Hauling Secrets

Ever since China destroyed an old weather satellite with an anti-satellite missile in January, there’s been a lot of talk about junk in space. From an article by William J. Broad in the International Herald Tribune:

For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens…
Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests…

A solution to the cascade threat exists but is costly. In his Science paper and in recent interviews, Nicholas Johnson of NASA argued that the only sure answer was environmental remediation, including the removal of existing large objects from orbit…

Robots might install rocket engines to send dead spacecraft careering back into the atmosphere, or ground-based lasers might be used to zap debris…

If nothing is done, a kind of orbital crisis might ensue that is known as the Kessler Syndrome…(which) holds that the space around Earth becomes so riddled with junk that launchings are almost impossible. Vehicles that entered space would quickly be destroyed.

Wikipedia weighs in on space debris:

Proposals have been made for ways to “sweep” space debris back into Earth’s atmosphere, including automated tugs, laser brooms to vaporize or nudge particles into rapidly-decaying orbits, or huge aerogel blobs to absorb impacting junk and eventually fall out of orbit with them trapped inside…Other ideas include the gathering of larger objects into an orbital “junk yard”, where they could be used as resources should future needs arise, while keeping them out of the way.

Forget robots, laser brooms, and aerogel blobs - forget all that. What the world needs is a capable hauler to go into orbit and collect all that space junk. If you’re listening, NASA, I just want you to know that I will volunteer my services for this important job, at no cost to the American taxpayer.

Further reading:

• Some speculation about what happens to a turd in space.
• United Nations System-Wide EARTHWATCH > Solid Wastes > Space junk
• NASA Orbital Debris Program
• Lost Bolts Just Add to Vast Amount of Orbiting Space Junk