Wild space 'ferry' concept uses paragliders to return satellites and science to Earth

[Admin]

Outpost recently tested a stratospheric paraglider to return space tech ahead of orbital ventures for NASA and other companies later in the 2020s.

Wild space 'ferry' concept uses paragliders to return satellites and science to Earth : Read more

 

[Wes I]

Does space debris and trash have any economic value while still in orbit? Can any of it be economically repaired, repurposed or remanufactured while in orbit, rather than returned to Earth?

 

[billslugg]

Trash has pretty much no value in space and would be extremely expensive to match orbits such that it could be caught. It would cost about the same amount of money to move a similar amount of mass from Earth to Earth orbit.

 

[Zayvra]

It's either that or...

Tow them into a giant magnet, & use the heap, as moorage for ships. Then, creating a space-station island, for traveling spaceships to dock and replenish supplies.

 

[bolide]

Matching location and orbit with the junk is the hardest part. I wonder if we could put a big electromagnet in orbit in a crowded area, then turn it on only when some piece of junk is passing nearby, to deflect the junk out of its orbit toward the atmosphere.

It's either that or...

Tow them into a giant magnet, & use the heap, as moorage for ships. Then, creating a space-station island, for traveling spaceships to dock and replenish supplies.

 

[billslugg]

The problem with using magnetism in trying to influence an object is that the strength of the magnetic field falls off as the cube of the distance to the object.
This is for two reasons, first the magnetic field falls off by the square of the distance as do EM waves. Second, the magnetic field is produced by a dipole of displaced charge which appears smaller as one moves away by the first power. Add the two and you get the cube.
Junk in orbit would better be slowed by hitting with a laser on the leading face. This could be done from great distance, relative speed is no issue, could even be done from the ground with adaptive optics.

(Edited to get my powers straight.)

 

[RussellB10]

What if we gathered up all the items in orbit around the Earth which are small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, and direct them into the atmosphere? Sizing is an issue. Can be done with a kind of filter. Large sail-like object to collect the objects, with a filter, excluding objects above a certain size, and then redirecting the small objects into the atmosphere. The engineering challenges on this would be considerable. I imagine that the density of the debris in orbit is very low, although it is obviously getting to a point where it is an issue. Low density makes this kind of idea less feasible.

 

[RussellB10]

What percentage of the objects in orbit are small enough to burn up safely in the atmosphere? What percentage by mass?

 

[RussellB10]

With magnetic attraction, a very slow process of deflection might be acceptable, with significant amounts collected over periods of, say, years. The other aspect here is that the magnets may deflect objects large enough to pose a threat, into the atmosphere.

 

[billslugg]

There are very few objects in orbit large enough to survive reentry. Virtually all space junk could be deorbited safely.
Matching the orbit of a piece of debris is extremely costly. Any scheme designed to affect its orbit by getting near the object and matching its speed is not practical.
Spacecraft are made of titanium, aluminum, plastic, copper, stainless steel, none of which are significantly magnetic.

 

[bolide]

What if we gathered up all the items in orbit around the Earth which are small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, and direct them into the atmosphere? Sizing is an issue. Can be done with a kind of filter. Large sail-like object to collect the objects, with a filter, excluding objects above a certain size, and then redirecting the small objects into the atmosphere. The engineering challenges on this would be considerable. I imagine that the density of the debris in orbit is very low, although it is obviously getting to a point where it is an issue. Low density makes this kind of idea less feasible.

The gathering up is the hard part, the rest is simple. But to collect an item, you have to match up speed & location with it. Otherwise all you'd get is a collision at thousands of mph, destroying your collector and creating even more debris. And this is required for each and every little bit of junk that you collect.

 

[Classical Motion]

I would launch a small fleet of laser ionizers. If we ionize the junk, our magnetic field will interact with it, causing the junk to lose velocity. This should bring it down. We can zap it at any angle. Maybe even from the surface. But it needs to be a high frequency and high energy zap. We want as high as a charge as possible on the junk. High voltage zap.