There was a show called `Planetes` that focused on a future where space janitor was a job and the people working in it. We seem to grow closer every day.
The cost for deorbiting space junk should be added to the launch costs of new satellites; otherwise, the taxpayer will end up paying the costs to clean up the mess left from private companies, which would be classic rent seeking.
Well, that might just mean companies stop putting new sattelites up. And that would mean they just keep using the ones that are already up there, which would mean the older satellites that are more likely to fail stay in orbit longer. What might be better is a globally agreed upon fine for leaving behind any space debris, based on the likelihood of it becoming dangerous for future satellites.
A lot of it is from governments and irresponsible BRICS countries. Commercial companies have been required to burn up satellites in the atmosphere for decades. You can't blame Elon for this one.
That's true if the debris is moving at 10,000 km/h relative to the satellite, but if they're able to collide, they're the same distance from earth, so they should be moving at the same speed. There could still be a destructive collision if the orbital planes of the debris and satellite are different, though.
There's also another developing problem with metallic particles being vaporized off of spacecraft and junk during reentry continuing to float around in the atmosphere. An experimental cubesat made of wood called LignoSat was just launched a few weeks ago to test the viability of replacing metal in an attempt to combat the problem.
@@jamesvandamme7786 This reads sarcastic to me, but using wood products is better for global warming because it takes less energy to manufacture them and wood is renewable. Deforestation is bad. Using wood isn't. These aren't the same thing.
if the plan has words like "clean" in it, no one will ever fund it , definitely emphasize the laser gun sounding bit. shoot stuff? yes clean something? never
You realize NASA made that decision. Just like astronomers made a mess of Mauna Kea, and lost out on the TNT. Scientists are terrible about cleaning their messes up.
Actually, think of it as sourcing precious materials from defunct satellites. It’s not cleaning, it’s in-situ resource collection for manufacturing products in space!
Another thing worked out over 45 years ago and yet here we are...... With 130M+ pieces of debris up there they better fire up the lasers quick! I'm not going to fly anywhere😂
Humanity is extremely stupid. We're almost completely incapable of avoiding even the most obvious problems if their time horizon is more than a few months in the future.
@@PeteQuad Compared to where we'd need to be to survive our own technological development. Our knowledge is increasing vastly faster than our intelligence, and that's very likely to be a lethal problem.
Glad to see our focus on polluting every inch of earth's surface will expand to this new frontier! "No continent nor empty space left untouched" (our new motto)
I am sure superpowers would be very interested in a terrestrial laser. Sure: officially to get rid of space junk. But such a device would also come in handy to shoot enemy satelites out of the sky. (and making the problem much, much worse in the process)
I just wanted to say, Russia already has a "Kalina"/"Krona" laser-to-space complex in Caucasus Mountains, how convenient! And I am sure US and China have some too, what a lucky coincidence!
Eh not really, the amount of energy needed to blow up a satellite with a terrestrial laser is insane. A much better plan to remove space trash is to build special satalites that rendezvous with junk and pushes it into the atmosphere.
Yes this is will be a problem, what it will do is increase the risk of using the higher LEO and so drive the choice to use lower orbits which will have shorter self clearing times. This will reduce the lifetime of the in orbit hardware and so increase the cost that has to be charged for the service provided by the orbiting hardware.
...but will be offset more or less by the decreasing cost of launches. I don't know which is the larger number. It will presumably depend on definitions and on the hardware in question.
Not really. It only makes those orbits unviable, you can still leave the planet, as you spend so little time in the danger zone. In the Age of Sail people explored all the oceans, despite many voyages having over 50% casualty rates.
Best comment on Kessler Syndrome read years ago. "All these satellites and debris....why can't we just blow thep up?" That day I learned from the responses to the genius who made the comment a whole bunch of ways to express in English that a person is not very intelligent. You always learn something.
@@AAhmouturns out humans are bad at intuiting things that aren’t important for their explicit personal survival and procreation, and even then it’s sketchy 😂
@@petrosros Just after reading his comment I too thought for a moment that he was joking.....but then he tried to defend his statement.......he wasn't joking. I hope he is never in his life in charge of anything more dangerous than a crayon.
In a small way, I'm glad this is about orbits in space than another health thing to worry about... Every Tuesday our garbage is collected and then a street sweeper comes through...perhaps Waste Management could come up with something??
@@reedrendered Exactly... some ppl get my style of humor. But can you imagine a hulking large garbage truck with "Waste Management" written on it flying through space collecting the space debris? Right out of a Sci-Fi comedy, it's hilarious! LOL
Sabine... you are one of my favourite presenters. I love the information you provide and at least once during every video I chuckle out loud. You are a treasure.
[1:47] Mass is probably not the best indicator. I think that kinetic energy (~4e14 J) compared to a rifle bullet (~3kJ for standard NATO 7,62x51) would be more visualizing. 🙂
There was an episode of the 80s TV show MAX HEADROOM where every year a festival was held when minute pieces of Space Junk would rain down on Earth. People would take heavy-duty umbrellas and walk around al night and have outside parties.
It’s rare to see such a clear explanation of the challenges posed by space debris and Kessler Syndrome. Acknowledging the commercial interest in solving this issue adds an interesting angle, solutions could come faster than expected.
Hopefully, the interest in lasers for de-orbiting will also increase interest in laser launch to put more things up there. Lightcraft are pretty cool, and theoretically very cheap and flexible to operate.
This doesn’t make any sense. The thrust you need to escape a planetary gravity well could never be provided by light. Photon momentum is too low. Between planets? Sure, slowly.
@@JM-cv7nv Light isn't the propellant, it's the energy source heating the propellant. In the case of a lightcraft, the propellant is the surrounding atmosphere, with the laser focused by a parabolic shape into the air intake. Obviously not for interplanetary travel, but saves weight on getting a payload to orbit.
A relative, familiar with this, educated me about the increasing problem of space junk back in the 1970s for future space endeavors. He used to joke that we should open a junkyard on the moon for the abandoned boosters, satellites, and other floating parts.
I am not convinced of the solutions that grabs junk from space and deorbit it. Non only for the immense cost of the operation (a space launch costs several millions, and I don't think someone will spend that amount of money for space ecology), but also because each launch causes the insertion into orbit of other debris. Every time a fairing will jettisoned, every time a second stage release the payload and every time an engine re-inject in space, tiny pieces of metal, paint and insulation materials will be lost and remain in orbit like the rest of the debris. So what's the point? We get rid of big junks for making even more small junks?
It is not a catch-all solution but will be necessary for the bigger pieces like whole broken satellites. It is worth it to create that, let say for the argument 1 kg of debris if it removes 1 ton if trash. Especially since that 1 kg can be engineered down, is RELATIVELY less harmfull and will deorbit quickly.
@@puskajussi37 launch isn't the issue. Even second stage separation. All of these are done in eccentric orbits and/or at low altitudes, so the decay time is short. The issue is for objects that have circularized their orbits in low earth orbit, say 300-450 kms up, like the ISS. Decay of their orbit is very slow at that point.
@KnugLidi Those could be an issue, but I don't see why sending a clean up mission would have to generate such debris in any significant scale. Every kilo of space craft has carefully planned purpose and it generally is not "to be left floating about". The only parts that by design leave debris I can think of are engines with their plumes and explosive bolts. I mean the whole arguments feels to me like a cleaning crew saying "We cannot go clean a messy place because we would also bring in dust and dandriff with us there."
@puskajussi37 So I would say, I have 2 points here: 1 - Bringing something in space causes space debris. A lot? Very few? I don't know. Has anyone done the math to check if the thing is REALLY worth it? 2 - These missions should focus on objects of big dimensions, which is not a big problem as for small debris, nearly impossible to detect in time. So it's a solution designed to solve less than half of the problems. And in the meanwhile we will increase, for every mission, the other half of a bit...
@@scaffale13 The point 1 can be turned around though. Presumably people considering these missions have done and will do the calculations, else they would not be considered a viable option. You have not seen nor done those calculations nor estimates, neither have I for the record, and as such there is no basis for discarding the aproach. Concerns such as this can and should be raised, but with zero data actually worrying about it is pointless. For point 2, you are correct that these missons should and would target just the bigger pieces such as entire satellites. But that is exactly why those should be targetted. Kessler syndrome is not just that there are tiny objects flying about, it is that that the small debris will pummel and break down the bigger pieces creating even more small debris in a cascade. As such, bringing the bigger chunks down is more or less equal to removing the equal mass of small parts with the benefit you don't have to endure the problems of that debris cloud. The syndrome is an exponential process, removing the big seed items will have large effect in Kessler mitigation as it gets to the root of the issue so to speak. And yes, there should be other options too for the smaller space junk or different orbits, like the laser. Any problem is dealt best with using the right tools for the right parts of the job.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Starships on fire off the shoulder of Mechazilla. I watched debris glitter in the dark near the Kessler Gate. All those satellites will be lost in space, like tears in rain. Time to recycle."
My pet theory was that Kessler syndrome actually started in 2019 or so, but that we haven't noticed that it's too late, because you won't notice until collisions have broken up multiple things that you thought were safe, and it takes a while for debris clouds to spread out. Hearing projections that we'll reach it by 2050 makes me thing I jumped the gun, but not by much. It's an exponential effect after all.
