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A few tons of very cold gas is placed in an orbit around the Earth traveling in the opposite direction to the trash. The gas would very quickly dissipate to the point where it is barely detectable. Nevertheless, for a time, I don't know how long, the gas molecules will continue in orbit and will impact
with trash they encounter slowing it and causing it to drop into a lower orbit. Over time this process could help deorbit the trash.
This gas would have the greatest effect on smaller and lighter trash because such objects have a relatively small amount of mass for their surface area as compared with larger objects. Something as large as a Space Shuttle would easily compensate for any slowing due to this very diffuse orbiting gas. This orbiting gas measure could be thought of as temporarily putting orbiting space trash into a very low orbit.
Space Debris Update
http://www.windows....pdate.html&edu=high
Several articles on space trash [hangingchad, Dec 04 2004]
Planetes
http://animenfo.com...qkfo,planet_es.html
An anime series that uses orbital garbage collection as a premise [5th Earth, Dec 05 2004]
Launch Speeds and Earth Rotation
http://www.aerospac...ecraft/q0115b.shtml
Explains acceleration needed for east-to-west orbit [hangingchad, Dec 06 2004]
Short name, e.g., Bob's Coffee
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E.g., http://www.coffee.com/
Description (displayed with the short name and URL.)
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What happens to the delivery vehicle? Creating space trash to clean up space trash? |
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[ConsulFlaminicus] Upon reaching orbital speed the last stage could pump out the liquified gas or release granular or powdered frozen gas into orbit. The last stage would then deorbit by firing a rocket to slow down and reenter the atmosphere. |
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1: Create delivery vehicle largely out of dry ice. The vehicle itself will emit the gas and disappear when it is done. |
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I have seen a similar idea using sand or scrap metal as an antisatellite/ antispace trash action. The problem would be that orbit would be rendered unusable forever for anyone: sort of a scorched earth procedure. But the sort of thing that might be useful for a nation like North Korea in a fight against the US. The use of gas for this would be less efficient but reversible, and so I give bread. |
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What about the debris travelling at roughly the same velocity as the gas? Why would the gas stay in orbit when our atmosphere is incapable of doing that same at that distance? |
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[wagster] There should be very little debris travelling at the same velocity (and direction) as the gas. The proposal is to place the gas into an East to West orbit. Most satellites (and debris) are in a West to East orbit direction (launching eastward takes advantage of the speed due to the spin of the Earth). Therefore, the gas would strike debris at roughly twice orbital speed. |
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The gas would be in orbit and that is why it would remain (for awhile) at low earth orbit distance from the surface of the Earth. Our atmosphere is almost entirely missing at this distance because it is not at orbital speed (and direction) and because the Earths gravity moves gas molecules not "bouncing" off other molecules toward the center of the Earth. Continual attraction and random "bouncing" results in half of our atmosphere below 5.6 km (18,500 ft) and almost nothing at 161 km (100 mi). |
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[hangingchad] - Both answers seem to hold water to me. I am still a little concerned about the sheer amount of gas you would need, but this might well work. Could I suggest that given current concerns about our climate, CO2 would not be the ideal choice - N perhaps? (Or NO2 for comic effect). |
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This "cleansing wind" would be compensatable by the space station perhaps, but not by many satellites. Most don't have the energy reserves needed to continually adjust their orbits in the face of this wind, and this would impact their accuracy. |
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Wouldn't this also interfere with land-based telescopes? |
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And, of course wayyyyy too much mass would be needed. The costs would be literally astronomical. |
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But you still get my croissant for being interesting :) |
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The cost of putting something in a west-to-east orbit is fairly high. Putting something in a polar orbit is extremely expensive. Putting something in an east-to-west orbit requires an effort similar to putting something on the moon. |
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With what it takes to put something in an orbit like that, you'll create more orbital debris than you could possibly bring down. You said it yourself, the gas would quickly dissipate. It wouldn't be there long enough to stop an orbiting grain of sand, much less a significant chunk of debris. |
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[Freefall] see new link The extra acceleration needed to put something in east-to-west orbit is nowhere like that needed for a Moon mission. From Cape Kennedy an extra acceleration of 2,945 km/hr (1,830 mph) would be required above the 28,886 km/hr (16,085 mph) acceleration for an eastward orbit -- not so significant. In contrast, to go to the Moon an extra acceleration of 11,256 km/hr (7,000 mph) was required. |
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With care I don't see why we couln't manage to put this gas into orbit without adding more junk. We would want to do this with care because any sizeable trash in a east-to-west orbit would be very dangerous to anything in a normal (eastward) orbit. |
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The gas would dissipate. I don't know how fast it would dissipate. I don't know how long it would stay in orbit. If the gas were very cold its expansion in a virtual vacuum would be rather slow. Where the gas goes once placed in orbit should be calculatable. A fairly simple experiment performed from the shuttle in a normal orbit should answer these questions. I just don't know. It's halfbaked. |
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Well put - you done good. I'm with [sophocles] here - you'll just need too much gas, but it's still a good halfbaked solution. Have a bun. |
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