretty powerful satellites (too expensive) or some enormous antennae (impractical) to get reasonable coverage at higher latitudes and at the poles, which is why Iridium used a constellation of LEO satellites. Also all the global positioning systems (GPS, Glonass, Galileo) use LEO satellites, as do most military and commercial imaging sats.

towel401

well if the military spy satellites were all destroyed by flying debris that would be a good thing and possibly put off the inevitable big brother society for a few more years.

GPS and the like are MEO. much higher than iridium sats anyway. it would be nice if iridium stayed profitable but all the cool kids are using their ordinary GSM phones through gateways that connect to Inmarsat. the coverage just isn't as good on geosynchronous services because of the distance involved and because the sats stay in one place a lot of places end up in radio shadow areas and are left without any coverage. maybe iridium will release some dual-mode phones on their next constellation and have a deal with the ordinary mobile phone operators to let them clean up their unprofitable masts & use iridium instead.

ChocolateSauce

Húrin wrote: »

Do you really believe in such a sci-fi idea of the future? This is almost as batty as the claim that GM food will solve world hunger. We can't expand into space without (at least) three things:

1. a lot of capital
2. a lot of cheap oil
3. the luxury of not having too many terrestrial problems to deal with

We're unlikely to have this combination again in this century.

In the future, yes. Not the near future, but the distant future. In many hundreds, and then thousands of years, when all the pressing problems on Earth have been solved, there's no reason not to go into space. Do you think we'll never do it? I don't think we should go into space more than is needed until things like poverty and hunger have been dealt with.

And what does oil have to do with it? Rockets get into space with oxygen and hydrogen, which can be attained from water.