A scientific theory detailing a cascade effect. Might this be of the resonance variety? If so, I gotta go find my crowbar and start preparing I guess...
Sabine, thanks for all your wonderful work here! You're part of my daily learning YT fix. Has anyone done an updated predictive model for today's satellites and predicted growth? The Springer article you cite is good but the authors say it's not predictive.
It takes a lot of energy to put something into orbit. Would be nice if we could recycle some of this junk without returning it to Earth or simply scrapping it. Orbital manufacturing is a staple in science fiction... ♻️
@grokeffer6226 not even remotely realistic in cost efficiency, it'd be cheaper to send vacuums to Saturn, suck up a bunch of mass, and return it to earth increasing its mass forcing the debris to fall from our new found gravity well 😂
Let's speak straight! How many people on earth really understands exponential growth? If they had, many things on earth would be different.. But as the things are (plastics, methane, chemical pollution, weapons, meat production, etc.) , I don't believe that humanity will "get out of trouble" on time.. I remember a very old film, "On the Beach", where all the world, except Australia was destroyed after a nuclear war and the nuclear clouds are coming closer and closer, and people desperately demonstrate on the streets whit pamphlets like "there is still hope brothers".. At least this is what I remember, I saw this film in the early 60's! By the way I recommend the film if you don't have seen it! 🤔😀 Is there really "still hope" today?
You mean that putting thousands of satellites into very close orbits isn't a good idea? I'm shocked. This is such a beautiful example of the tragedy of the commons.
This is a similar problem to climate change, micro plastics and Nuclear Waste. Those who were alive before us have left a dreadful mess for all future generations just so they could make some money and have some fun at our expense. How much will all these clean up operations cost and who is paying? Hopefully, low earth orbit will soon be unusable and space travel will become impossible. Also, I'll be interested to know what effect the 13000 tons of junk burning up on re-entry will have on the upper atmosphere over time. The only difference I can see between fossil fuel burning and other issues is that that the long term effects were not predictable with available technologies at the start. Now, however, we knowingly pollute everything everywhere.😢
One of the things I learned from playing Kerbal Space Program is that while a low earth orbit may be around 8km/s relative to the earth. All those LEO satellites are typically going in the same direction at the same speed, which is logical, the speed is their orbit speed and the inclination is a cost factor. Other than Starlink which are at a very low specific orbit with very eccentric inclination and there are thousands of them. Given how political Elon has become, those are likely to become a target for other countries. They can however manouever to avoid collisions but would be interesting to see a simulation of how much effort would be required to Kessler them. If I'm driving down the motorway, there's only so much I can do to avoid a car coming in the opposite direction.
Starlink is not a problem, its literally designed in an unstable orbit that automatically deorbits the satellite. But I can see why people can't seem to leave his companies alone, the cry about trash or some bullshit. When literally starlink is not producing trash. Meanwhile China...
In KSP, the Kerbal Space Center is precisely on the equator. On Earth, there's surprisingly few equatorial launch sites, and the Earth has axial tilt... So almost everything in LEO has some amount of uncorrected inclination, unless the launch had the resources and need to actually get to 0° inclination. And that's before dealing with weird launch requirements like launches from Vandenberg, which can't launch East for safety reasons. And a little bit of inclination is enough; if everything is launched with just a modest inclination but not as a perfect train, you get criss-crossing orbits all over the place. Even if it's a tight band of just 10° inclination, you have relative velocities above 1km/s. So then have a look at a realtime map of LEO satellites, and they're not a tight band of just 10°...
@@gasdive So, those decays still take years, and when a satellite actually blows up, the pieces don't just stay on that orbital track, they get thrown into a huge mess of erratic orbits - some of which *won't* decay any time particularly soon. So if the Starlink system Kessler's itself, the bulk of its junk will fall out of orbit within a decade or two, but some portion of it will likely be around for centuries, and a smaller fraction for millenia.
We are currently working in the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1667 “Advancing Technologies of Very Low Altitude Satellites (ATLAS)” on making VLEO (very low earth orbit) accessible as an alternative to LEO so that we can benefit from the self-cleaning effect.
Well, it does a fair job of describing the problem conceptually. However, the real problem looks nothing like what they showed. There are a lot of problems with that movie as far as physics, timelines, distances, and risks. But, it is Hollywood and the reality is much more boring and tedious so it's ok within context.
Heard a lot about that film when it came out, but never watched it. Tbh, the first non-scientific media I watched that addressed Kessler Syndrome was the early 2000s science-fiction anime "Planetes". It is unexpectedly good (despite an atrocious intro and outro) and touches on a lot of real problems that might arise if space travel becomes accessible for a lot of people.
@@danielschegh9695 When they had Sandra Bullock do the Barbarella routine without it actually being sexy, they showed how hard they were working at making a bad movie. Making that scene not work took effort.
i was just about to give an idea about a space vessel that has a massive super magnet ontop of it in the shape of a half globe, and it flies in low orbit, dragging down and also collecting trash, and then the video says something similar was considerd. Very cool.
Probably this is why they are not already using this technique.. The technology exist and its operational. Maybe the general public is not ready to witness this new type of powerfull and potentially dangerous, destruction laser machine in action. The new technologies that are presented to the public, are not really "new"... We are 10-15 years behind, when it come to knowing what is realised in the R&D departement.
…by definition, ground-based lasers wouldn’t put other nations at risk. Unless the Earth collapses into a black hole the size of a marble (and develops a photon sphere 4.4 millimetres above its surface), those laser beams aren’t coming back down.
One option might be to collect that debris and use it to build needed things in orbit. That way we could get rid of the debris and not have to launch all that much stuff into orbit.
In my old novel a "debrisphere" was created with military purpose. It's interesting to see how many of my contrived world building aligns with real subjects on Sabine's channel. Wonder if tipping the Kesler cascade threshold could ever end up actually serving military purpose in the future 🤔
Can easily see that happening to reduce tech advantage of a more developed country more heavily relying on satellite data, gps, satellite internet connections and so forth. Military aside, it'd have massive detrimental impact on a lot of civilian technologies and applications. The fact the earth would then be surrounded by debris would be very much a secondary issue.
This was actually suggested as a missile defense, back in the 60's and 70's. We worked an older program for removing spent satellites from orbit for the USAF, but it was only prompted because Soviet satellites were exploding (due to battery failures), and scattering debris all over the place. The Russians, when pressed with countermeasures, decides to embed de-orbiting measures, as we did for some military satellites.
Just to be clear, the problem looks nothing like the imagery typically shown. It's not like a junkyard, nor is it possible to see anything like those orbiting white dots. In fact, it is practically impossible to get two or more orbiting objects in a single photo. The distances between objects, and their sizes, would not allow it even if everything gave off white light. Rather, it is more like walking across a firing range where a rifle fires randomly once per week. The odds of it being at the time you are there is almost zero, and if it did fire while you where there, the odds of you being in its path at the time is also almost zero. But, with more satellites, the analogy is more people walking across and rifle firing more often, and if anybody gets hit, the rifle firing frequency will increase again. But, there are also other paths to the other side. It's not a perfect analogy, but we need to be clear about the problem. It isn't anything like a junkyard, and the visuals for it are generally misleading. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but different. Also, to be clear, this only affects a range of orbits at a time, and the density of objects is highest around 800 km I believe. It's serious problem that is being dealt with, slowly, but also isn't quite what some people portray it as.
The problem isnt here and now, but when it comes, it will be exponential if not logarithmic. Once it gets going, there is no going back. Bit like some other global issues. But whatever.... lets ignore them for now, like what is the worst that could happen?
The odds are not almost zero my friend. The ISS has been hit 32x since 2022 and satellites often re-maneuver to avoid collisions on a regular basis, so it's not as rare as you pretend. It's difficult to get a picture of the debris because it's traveling seven times faster than a bullet, most are around 1-10cm in length, and it's orbiting a planet in a pitch black environment which is why other methods are used to track the debris instead of a fancy GoPro camera with the flash on. You are spreading misinformation by saying that the visuals are misleading because those visuals are actual data. It's not hypothetical or AI generated for mood to push an agenda like say... an analogy. These are facts not feelings, so it's not misleading. Anyone can do a search for "track space debris online" and they can see the situation for themselves. These 'people' who portray the problem are literal rocket scientists and experts in their field with real data offered freely to the public so people with ZERO experience or education on the subject don't go around creating false narratives to make themselves feel better, like climate change.
Well to be quite clear, and candid - that was the most unclear silly exposition I've had the miserable time to peruse in the past year or more. I hope that is clear to you.
As someone that shoots astro-photography as a hobby, I can assure you that's not true. I have narrow field 30 second images that have up to 10 satellite trails in each one. Adn these are only the ones I can see just after /prior to sunset / sunrise. And it only requires a tiny particle from one previous collision to create thousands more particles.
@@danielschegh9695 it's a problem that increases exponentially as objects are added - and starlink has been spamming objects into orbit like it doesn't matter. Ironically Musk may end up being the one who cuts us off from space before we even get started, because he doesn't believe in 'regulating' companies - especially his own.
