Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 12/08/2025 6:12:04 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Sometimes, what goes up doesn’t come back down — instead, it becomes a problem.
Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, millions of pieces orbit the Earth, from broken satellites to lost screws and tiny hunks of splintered paint. The International Space Station has to dodge it. Sometimes, space junk crashes into other space junk, creating more space junk. And while there have been many proposals for technologies to capture and destroy it, there’s not been a system-level plan for dealing with it in a comprehensive way.
This week, researchers at England’s University of Surrey published a paper outlining how to better deal with our celestial litter. The basic idea: make space more sustainable by using less material, repairing what’s already up there, and recycling the junk we can’t repair — and doing it systemically, industry-wide.
While this sounds pretty basic to Earth-dwellers already long-familiar with reduce, re-use, recycle, it really is a “fairly new” concept for the space industry, said Michael Dodge, a professor of space studies at the University of North Dakota, who was not involved in the study. “I’ve never seen it presented this way,” he said. “It’s an area that needs to be discussed further.”
There are currently more than 25,000 pieces of space junk larger than 4 inches in diameter circling the Earth, according to documentation from NASA. Add in smaller bits and that number soars to more than 100 million. Altogether, our space trash weighs upwards of 10,000 tons, according to a 2022 report by the agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at channel3000.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
I’ve long advocated for “Big Balls of Goo”, large polymer targets that would catch junk like 3D flypaper. Guided by a small satellite, even fast and hot junk would just be absorbed. When ‘full’, it would reenter the atmosphere and burn up.
How about a Space Roomba?
Probably not a lot.
Elon needs to develop small space drones that can gather debris and take it back to canisters on a larger mothership. As the canisters get full, they are ejected back to earth and burn up on re-entry.
Hey, it was an excuse to watch the Barnstable twins.
I actually came up with a sweeper concept where a large box container with one end open and reinforced walls go around scooping up space junk, compacting it, and then directing it either to the moon or out of orbit back to earth as a compacted mass. Could be any size, though large enough for an average satellite I think would be best.
I was going to say the same thing.
Front ‘n center: Blondes in hot pants with guns! What’s not to like?
I doubt vacuums work well in a vacuum.
The University of Arizona (UA) is heavily involved in space junk research, primarily through its Space4 Center.
Ben Bova short story...USA and USSR go to the moon; war breaks out. The bullets stay in orbit around the moon. They have to keep ducking on every orbit.
lol
great answer )))
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.