Space Junk

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PJay_A

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I'm really surprised that no one is talking about a growing problem that is becoming more and more serious: space junk.

The international community should start holding serious formal meetings with the goal of researching possible solutions, followed by an agreement of implementation and action.

Here are some solutions I thought of....

-- An orbital fleet of "space robots", satellites with ion drive thrusters for orbital manuverability, robotic arms and hands, and materials recycling and storage capabilities and compartments. The space robots would thrust from orbit to orbit in search of space junk. Once it approaches the space junk, its robotic arms would extend and its robotic hands would grab it. It would then bring the garbage to a unit inside that would melt it down and separate the materials by chemical composition into recyclable "blocks" that would be available for pickup later by another spacecraft that would be equipted to melt it down and mold, deliver, and install it into hardware needed by another already in-orbit satellite or space station.

-- Use focused beams (on ground or in space) to nudge junks' orbits so that each nudge would cause each peice of space junks' orbit to shift ever so closer to a re-entry burn trajectory.
 
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samkent

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Robotic arms to grab paint chips?? How much are you willing to pay, to have a ground controller operate the arm for paint chips?

Most of our sats have JUST ENOUGH fuel to get to their intended orbit never mind hopping from orbit to orbit.

Bring a defunct sat inside to break it down and smelt out the different metals? Imagine the indigestion it the sat still has a fully pressurized fuel tank.

Should we cancel our Orion to pay for this ‘fleet of robots’ to clean up space junk from China?
 
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MeteorWayne

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There are already 2 or 3 ongoing discussions about this subject here at SDC. I am going to merge this thread with one of them.
 
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