The ESA website states that the Clearspace mission is planned to be launched in 2028 - given the reliability of ESA launch plans in recent years, it means it will not launch before 2030. The website also says that the mission has been procured by ESA as a service contract in 2020. If it takes over 10 years to remove a single debris…
Yeah Richard, the guy who wants to put 42,000 of his fucking Starlink stats (plus dozens of thousands more in various other planned constellations from competitors) and is now part of a fascist A-Team of deplorable baboons that wants to deregulate everything at the expense of your safety and heath, is going to be concerned by space trash, while he has no qualms in trashing Earth for profits with his science denier fascist buddies. Sure. 🙄
They have plans for their own satellites, aside from that they are just a launch contractor basically, so would facilitate customers paying to launch any debris removal systems the customers come up with. Or they could be contracted to scoop up old satellites with starship, but I doubt they'd take the initiative on their own unless it was vital for their continued operations.
Does SpaceX even have anything in GEO? Their LEO stuff is so low that it goes away in 10 years or so no matter what they do. If Starlink went out of business today, their satellites would fall out of the sky over a few years assuming they stopped boosting them, or they run out of fuel in a decade or so and then fall.
True or not, one factoid came out in the SDI “Star Wars” research was that focused beams of laser or particles splayed-out of coherence, even in space, thus reducing the necessary focus. That may or may not have been overcome in forty years of study, but that might work to an vantage in fanning a portion of the sky with tightly-packed rays whose rays diverge from earth’s surface on radials. Reflections could trigger a stylus change in each to draw a focus, not to destroy the beasts, but to slow them or disrupt their balance of motion versus gravity. They’ll either bug-out into space or decay rapidly into equatorial seas.
It is actually less of a problem in Low Earth Orbit. Due to atmospheric drag , anything that is at LEO won't stay up long, eventually the drag will slow them enough that they can no longer orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. Any Kessler Cascade cvent at LEO will clear up in few dozen years if left to its own device.
A few tons of metal in the atmosphere is nothing. Any sizeable volcanic eruption spews hundreds of tons of much worse junk into the stratosphere. You can find dozens of peer-reviewed papers as well as vulgarization about metal dispersion from volcanic plumes.
Having ground based laser able to pinpoint and kill debris would be super handy for dealing with oher stuff... planes, satelites, rockets etc. And if those were even semi mobile then blinding lots of spying eyes would be easy to do.
At about the 2-minute mark I started wondering whether a strong enough laser could either nudge the orbits or potentially burn up the debris. A minute later the video touched on these ideas and it's good to know that it was an obvious idea.
Bear with me, take scrap armour plating and launch masses into space. Need to be angled sufficiently so that the down side causes deorbiting from the collision and the up side causes debris to move to a new,higher orbit. Make the shield thick enough and any metal flaked off by the collision would also follow the space junk. You could plow the field , so to speak and keep moving the shield higher and higher to slowly clear lanes. Whatever we do, it’s going to take a multitude of methods to clear it all. Just as it’s taking a multitude of methods to clear the waste pollution on earth.
and if they pass, we still have rocks to throw at them.... (I expect a space travelling species don't fear a few low velocity impacts... Otherwise they will have a hard time during the trip)
We don´t need to go into the universe, before we have our own world in our safe hands. Sabine - You are one of very few in this world, that understand the purpose and meaning, so THANKS ❤
yeah but those have the self capability of deorbiting at end of life. the real issue is with space debris that's dead or even incapable of deorbiting on its own
All in ver low earth orbit (on purpose) where they will deorbit in a few years on their own. This is not really the problem being discussed here. If however one was to complain about the amount of heavy metals bring injected into the atmosphere with each retired starlink satellite, there a person would be on firmer ground to complain. But then if not Starlink it would be some other company, so... Not really a Musk specific problem.
I remember that one, i think it was said quite some time ago that this could softlock space travel for the future. There was also an idea about knock off effect, that could wipe all the satelites in orbit, it was something along the side if there will be enough debries, random collision can produce cascading effect, eventually wiping all the hardware from orbit. Sort of like demolition dominos at flying around at high speeds. Laser idea i think is double trouble, not only can it help to remove the debreis as intended but may be able to develop anti-ICBM tech which is in my eyes crucial.
My idea for capturing oribital debris is based upon the sticky material used in those stretchy/sticky hands that we used to buy in gumball machines back in the 90's. A giant sheet of it moving in the direction of the debris, at comparable speeds, could catch the bits and pieces and then deorbit on its own. Sending numerous sheets in different orbits could theoretically capture the small shards and paint chips that are currently not on the radar for capture.
@@bumbo222as RoryJamesFord said, they need to be going "comparable speeds". The problem, of course, is how to get your catchers mitt to the necessary velocity. iirc, everything at the same altitude is traveling the same speed. But they aren't moving in the same direction (i.e., velocity). A big question is: how many pieces of debris are at a particular orbit level with close enough velocities? Engineers will have to evaluate every such group of debris, to see if it's worth it to get a garbage scow up to speed to catch that particular group of such debris.
@SabineHossenfelder, shooting a laser at a satellite will not change its orbit since the momentum of light is very small. Vaporizing one side of a satellite will change its momentum, of course, but it will also produce many smaller pieces and accelerate the process toward the Kessler syndrome.
When you initially explained the Kessler Syndrome you didn't actually mention collisions. The issue is not the debris of a few satellite spreading out but rather that once there are enough they start hitting other satellites, breaking them up and causing a cascade of more and more debris. You mention 'creates a cascade' but didn't really mention that it was due to debris hitting other satellites. Also when mentioning various recent events you also didn't really explain that some are much more serious than others depending on altitude. Low satellites experience quite a lot of atmospheric drag and any debris in that region will experience orbit decay in a few years or decades whereas higher up at geostationary orbit the space junk is more or less permanent.
That's a good observation, there's so much money involved in space exploration and Innovation you would think that there would be the opportunity to make tremendous amounts of money off of gathering space junk and keeping it there and reprocessing it
@@doomoo5365 No, it is much much cheaper to launch new stuff than to try and reprocess existing satellites. Repairing / refueling existing satellites has some use cases because some satellites are very very expensive eg hubble. SpaceX is making launching new mass cheaper and cheaper and it won't be long ( a decade maybe) before they could capture a satellite from orbit, bring it back to earth, have it repaired then relaunch it.
I believe it's inevitable. Whenever there are enough humans in one place it turns into a junk heap. It's simply what we do. We've reached the point where the "one place" is Earth 😢
YES!!! I've thought about getting rid of space junk in orbit and how to get rid of it. My solution that I thought of was this: 1. In order to rid an object in orbit the easiest would be to slow down its orbital speed. An object's orbital speed is what helps it escape the Earth's gravity. If you slow down its orbit, it will de-orbit and burn up. The slower it moves, the quicker it burns up. 2. So, the idea is to put some "brakes on" or slow it down. The only way to do this is to apply a significant force to it in the opposite direction of its orbit. 3. The easiest way to catch what could relatively be a small object is a net. Precision isn't that necessary. 4. The net has to weigh a lot, in order for this to work. The way to add weight to it is to add weights to the net's edges. So, someone apparently had the same idea and tested it!!! 7:33 Woohoo!!!
You're missing #5: It has to be cheap enough for someone to fund it. That's always the biggest problem when it comes to cleaning up the messes we've made.
@@JordanLyon-w8e Probably not electromagnets as you'd need a power source strong enough to make them useful, which likely won't attach to a net all that well. You could attach permanent magnets I suppose, but it's really not all that useful. Space is really, really big and just tossing a magnet out in the hopes that something will be passing by close enough and slow enough to get picked up is unfathomably small. It's more like a dogcatchers net than a troller's net - intended to capture just the one target with a bit of a margin for error. Magnets have been discussed in their own right, but still not in the troller's net style (again, space is really really big). It's more like using the magnetic field as a "net" to pick up smaller stuff that an actual net wouldn't be able to easily contain (but still typically only a handful of localized targets that you've identified ahead of time so you know where to find them, what speed you need to move to capture them, etc.).
@altrag As long as all the satellites go in the same direction, this'll work. But if satellite paths start crossing and a catastrophe or attack occurs on enough satellites, this wouldn't work. I thought you were talking about cleaning up a debris field in that event.
@@JordanLyon-w8e Nothing will get "all the satellites", and they definitely don't all go in the same direction. But we're not trying to scoop up functioning satellites anyway, so that's not super relevant. If a satellite gets smashed though, most of the debris it generates _does_ go in at least approximately the same direction. If you can get close enough with a strong magnet before the stuff spreads apart too far, you can potentially clean up a fair bit of it in one go. Of course I have no idea how realistic that potential is, never mind how cost-effective. But that's the idea people are working with anyway. As noted in one of these other comments, we're going to need multiple solutions eventually. No single solution works for every piece of junk up there. Nets work for "big" stuff but would be challenging or impossible to use for small stuff. Magnets might work for "close together" stuff but would be relatively ineffective for "far apart" stuff. Lasers wouldn't care how far apart stuff is but they'd only work for "small" stuff as the photons wouldn't have enough energy to sufficiently modify the trajectory of something heavy. There's probably other solutions I've forgotten (or just haven't heard of) with other trade-offs as well.
