Russia Spending Billions to Clean Up Space Junk

[okibrian]

I hope we have a missile at the ready to shoot it down when it starts to scoop up our GPS satellites, which will stop us from navigating our precision guided weapons, live battle field updates and so on. I want to say thanks to Russia for this, but since they NEVER have done ANYTHING even remotely like this it is really hard for me to believe they don’t have another motive. When was the last time someone talked about Russia reaching out to help another country in any way shape or form? I fully believe they are expecting to pick up space junk with it, but I’m also sure they know the other things they can do with this as well. It’s pretty smart of them. If you cannot beat our weapons that use much higher technology then disrupt or disable that technology by removing our satellites.

 

[falchard]

Obviously the top satellites to de-orbit are "broken" US Spy satellites.

 

[ProDigit10]

good excuse to kick living satelites out of orbit, spying on others, and getting the gold of USA pods as a way to quickly get rich!

 

[ProDigit10]

[citation][nom]Preecher[/nom]Many satellites are already nuclear powered. This is nothing new and not to be feared. The radiation is used to generate electricity. How do you think we get those things to function for decades in space? Its a small nuclear source with no potential for explosion and if I am not mistaken, not very intense with respect to radioactivity. You probably have more radiation from your smoke alarms in your house (albeit its alpha radiation and can be blocked by smoke). Seriously, take your smoke alarm off the ceiling and look at the back... you will see a radiation symbol[/citation]

Sun rays?

But I agree, nuclear pods are less harmful than solar rays!

 

[Guest]

There is an enormous amount of ignorant comments being posted here. Allow me to address a few of the misconceptions.

a) Currently, there are *no* current satellites or probes that use nuclear propulsion. There are some that use RTGs (nuclear batteries) to generate electricity to run essential systems, but not as a means to actually move the satellite. This would be something new.

b) There is essentially zero risk from having nuclear-powered spacecraft in orbit. Containment cores can easily be constructed able to survive accidental deorbiting or even catastrophic launch failure. The nuclear RTG from Apollo 13's lunar module crashed into the Pacific Ocean; there was no release of radioactivity.

c) The "problem" of space debris is certainly real, but not nearly the critical issue some of you seem to believe. Space is far larger than it appears on these debris-tracking maps...and any debris in LEO is going to come down fairly soon on its own anyway. It's the debris in geosynch that remains effectively forever ... but that far out, you're talking about a shell that's nearly 50,000 miles across; a volume nearly 300 times larger than the entire earth.

d) Russia is most definitely not spending $2B to "cleanup space junk". This is a technology demonstrator platform first and foremost, and the technology developed will have enormous defense applications, whether or not this actual satellite itself is used for anything besides satellite capture.

e) For those of you whining about not spending this money on "starving babies", I am truly astounded you are so ignorant and short-sighted. Do you honestly not realize how the exploitation of space has already improved our lives? Hurricane monitoring by weather satellites alone has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and communication satellites have revolutionized the industry.

 

[americanbrian]

Wouldn't it be better just to leave that stuff up there as it has already cost so much energy to get it into orbit. Just move all the redundant stuff into a tidy pile and have a space junk yard for future salvage operations to re-use the material, patch hull, replace solar panels, reclaim heat shielding whatever. Maybe even just take some screws and gasket etc.

It seems insane to burn it up and waste all that energy. just park it in orbit all in one neat pile.

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

Here is the best way to clean up all this mess....think billiards.

Find one satellite that still has some juice in it and that is in one of the higher orbits. Send that sucker careening into another one and let chaos theory take over. They will either leave orbit and be sucked in by gravity therefore burning up on reentry or they will leave orbit slamming into the moon or some other planet. Just stay inside that day and you will be good.

That or a big butterfly net with about 20 rockets attached to it zooming around scooping up all the crap.

 

[eddieroolz]

You know, it would be a good initiative to get their stagnant space program back up and running again. Not to mention create some jobs along the way.