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Space Forum / Space Flight / September 2006Method for cleaning up orbital junk
Would it be possible to de-orbit a small bit of orbiting debris by firing a suborbital cloud of oxygen at it? If launched on a suborbital rocket, a tank of LOX would evaporate into a cloud, which would merely rise to a maximum altitude and then fall back to Earth. Any orbiting paint flakes striking the cloud would be decelerated and de-orbit rather quickly. Since the cloud would be very large targeting would be easy, especially if you were aiming at the debris cloud from an exploded upper stage. Jim > Would it be possible to de-orbit a small bit of > orbiting debris by firing a suborbital cloud of > oxygen at it? Probably, but don't go there. > If launched on a suborbital rocket, a tank of LOX > would evaporate into a cloud, which would merely > rise to a maximum altitude and then fall back to > Earth. Life isn't that easy, or the earth's atmosphere wouldn't blend seamlessly into the solar wind. Likely thermal and radiation pressure would keep that cloud aloft for a long time. > Any orbiting paint flakes striking the cloud would > be decelerated and de-orbit rather quickly. I suspect both you and I are underestimating just how huge a quantity of gas would be required to make a difference. The earth's atmosphere is measured in quantities like _gigatons_ of CO2 added per year, and that to achieve a small fraction of a percent total concentration. > Since the cloud would be very large targeting > would be easy, especially if you were aiming at > the debris cloud from an exploded upper stage. But isn't an "exploding upper stage" likely to be mostly a self-curing problem? I can't believe much of it would be in a stable orbit on departing the center of explosion, or that by the time remedial action could be taken that it would be in any sense a "small" target, so that again you'd need huge amounts of LOX or whatever, or that much of it would be in small enough pieces for your scheme to pay off very well compared to just letting the existing atmosphere do its work. You'd probably make pretty bad enemies among operators of low earth orbit satellites. From comments in the long running debate about global warming over in sci.environment, the "top of the atmosphere" for earth, which coexists with the LEO satellites, contains almost no diatomic oxygen, but only free radicals split by the heavy solar radiation unfiltered by ozone, which radicals in turn are deathly reactive with satellite parts. Massively increase the concentrations of those radicals where the satellites orbit, and you might lift eyebrows in some corporate boardrooms of companies operating such satellites. Argon might be a better choice, still relatively cheap, I think, and relatively non-reactive. FWIW. Someone who can do the numbers please comment. xanthian. > > Would it be possible to de-orbit a small bit of > > orbiting debris by firing a suborbital cloud of [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > rise to a maximum altitude and then fall back to > > Earth. Research Project Highwater. It did roughly the same with water. Regards Carsten Nielsen Denmark >>> Would it be possible to de-orbit a small bit of >>> orbiting debris by firing a suborbital cloud of >>> oxygen at it? >>> If launched on a suborbital rocket, a tank of >>> LOX would evaporate into a cloud, which would >>> merely rise to a maximum altitude and then fall >>> back to Earth. > Research Project Highwater. It did roughly the > same with water. Based on the few available useful writeups, that seemed to be mostly a test of the Saturn 5 booster, and the water was just ballast. Still, they tried to do good science with it, perhaps related to interest in what a fleet of supersonic aircraft would do dumping water vapor into the high atmosphere??? What they weren't doing, then, was trying to swat micro-trash out of orbit. That doesn't mean pro or con now whether the OP's suggestion would work. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/higwater.htm http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Saturn_SA2_launch.jpg FWIW xanthian. >>>> Would it be possible to de-orbit a small bit of >>>> orbiting debris by firing a suborbital cloud of [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > xanthian. Every so often someone mentions the possibility of an unfriendly nation launching a high suborbital with a variety of payloads, ball bearings, sand, water and flour all seem to be popular. Basically anything that gets in the way of something that has been deliberately put in orbit is an unfriendly act. If you dumped sand all ball bearing on a trajectory that intercepted the ISSA or satellites for instance the costs would be extremely high to the USA or owner of the satellite in question. Kent Paul Dolan skrev: > > Research Project Highwater. It did roughly the > > same with water. > > Based on the few available useful writeups, that > seemed to be mostly a test of the Saturn 5 booster, > and the water was just ballast. You mean the Saturn 1. The Saturn 5 was used first on Apollo 4. Regards Carsten Nielsen Denmark > > Any orbiting paint flakes striking the cloud would > > be decelerated and de-orbit rather quickly. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > and that to achieve a small fraction of a percent > total concentration. I could be wrong but I suspect the OP was suggesting a small, targetted, localised cloud to deorbit specific objects rather than a huge, planet-covering blanket that would slow down *everything* currently up there. >From reading the OP I envisaged a kind of Planetes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes ) scenario, with a (probably unmanned) vehicle up there for the express purpose of intercepting and squirting gas at any particular bits of debris deemed problematic by ground control. |
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