The thing everybody forgets is that the velocity of new pieces is not the same velocity as the incoming piece. To do that, power would be generated by the collision.
1:21 -- that´s a deep fake, this is not Dr. Sabine, you can recognize it by the shoes.😂 2:44 -- the destruction of the RedPhone would be a desaster indeed.😅 Thanks for another interesting report. As we see once more, it´s much easier not to release crap in the first place than removing it.
I contacted the ACME Solutions Department and they suggested one of their gigantic magnets. Simply aim it up and anything ferrous will be dragged down. I'm also getting a bid from Planet Spaceball to contract out Mega Maid and her gigantic vacuum cleaner.
Great topic! Debris and functioning equipment should be considered as to their conductivity, as well. Solar energies can radiate and charge these items.
I saw a recent article about them testing refueling satellites. Each time they do that there will be some spills or leakage and then that becomes yet more junk orbiting...
The Anime „Planetes“ overarching plot is the main characters being space debris cleanup in the year 2075- while humanity has just barely established some habitable moon facilities. Earth is heavily polluted aswell… i dont like the parallels with the future were running into! Also, the space debris is one thing- i hope they clean up the heavy oil from sunken ww2 ships aswell- otherwise the polluted ocean gets way too real fast. Great Documentary is (Black tears of the sea) by Arte
@@Jason1975ism Of course that is pretty much the best source of information we have on them. So yeah, we will be remembered for the garbage landfills and a layer of concrete and plastics in the geologic record. lol
@@JC-nl3nh Piss and shit don't pollute and in the cases of feces actually act as fertilizer and help spread seeds that cause new growth. It's not the same thing.
Honestly the laser solution seems like the only one that could even come close to dealing with the problem in a reasonable amount of time. An array of lasers could be firing pretty much 24/7 (power and heating issues allowing), de-orbiting hundreds or thousands of pieces an hour. The power costs would be high, but should be a more or less solid state system that's easy to operate. By comparison, trying to de-orbit junk using blockers, nets, grabbers, harpoons and so on generally risks creating MORE junk, and also requires you to be firing hundreds of rockets up into orbit, just to de-orbit other rocket junk. This might be necessary for particularly large pieces that lasers can't slow down in a reasonable period of time, but should generally be a last resort. Most satellites *should* have been designed to de-orbit themselves at EOL at any rate, though of course a damaged one may not be able to do so.
Some of the smartest, best educated humans that ever lived, sent those objects into low-earth orbit, yet nobody created a plan to stop space turning into a giant rubbish dump. The fault, dear humanoids, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
You're right, but you don't, have to, structure, your sentences, like this. Pausing, for emphasis, becomes, much less effective, if you, do it, constantly. Comma.
So many radical predictions about the Space Age in science fiction, but no one was so radical as to guess that it might just come to an end in as little as 70 years.
In case anyone reads this, I recommend the anime Planetes, is a futuristic series about a group of worker that cleans debris from orbit to avoid the Kessler Syndrome
What I also like is that the company that has them on payroll only does it because they are forced to by regulation that happened * after * a civilian transfer shuttle exploded due to debris collision, and they still do it reluctantly giving them the most obsolete equipment available to do the job. Which is totally how I expect things will play out IRL as well.
4:28 it’s not backed by the Indian Space Agency?!!?! No, but for real, how are we closer to solving the litter crisis in space than in the country of India. What an existence we humans live in!
How hard is it to catch small debris in space? Remember, the orbit surface area is 4 pi times orbit radius squared. So, for low earth orbit at altitude 1000 km, add earth's radius 6,378 km (equatorial), you get 54,434,884 (km)^2. And you're looking for an M8 nut there, the probability is dividing ~(pi*8^2)/4 mm with that, or ~ (8^2)e-6/((7378^2)e+10^6) = ((8/7378)^2)e-12 = (1.176e-6)e-12 = 1.176e-18. That's very small, it's 1 in quintrillion, that's why satellites still works. I have to admit that I didn't factor effective functional orbit in to account for higher probability. But, you see, debris flies into unknown orbit, so it might as well totally random.
I prefer using a web made from giant space spiders. They construct the web in orbit between a handful of charging stations that act as the edges of the web. Then the web catches debris and the spiders use the material to make more webbing. Whatever they can't use is dumped to Earth in the web. What could go wrong?
A few years ago Elon Musk said that when Starship starts making regular orbital launches, its huge cargo bay could be used to help clean up orbital debris. Now that SpaceX is close to this goal Musk should be held to this claim. Starship would have the benefit of returning the debris back to Earth intact rather than just burning it up in the atmosphere. To SpaceX's credit, the Starlink satellites that now make up 60-62% of everything that's been launched into orbit are designed to avoid collisions, and are low enough to burn up in the atmosphere within about five years if they become uncontrollable. Also, might this be a good time to push for the Breakthrough Starshot project? When not accelerating micro probes towards Proxima Centauri, the powerful ground-based lasers the project envisions could perform other useful functions, such as cleaning up orbital debris or perhaps even helping to deflect threatening asteroids or NEOs.
The answer to the Fermi Paradox. No Alien civilization has managed to get past the point where they full their planets lower earth orbits completely with space junk that makes it is too dangerous to launch alien beings beyond the junk
My main argument with those that preach kessler syndrome catastrophe is that they use graphics that have the same flaw of every solar system model. You can't possibly be faithful to the immensity of the space between objects and still have it fit in a screen. I don't see evidence that we're close at all with such a syndrome in higher orbit objects, and lower orbit objects don't tend to last very long, the damage would not be that long. Anything that is orbiting below 600 km will not last more than 5 years without working engines. The ISS would've fallen a long time ago by gravity if it wasn't for humans constantly accelerating it. Now, objects above 600 km do take a long time, but the space available grows exponentially.
it's just sizes, math, and statistics. Forget the visual representation just look at the numbers. It's not so much about the big objects it's more about the small objects that are orbiting at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. Even a paint chipping can kill you in space.
It's just statistics. A piece of a screw weighing roughly as much as a bullet travelling at ten times the speed of said bullet relative to it's target, say, a geostationary communications sattelite, will go through electronics like... a bullet, really, disabling the satellite, knocking it off of its orbit, and probably knock loose several pieces, which will go on to hit other targets at relatively large speeds, setting up a chain reaction of debris generating more debris and breaking our stuff. That's what the Kessler Syndrome is all about. Statistically, as the amount of crap spinning around the globe that we are unable to track increases, it will cause more collisions which will cause more untrackable crap to spin around the globe, making keeping anything in the more popular orbits for long periods of time impossible.
I always thought that orbits were difficult to get into without the proper planning of a trajectory. How is it that a collision between satellites (mostly moving at the same speed) causes them to fragment into many tens of pieces that continue on in almost perfect orbit?
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
If Nasa sent tourists to space with explicit instructions about not taking souvenirs, the junk would simply disappear. Haha.
I like that solution!
@SabineHossenfelder lol!
Great idea!
Or push the ISS back up with a giant mylar net!
That was the moment the world realized Aaron was a genius. 😂
There was a show called `Planetes` that focused on a future where space janitor was a job and the people working in it. We seem to grow closer every day.
And it was surprisingly realistic. Highly recommend!
Very good anime. Too short.
I'm not much of an anime fan, but I bought this on Bluray a few years back and really enjoyed it, and so did my daughter.
Is Tony soprano the head of aerospace waste management?
Sabine is collecting nerds 👍
The cost for deorbiting space junk should be added to the launch costs of new satellites; otherwise, the taxpayer will end up paying the costs to clean up the mess left from private companies, which would be classic rent seeking.
Well, that might just mean companies stop putting new sattelites up. And that would mean they just keep using the ones that are already up there, which would mean the older satellites that are more likely to fail stay in orbit longer.
What might be better is a globally agreed upon fine for leaving behind any space debris, based on the likelihood of it becoming dangerous for future satellites.
A lot of it is from governments and irresponsible BRICS countries. Commercial companies have been required to burn up satellites in the atmosphere for decades. You can't blame Elon for this one.
Adding to the cost of new satellites IS a tax!
That money will be handy for Jamie Diamon's next bonus
It would be a classic negative externality. Space junk is just another form of pollution.
Thank you for putting the ad at the end of the video. because of that, I actually watched it instead of skipping it.
"Smaller than 1 cm" is no comfort. A 1 cm large piece of metal moving at 10000 km/h can still blow a nice big hole through any satellite.
Most bullets used in combat are less than a centimeter. They do immense damage if moving fast enough.
Especially since the parts are moving at around 38.000 km/h......
That's true if the debris is moving at 10,000 km/h relative to the satellite, but if they're able to collide, they're the same distance from earth, so they should be moving at the same speed. There could still be a destructive collision if the orbital planes of the debris and satellite are different, though.
There is an invisible man up there too.
Or an astronaut's leg. 😮
There's also another developing problem with metallic particles being vaporized off of spacecraft and junk during reentry continuing to float around in the atmosphere. An experimental cubesat made of wood called LignoSat was just launched a few weeks ago to test the viability of replacing metal in an attempt to combat the problem.
Cars and planes can be made of wood.
Well, that reduces global warming.
@@jamesvandamme7786 This reads sarcastic to me, but using wood products is better for global warming because it takes less energy to manufacture them and wood is renewable. Deforestation is bad. Using wood isn't. These aren't the same thing.
@guard13007 if we forget about negligence in commerce, this might be a good option
if the plan has words like "clean" in it, no one will ever fund it , definitely emphasize the laser gun sounding bit.
shoot stuff? yes
clean something? never
You realize NASA made that decision. Just like astronomers made a mess of Mauna Kea, and lost out on the TNT.
Scientists are terrible about cleaning their messes up.
Trash collection is a high paying job
It’s the American way!!!
Call it "Project Pyew! Pyew!"
Actually, think of it as sourcing precious materials from defunct satellites. It’s not cleaning, it’s in-situ resource collection for manufacturing products in space!
I just taught my students about this the other day. I'll have them watch this video. Great timing.
Another thing worked out over 45 years ago and yet here we are...... With 130M+ pieces of debris up there they better fire up the lasers quick! I'm not going to fly anywhere😂
130M+ pieces, if each piece were "pits" on a CD (no MP3, WAV!) you could listen to that space music for 97 seconds
Ask the Brits. (About te lazers)
Humanity is extremely stupid. We're almost completely incapable of avoiding even the most obvious problems if their time horizon is more than a few months in the future.
@@VastinCompared to what?
@@PeteQuad Compared to where we'd need to be to survive our own technological development. Our knowledge is increasing vastly faster than our intelligence, and that's very likely to be a lethal problem.
Glad to see our focus on polluting every inch of earth's surface will expand to this new frontier! "No continent nor empty space left untouched" (our new motto)
Nothing came from anywhere else but the earth, it all belongs here.
@@thedave7760 What? The entire Earth came from other areas of space.
@@rasta77-x7o 4.5 billion years ago, a lot of things were different.
Space is the new ghetto.
"will expand"? Nope. Has expanded.
Have another Starship full of Starlink orbiting junk piles
I am sure superpowers would be very interested in a terrestrial laser. Sure: officially to get rid of space junk. But such a device would also come in handy to shoot enemy satelites out of the sky. (and making the problem much, much worse in the process)
The 1980s called
They want thier Space War Scenario back 😂😅
They've already tested it.
I just wanted to say, Russia already has a "Kalina"/"Krona" laser-to-space complex in Caucasus Mountains, how convenient! And I am sure US and China have some too, what a lucky coincidence!
Oh sh*t, can they put mirrors on it to deflect the attack?
Eh not really, the amount of energy needed to blow up a satellite with a terrestrial laser is insane.
A much better plan to remove space trash is to build special satalites that rendezvous with junk and pushes it into the atmosphere.
There was a TV show in 1979 with Andy Griffith. The show name was Salvage 1. It was a show about collecting garbage in space.
I remember that show. I thought it was a TV movie.
I remember try to decide if a cement mixer would actually work as a space ship when I was 10.
Space pickers.
I remember it.
I mean, Kessler syndrome was proposed in 1978. I'm guessing that inspired the show.
Yes this is will be a problem, what it will do is increase the risk of using the higher LEO and so drive the choice to use lower orbits which will have shorter self clearing times. This will reduce the lifetime of the in orbit hardware and so increase the cost that has to be charged for the service provided by the orbiting hardware.
...but will be offset more or less by the decreasing cost of launches. I don't know which is the larger number. It will presumably depend on definitions and on the hardware in question.
@@tvuser9529 The cost of replacing hardware is a lot more than the cost from the launch provider of a higher altitude on the initial launch
We will likely need to update the hardware on all existing satellites soon anyway.
Ah, that is how a species gets stuck on their own planet.
Fermi paradox solved!
Free protection from invasion IMO…😂
Not really. It only makes those orbits unviable, you can still leave the planet, as you spend so little time in the danger zone. In the Age of Sail people explored all the oceans, despite many voyages having over 50% casualty rates.
you-were-planning-to-leave-dufus?!...:))
We were always destined to be so intelligent that we die under a pile of our own trash.
Best comment on Kessler Syndrome read years ago.
"All these satellites and debris....why can't we just blow thep up?"
That day I learned from the responses to the genius who made the comment a whole bunch of ways to express in English that a person is not very intelligent.
You always learn something.
I always find it interesting how much a person's (uneducated) intuitive answer can make a problem worse.
@@AAhmouturns out humans are bad at intuiting things that aren’t important for their explicit personal survival and procreation, and even then it’s sketchy 😂
Or, he had a lovely sense of humour
I don't understand, if we can blow up an incoming asteroid (Michael Bay did a documentary about this), why wouldn't it work for space debris?
@@petrosros Just after reading his comment I too thought for a moment that he was joking.....but then he tried to defend his statement.......he wasn't joking.
I hope he is never in his life in charge of anything more dangerous than a crayon.
I love the detail with which you address the issues. Your wonderful sense of humor is the icing on the top.
In a small way, I'm glad this is about orbits in space than another health thing to worry about... Every Tuesday our garbage is collected and then a street sweeper comes through...perhaps Waste Management could come up with something??
No, waste management under an atmosphere is utterly diffeent from the vacuum of space.
Waste Management cant even reliably pick up my trash at my house, aint no way theyre figuring anything out soon 😂
@@StuHol-jb1hh Well, since their service sucked (at times) I figured they knew how to work in a vacuum.
@@StuHol-jb1hhgather the space junk with drones have a reprocessing spacecraft and feed the waste into a plasma reprocessor or something
@@reedrendered Exactly... some ppl get my style of humor. But can you imagine a hulking large garbage truck with "Waste Management" written on it flying through space collecting the space debris? Right out of a Sci-Fi comedy, it's hilarious! LOL
Sabine... you are one of my favourite presenters. I love the information you provide and at least once during every video I chuckle out loud. You are a treasure.
[1:47] Mass is probably not the best indicator. I think that kinetic energy (~4e14 J) compared to a rifle bullet (~3kJ for standard NATO 7,62x51) would be more visualizing. 🙂
Yup. Garbage collection is a very different job than missile interception
There was an episode of the 80s TV show MAX HEADROOM where every year a festival was held when minute pieces of Space Junk would rain down on Earth. People would take heavy-duty umbrellas and walk around al night and have outside parties.
It’s rare to see such a clear explanation of the challenges posed by space debris and Kessler Syndrome. Acknowledging the commercial interest in solving this issue adds an interesting angle, solutions could come faster than expected.
this is so cool, I can just imagine solar powered AI controlled robots cleaning up space debris, straight out if a sci fi film
Hopefully, the interest in lasers for de-orbiting will also increase interest in laser launch to put more things up there. Lightcraft are pretty cool, and theoretically very cheap and flexible to operate.
This doesn’t make any sense. The thrust you need to escape a planetary gravity well could never be provided by light. Photon momentum is too low. Between planets? Sure, slowly.
@@JM-cv7nv Light isn't the propellant, it's the energy source heating the propellant. In the case of a lightcraft, the propellant is the surrounding atmosphere, with the laser focused by a parabolic shape into the air intake. Obviously not for interplanetary travel, but saves weight on getting a payload to orbit.
A relative, familiar with this, educated me about the increasing problem of space junk back in the 1970s for future space endeavors. He used to joke that we should open a junkyard on the moon for the abandoned boosters, satellites, and other floating parts.
I am not convinced of the solutions that grabs junk from space and deorbit it. Non only for the immense cost of the operation (a space launch costs several millions, and I don't think someone will spend that amount of money for space ecology), but also because each launch causes the insertion into orbit of other debris. Every time a fairing will jettisoned, every time a second stage release the payload and every time an engine re-inject in space, tiny pieces of metal, paint and insulation materials will be lost and remain in orbit like the rest of the debris. So what's the point? We get rid of big junks for making even more small junks?
It is not a catch-all solution but will be necessary for the bigger pieces like whole broken satellites.
It is worth it to create that, let say for the argument 1 kg of debris if it removes 1 ton if trash. Especially since that 1 kg can be engineered down, is RELATIVELY less harmfull and will deorbit quickly.
@@puskajussi37 launch isn't the issue. Even second stage separation. All of these are done in eccentric orbits and/or at low altitudes, so the decay time is short. The issue is for objects that have circularized their orbits in low earth orbit, say 300-450 kms up, like the ISS. Decay of their orbit is very slow at that point.
@KnugLidi Those could be an issue, but I don't see why sending a clean up mission would have to generate such debris in any significant scale. Every kilo of space craft has carefully planned purpose and it generally is not "to be left floating about". The only parts that by design leave debris I can think of are engines with their plumes and explosive bolts.
I mean the whole arguments feels to me like a cleaning crew saying "We cannot go clean a messy place because we would also bring in dust and dandriff with us there."
@puskajussi37 So I would say, I have 2 points here:
1 - Bringing something in space causes space debris. A lot? Very few? I don't know. Has anyone done the math to check if the thing is REALLY worth it?
2 - These missions should focus on objects of big dimensions, which is not a big problem as for small debris, nearly impossible to detect in time. So it's a solution designed to solve less than half of the problems. And in the meanwhile we will increase, for every mission, the other half of a bit...
@@scaffale13
The point 1 can be turned around though. Presumably people considering these missions have done and will do the calculations, else they would not be considered a viable option. You have not seen nor done those calculations nor estimates, neither have I for the record, and as such there is no basis for discarding the aproach. Concerns such as this can and should be raised, but with zero data actually worrying about it is pointless.
For point 2, you are correct that these missons should and would target just the bigger pieces such as entire satellites. But that is exactly why those should be targetted. Kessler syndrome is not just that there are tiny objects flying about, it is that that the small debris will pummel and break down the bigger pieces creating even more small debris in a cascade. As such, bringing the bigger chunks down is more or less equal to removing the equal mass of small parts with the benefit you don't have to endure the problems of that debris cloud. The syndrome is an exponential process, removing the big seed items will have large effect in Kessler mitigation as it gets to the root of the issue so to speak.
And yes, there should be other options too for the smaller space junk or different orbits, like the laser. Any problem is dealt best with using the right tools for the right parts of the job.
How ironic that communication equipment turns in to emr blocker the great filter
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Starships on fire off the shoulder of Mechazilla. I watched debris glitter in the dark near the Kessler Gate. All those satellites will be lost in space, like tears in rain. Time to recycle."
Ah yes... The fabled "lost first take" - I thought it was just legend...
so that's what noiro looks like from the front?
Time... to ban billionaires
You’re right. I don’t believe it.
Me: mom I want Blade Runner
Mom: we have Blade Runner at home
Blade Runner at home:
My pet theory was that Kessler syndrome actually started in 2019 or so, but that we haven't noticed that it's too late, because you won't notice until collisions have broken up multiple things that you thought were safe, and it takes a while for debris clouds to spread out.
Hearing projections that we'll reach it by 2050 makes me thing I jumped the gun, but not by much. It's an exponential effect after all.
A scientific theory detailing a cascade effect. Might this be of the resonance variety? If so, I gotta go find my crowbar and start preparing I guess...
Sabine, thanks for all your wonderful work here! You're part of my daily learning YT fix.
Has anyone done an updated predictive model for today's satellites and predicted growth? The Springer article you cite is good but the authors say it's not predictive.
It takes a lot of energy to put something into orbit. Would be nice if we could recycle some of this junk without returning it to Earth or simply scrapping it. Orbital manufacturing is a staple in science fiction... ♻️
to do this we would need boots in space so a rotating space station and orbital assembly / service / satellite platforms
That's what I was thinking, too. I'm guessing it wouldn't be cost effective, but I don't know.
In short the debris is too fast, too small and too unpredictable. There is no good way to do this
@grokeffer6226 not even remotely realistic in cost efficiency, it'd be cheaper to send vacuums to Saturn, suck up a bunch of mass, and return it to earth increasing its mass forcing the debris to fall from our new found gravity well 😂
Man all this dooming is getting annoying. This issue seems fixable with enough effort. Use a large electromagnetic coil as a scoop. Easy
Let's speak straight! How many people on earth really understands exponential growth? If they had, many things on earth would be different.. But as the things are (plastics, methane, chemical pollution, weapons, meat production, etc.) , I don't believe that humanity will "get out of trouble" on time.. I remember a very old film, "On the Beach", where all the world, except Australia was destroyed after a nuclear war and the nuclear clouds are coming closer and closer, and people desperately demonstrate on the streets whit pamphlets like "there is still hope brothers"..
At least this is what I remember, I saw this film in the early 60's! By the way I recommend the film if you don't have seen it! 🤔😀
Is there really "still hope" today?
You mean that putting thousands of satellites into very close orbits isn't a good idea? I'm shocked. This is such a beautiful example of the tragedy of the commons.
This is a similar problem to climate change, micro plastics and Nuclear Waste. Those who were alive before us have left a dreadful mess for all future generations just so they could make some money and have some fun at our expense. How much will all these clean up operations cost and who is paying? Hopefully, low earth orbit will soon be unusable and space travel will become impossible. Also, I'll be interested to know what effect the 13000 tons of junk burning up on re-entry will have on the upper atmosphere over time.
The only difference I can see between fossil fuel burning and other issues is that that the long term effects were not predictable with available technologies at the start. Now, however, we knowingly pollute everything everywhere.😢
One of the things I learned from playing Kerbal Space Program is that while a low earth orbit may be around 8km/s relative to the earth. All those LEO satellites are typically going in the same direction at the same speed, which is logical, the speed is their orbit speed and the inclination is a cost factor.
Other than Starlink which are at a very low specific orbit with very eccentric inclination and there are thousands of them. Given how political Elon has become, those are likely to become a target for other countries. They can however manouever to avoid collisions but would be interesting to see a simulation of how much effort would be required to Kessler them. If I'm driving down the motorway, there's only so much I can do to avoid a car coming in the opposite direction.
Starlink is not a problem, its literally designed in an unstable orbit that automatically deorbits the satellite. But I can see why people can't seem to leave his companies alone, the cry about trash or some bullshit.
When literally starlink is not producing trash.
Meanwhile China...
In KSP, the Kerbal Space Center is precisely on the equator. On Earth, there's surprisingly few equatorial launch sites, and the Earth has axial tilt... So almost everything in LEO has some amount of uncorrected inclination, unless the launch had the resources and need to actually get to 0° inclination. And that's before dealing with weird launch requirements like launches from Vandenberg, which can't launch East for safety reasons.
And a little bit of inclination is enough; if everything is launched with just a modest inclination but not as a perfect train, you get criss-crossing orbits all over the place. Even if it's a tight band of just 10° inclination, you have relative velocities above 1km/s. So then have a look at a realtime map of LEO satellites, and they're not a tight band of just 10°...
They're in orbits that decay rapidly. Debris won't stay there (smaller objects decay faster than large) so they pose no risk of Kesslering.
@@gasdive So, those decays still take years, and when a satellite actually blows up, the pieces don't just stay on that orbital track, they get thrown into a huge mess of erratic orbits - some of which *won't* decay any time particularly soon. So if the Starlink system Kessler's itself, the bulk of its junk will fall out of orbit within a decade or two, but some portion of it will likely be around for centuries, and a smaller fraction for millenia.
@@oasntet WeLL
We are currently working in the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1667 “Advancing Technologies of Very Low Altitude Satellites (ATLAS)” on making VLEO (very low earth orbit) accessible as an alternative to LEO so that we can benefit from the self-cleaning effect.
1:20 lmao 😂 same for me except it's monday morning. that's what separates a YT content creator vs content absorber.
I just finished the tv show Planetes yesterday! How fitting this comes on my feed!
The algorithm knows...
The film Gravity did a fair job of portraying this problem. Hole-Face Guy was terrifying but I think exemplary.
The manga/anime Planetes has a lot of its world-building based on this as well
Well, it does a fair job of describing the problem conceptually. However, the real problem looks nothing like what they showed. There are a lot of problems with that movie as far as physics, timelines, distances, and risks. But, it is Hollywood and the reality is much more boring and tedious so it's ok within context.
Heard a lot about that film when it came out, but never watched it.
Tbh, the first non-scientific media I watched that addressed Kessler Syndrome was the early 2000s science-fiction anime "Planetes". It is unexpectedly good (despite an atrocious intro and outro) and touches on a lot of real problems that might arise if space travel becomes accessible for a lot of people.
@@danielschegh9695 When they had Sandra Bullock do the Barbarella routine without it actually being sexy, they showed how hard they were working at making a bad movie. Making that scene not work took effort.
Gravity did not do a good job portraying this. It was an idiotic movie from any kind of realism standpoint.
i was just about to give an idea about a space vessel that has a massive super magnet ontop of it in the shape of a half globe, and it flies in low orbit, dragging down and also collecting trash, and then the video says something similar was considerd. Very cool.
I wonder if there would be any geopolitical issues with the laser solution given the potential offensive capability of it.
Probably this is why they are not already using this technique..
The technology exist and its operational.
Maybe the general public is not ready to witness this new type of powerfull and potentially dangerous, destruction laser machine in action.
The new technologies that are presented to the public, are not really "new"...
We are 10-15 years behind, when it come to knowing what is realised in the R&D departement.
…by definition, ground-based lasers wouldn’t put other nations at risk.
Unless the Earth collapses into a black hole the size of a marble (and develops a photon sphere 4.4 millimetres above its surface), those laser beams aren’t coming back down.
One option might be to collect that debris and use it to build needed things in orbit. That way we could get rid of the debris and not have to launch all that much stuff into orbit.
In my old novel a "debrisphere" was created with military purpose. It's interesting to see how many of my contrived world building aligns with real subjects on Sabine's channel. Wonder if tipping the Kesler cascade threshold could ever end up actually serving military purpose in the future 🤔
Can easily see that happening to reduce tech advantage of a more developed country more heavily relying on satellite data, gps, satellite internet connections and so forth. Military aside, it'd have massive detrimental impact on a lot of civilian technologies and applications. The fact the earth would then be surrounded by debris would be very much a secondary issue.
This was actually suggested as a missile defense, back in the 60's and 70's. We worked an older program for removing spent satellites from orbit for the USAF, but it was only prompted because Soviet satellites were exploding (due to battery failures), and scattering debris all over the place. The Russians, when pressed with countermeasures, decides to embed de-orbiting measures, as we did for some military satellites.
Keep up your good work sabine.... people have respect for you
She's becoming more of a guru with each new vid. How pathetic...
Just to be clear, the problem looks nothing like the imagery typically shown. It's not like a junkyard, nor is it possible to see anything like those orbiting white dots. In fact, it is practically impossible to get two or more orbiting objects in a single photo. The distances between objects, and their sizes, would not allow it even if everything gave off white light.
Rather, it is more like walking across a firing range where a rifle fires randomly once per week. The odds of it being at the time you are there is almost zero, and if it did fire while you where there, the odds of you being in its path at the time is also almost zero.
But, with more satellites, the analogy is more people walking across and rifle firing more often, and if anybody gets hit, the rifle firing frequency will increase again. But, there are also other paths to the other side.
It's not a perfect analogy, but we need to be clear about the problem. It isn't anything like a junkyard, and the visuals for it are generally misleading. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but different. Also, to be clear, this only affects a range of orbits at a time, and the density of objects is highest around 800 km I believe.
It's serious problem that is being dealt with, slowly, but also isn't quite what some people portray it as.
The problem isnt here and now, but when it comes, it will be exponential if not logarithmic. Once it gets going, there is no going back. Bit like some other global issues. But whatever.... lets ignore them for now, like what is the worst that could happen?
The odds are not almost zero my friend. The ISS has been hit 32x since 2022 and satellites often re-maneuver to avoid collisions on a regular basis, so it's not as rare as you pretend.
It's difficult to get a picture of the debris because it's traveling seven times faster than a bullet, most are around 1-10cm in length, and it's orbiting a planet in a pitch black environment
which is why other methods are used to track the debris instead of a fancy GoPro camera with the flash on.
You are spreading misinformation by saying that the visuals are misleading because those visuals are actual data. It's not hypothetical or AI generated for mood to push an agenda like say... an analogy. These are facts not feelings, so it's not misleading. Anyone can do a search for "track space debris online" and they can see the situation for themselves.
These 'people' who portray the problem are literal rocket scientists and experts in their field with real data offered freely to the public so people with ZERO experience or education on the subject don't go around creating false narratives to make themselves feel better, like climate change.
Well to be quite clear, and candid - that was the most unclear silly exposition I've had the miserable time to peruse in the past year or more. I hope that is clear to you.
As someone that shoots astro-photography as a hobby, I can assure you that's not true. I have narrow field 30 second images that have up to 10 satellite trails in each one. Adn these are only the ones I can see just after /prior to sunset / sunrise.
And it only requires a tiny particle from one previous collision to create thousands more particles.
@@danielschegh9695 it's a problem that increases exponentially as objects are added - and starlink has been spamming objects into orbit like it doesn't matter. Ironically Musk may end up being the one who cuts us off from space before we even get started, because he doesn't believe in 'regulating' companies - especially his own.
The ESA website states that the Clearspace mission is planned to be launched in 2028 - given the reliability of ESA launch plans in recent years, it means it will not launch before 2030.
The website also says that the mission has been procured by ESA as a service contract in 2020. If it takes over 10 years to remove a single debris…
As a renowned science commentator please ask SpaceX if they have any near term plans to remove LEO and GEO junk.
Yeah Richard, the guy who wants to put 42,000 of his fucking Starlink stats (plus dozens of thousands more in various other planned constellations from competitors) and is now part of a fascist A-Team of deplorable baboons that wants to deregulate everything at the expense of your safety and heath, is going to be concerned by space trash, while he has no qualms in trashing Earth for profits with his science denier fascist buddies. Sure. 🙄
They have plans for their own satellites, aside from that they are just a launch contractor basically, so would facilitate customers paying to launch any debris removal systems the customers come up with. Or they could be contracted to scoop up old satellites with starship, but I doubt they'd take the initiative on their own unless it was vital for their continued operations.
Does SpaceX even have anything in GEO? Their LEO stuff is so low that it goes away in 10 years or so no matter what they do. If Starlink went out of business today, their satellites would fall out of the sky over a few years assuming they stopped boosting them, or they run out of fuel in a decade or so and then fall.
True or not, one factoid came out in the SDI “Star Wars” research was that focused beams of laser or particles splayed-out of coherence, even in space, thus reducing the necessary focus. That may or may not have been overcome in forty years of study, but that might work to an vantage in fanning a portion of the sky with tightly-packed rays whose rays diverge from earth’s surface on radials.
Reflections could trigger a stylus change in each to draw a focus, not to destroy the beasts, but to slow them or disrupt their balance of motion versus gravity. They’ll either bug-out into space or decay rapidly into equatorial seas.
If I recall correctly the Japanese tried to put in orbit a space junk retrieval device but gave up on the idea. Clearly not a trivial task.
It is actually less of a problem in Low Earth Orbit. Due to atmospheric drag , anything that is at LEO won't stay up long, eventually the drag will slow them enough that they can no longer orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. Any Kessler Cascade cvent at LEO will clear up in few dozen years if left to its own device.
Eventually, as the pieces get smaller and more dispersed… earth will have rings.
Everyone LOVES Saturn’s rings 🤷♂️😌
This is not true, you would need way more material to make visible rings.
@@ObjectsInMotionDon't worry, we'll get there
We had rings not long after the collision that made the moon. Gone now.
Would large amounts of space debree affect global warming?
I love that breaking up in the atmosphere is just another term for aerosolizing heavy metals 😅
....don't forget the leftover nuclear reactors from past experiments too.
Mostly aluminium
Well its either aerosolizing heavy metals or loosing tiktok… we are so fucked.
@@ObsessedWithaProblem Most of TikTok data is sent through ground based parts of the internet.
A few tons of metal in the atmosphere is nothing.
Any sizeable volcanic eruption spews hundreds of tons of much worse junk into the stratosphere.
You can find dozens of peer-reviewed papers as well as vulgarization about metal dispersion from volcanic plumes.
Crazy how we (humanity) can see things coming from years away, but never act on anything until it's become a crisis. So strange.
The Kessler issue is absolutely terrifying. As if space wasn’t hostile enough
Having ground based laser able to pinpoint and kill debris would be super handy for dealing with oher stuff... planes, satelites, rockets etc. And if those were even semi mobile then blinding lots of spying eyes would be easy to do.
Like in every movie with lazers?
@@WoodworkingforAnyone exactly. But in fancy way and with real life capabilities to hit small things on LEO instead of CGI.
Also a major plot element in SEVENEVES
My current read.
At about the 2-minute mark I started wondering whether a strong enough laser could either nudge the orbits or potentially burn up the debris. A minute later the video touched on these ideas and it's good to know that it was an obvious idea.
The Kessler syndrome is a fantastic name for a Sci-Fi movie. Perhaps a Sci-Fi movie about astronauts onboard a space-station.....
That movie already exists: Gravity
Kessler syndrome in the movie Gravity
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Bear with me, take scrap armour plating and launch masses into space. Need to be angled sufficiently so that the down side causes deorbiting from the collision and the up side causes debris to move to a new,higher orbit. Make the shield thick enough and any metal flaked off by the collision would also follow the space junk. You could plow the field , so to speak and keep moving the shield higher and higher to slowly clear lanes. Whatever we do, it’s going to take a multitude of methods to clear it all. Just as it’s taking a multitude of methods to clear the waste pollution on earth.
At least it will help prevent an ALIEN 👽INVASION.
A moat of space junk! We humans are so clever.😁😉🤔Or will the easy pickings of processed materials attract Space Salvagers?
and if they pass, we still have rocks to throw at them....
(I expect a space travelling species don't fear a few low velocity impacts... Otherwise they will have a hard time during the trip)
Aliens ships likely have shields, we haven’t of any kind. Our resistance will be futile.
We don´t need to go into the universe, before we have our own world in our safe hands. Sabine - You are one of very few in this world, that understand the purpose and meaning, so THANKS ❤
We can do both at the same time
@@rayparent1 Perhaps - But what is the point of cleaning before there is any dirt, when you live in mess?
@@kimkjehr4255 i live in a mess but theres no dirt so i shouldnt clean? Tbh i dont understand this analogy
And Musk wants to put 30k satellites for Starlink. 🤦
What a scum that guy is
yeah but those have the self capability of deorbiting at end of life. the real issue is with space debris that's dead or even incapable of deorbiting on its own
All in ver low earth orbit (on purpose) where they will deorbit in a few years on their own. This is not really the problem being discussed here. If however one was to complain about the amount of heavy metals bring injected into the atmosphere with each retired starlink satellite, there a person would be on firmer ground to complain. But then if not Starlink it would be some other company, so... Not really a Musk specific problem.
Yes but i believe that their orbits are so low that they will fall into the atmosphere qiickly if not maintained.
@@jamescomstock7299Everything is a musk specific problem to these people.
I remember that one, i think it was said quite some time ago that this could softlock space travel for the future.
There was also an idea about knock off effect, that could wipe all the satelites in orbit, it was something along the side if there will be enough debries, random collision can produce cascading effect, eventually wiping all the hardware from orbit. Sort of like demolition dominos at flying around at high speeds.
Laser idea i think is double trouble, not only can it help to remove the debreis as intended but may be able to develop anti-ICBM tech which is in my eyes crucial.
My idea for capturing oribital debris is based upon the sticky material used in those stretchy/sticky hands that we used to buy in gumball machines back in the 90's. A giant sheet of it moving in the direction of the debris, at comparable speeds, could catch the bits and pieces and then deorbit on its own. Sending numerous sheets in different orbits could theoretically capture the small shards and paint chips that are currently not on the radar for capture.
God yes! Snot balls full of metal falling from space. I'm gonna use this as a writing prompt.
You realize at the speeds that those debris are traveling, it would go right through.
@@bumbo222as RoryJamesFord said, they need to be going "comparable speeds". The problem, of course, is how to get your catchers mitt to the necessary velocity. iirc, everything at the same altitude is traveling the same speed. But they aren't moving in the same direction (i.e., velocity). A big question is: how many pieces of debris are at a particular orbit level with close enough velocities? Engineers will have to evaluate every such group of debris, to see if it's worth it to get a garbage scow up to speed to catch that particular group of such debris.
@SabineHossenfelder, shooting a laser at a satellite will not change its orbit since the momentum of light is very small.
Vaporizing one side of a satellite will change its momentum, of course, but it will also produce many smaller pieces and accelerate the process toward the Kessler syndrome.
When you initially explained the Kessler Syndrome you didn't actually mention collisions. The issue is not the debris of a few satellite spreading out but rather that once there are enough they start hitting other satellites, breaking them up and causing a cascade of more and more debris. You mention 'creates a cascade' but didn't really mention that it was due to debris hitting other satellites.
Also when mentioning various recent events you also didn't really explain that some are much more serious than others depending on altitude. Low satellites experience quite a lot of atmospheric drag and any debris in that region will experience orbit decay in a few years or decades whereas higher up at geostationary orbit the space junk is more or less permanent.
Sadly she has the comments set to “members” so almost nobody will see this post nor mine.
@@Bassotronics I saw both, FWIW.
That's a good observation, there's so much money involved in space exploration and Innovation you would think that there would be the opportunity to make tremendous amounts of money off of gathering space junk and keeping it there and reprocessing it
@@Bassotronics I don't understand. I can see your comment and you can see mine and I am not a member.
@@doomoo5365 No, it is much much cheaper to launch new stuff than to try and reprocess existing satellites. Repairing / refueling existing satellites has some use cases because some satellites are very very expensive eg hubble. SpaceX is making launching new mass cheaper and cheaper and it won't be long ( a decade maybe) before they could capture a satellite from orbit, bring it back to earth, have it repaired then relaunch it.
I believe it's inevitable. Whenever there are enough humans in one place it turns into a junk heap. It's simply what we do. We've reached the point where the "one place" is Earth 😢
YES!!!
I've thought about getting rid of space junk in orbit and how to get rid of it. My solution that I thought of was this:
1. In order to rid an object in orbit the easiest would be to slow down its orbital speed. An object's orbital speed is what helps it escape the Earth's gravity. If you slow down its orbit, it will de-orbit and burn up. The slower it moves, the quicker it burns up.
2. So, the idea is to put some "brakes on" or slow it down. The only way to do this is to apply a significant force to it in the opposite direction of its orbit.
3. The easiest way to catch what could relatively be a small object is a net. Precision isn't that necessary.
4. The net has to weigh a lot, in order for this to work. The way to add weight to it is to add weights to the net's edges.
So, someone apparently had the same idea and tested it!!! 7:33 Woohoo!!!
You're missing #5: It has to be cheap enough for someone to fund it. That's always the biggest problem when it comes to cleaning up the messes we've made.
Could the net have electromagnets to pull in the metallic debris?
@@JordanLyon-w8e Probably not electromagnets as you'd need a power source strong enough to make them useful, which likely won't attach to a net all that well.
You could attach permanent magnets I suppose, but it's really not all that useful. Space is really, really big and just tossing a magnet out in the hopes that something will be passing by close enough and slow enough to get picked up is unfathomably small. It's more like a dogcatchers net than a troller's net - intended to capture just the one target with a bit of a margin for error.
Magnets have been discussed in their own right, but still not in the troller's net style (again, space is really really big). It's more like using the magnetic field as a "net" to pick up smaller stuff that an actual net wouldn't be able to easily contain (but still typically only a handful of localized targets that you've identified ahead of time so you know where to find them, what speed you need to move to capture them, etc.).
@altrag As long as all the satellites go in the same direction, this'll work. But if satellite paths start crossing and a catastrophe or attack occurs on enough satellites, this wouldn't work. I thought you were talking about cleaning up a debris field in that event.
@@JordanLyon-w8e Nothing will get "all the satellites", and they definitely don't all go in the same direction. But we're not trying to scoop up functioning satellites anyway, so that's not super relevant.
If a satellite gets smashed though, most of the debris it generates _does_ go in at least approximately the same direction. If you can get close enough with a strong magnet before the stuff spreads apart too far, you can potentially clean up a fair bit of it in one go.
Of course I have no idea how realistic that potential is, never mind how cost-effective. But that's the idea people are working with anyway. As noted in one of these other comments, we're going to need multiple solutions eventually. No single solution works for every piece of junk up there. Nets work for "big" stuff but would be challenging or impossible to use for small stuff. Magnets might work for "close together" stuff but would be relatively ineffective for "far apart" stuff. Lasers wouldn't care how far apart stuff is but they'd only work for "small" stuff as the photons wouldn't have enough energy to sufficiently modify the trajectory of something heavy. There's probably other solutions I've forgotten (or just haven't heard of) with other trade-offs as well.
The thing everybody forgets is that the velocity of new pieces is not the same velocity as the incoming piece. To do that, power would be generated by the collision.
true, conservation of momentum means the velocities of all the satellite fragments would eventually average out
...and to the ones saying "...but that's how nukes work!" Yep, but with energetic particles from radioactives, not drifting space junk.
1:21 -- that´s a deep fake, this is not Dr. Sabine, you can recognize it by the shoes.😂 2:44 -- the destruction of the RedPhone would be a desaster indeed.😅 Thanks for another interesting report. As we see once more, it´s much easier not to release crap in the first place than removing it.
Yes. Applies to social media, too!
@@markdowning7959 Indeed😅
I think I'm in love. Glad I found you and I plan to stick around.
Welcome!
I contacted the ACME Solutions Department and they suggested one of their gigantic magnets. Simply aim it up and anything ferrous will be dragged down. I'm also getting a bid from Planet Spaceball to contract out Mega Maid and her gigantic vacuum cleaner.
Great topic! Debris and functioning equipment should be considered as to their conductivity, as well. Solar energies can radiate and charge these items.
These’s a clip in the movie Wall-E as the Axiom leaves smashing space debris and satellites.
and Gravity
Kessler syndrome in the movie Gravity
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I saw a recent article about them testing refueling satellites. Each time they do that there will be some spills or leakage and then that becomes yet more junk orbiting...
Vacuum cleaners! D'uh.
ive seen spaceballs
Most underrated comment here
The Anime
„Planetes“
overarching plot is the main characters being space debris cleanup in the year 2075-
while humanity has just barely established some habitable moon facilities.
Earth is heavily polluted aswell… i dont like the parallels with the future were running into!
Also, the space debris is one thing- i hope they clean up the heavy oil from sunken ww2 ships aswell- otherwise the polluted ocean gets way too real fast.
Great Documentary is (Black tears of the sea) by Arte
We can't help but litter no matter where we go.
That's because we are the peak of the evolution.
Nor when we go. Ancient people left middens of trash and debitage and bones and shells.
@@Jason1975ism Of course that is pretty much the best source of information we have on them. So yeah, we will be remembered for the garbage landfills and a layer of concrete and plastics in the geologic record. lol
the same for all life, every organism shits and pisses everywhere it goes.
@@JC-nl3nh Piss and shit don't pollute and in the cases of feces actually act as fertilizer and help spread seeds that cause new growth. It's not the same thing.
How do you think Saturn's rings were formed?
Ground lasers, 100% a military project.
I hope you have a long and viable career, Sabine. Your videos are wonderful.
Being a junkman in space might be a pretty cool job.
You read my mind. Space scrapping is the future.
They should stamp bitcoin codes onto the satellites. So future entrepreneurs will race to catch the pieces when one bitcoin costs 1 billion dollars.
Assuming your employer isn't trying to cut costs by giving you low quality pressure suits
@davianoinglesias5030 employer? Scrap men are self employed!
Honestly the laser solution seems like the only one that could even come close to dealing with the problem in a reasonable amount of time. An array of lasers could be firing pretty much 24/7 (power and heating issues allowing), de-orbiting hundreds or thousands of pieces an hour. The power costs would be high, but should be a more or less solid state system that's easy to operate.
By comparison, trying to de-orbit junk using blockers, nets, grabbers, harpoons and so on generally risks creating MORE junk, and also requires you to be firing hundreds of rockets up into orbit, just to de-orbit other rocket junk. This might be necessary for particularly large pieces that lasers can't slow down in a reasonable period of time, but should generally be a last resort. Most satellites *should* have been designed to de-orbit themselves at EOL at any rate, though of course a damaged one may not be able to do so.
coming next: space scavengers
pollution on earth, now around earth, it seems, like we are the problem ?!
Some of the smartest, best educated humans that ever lived, sent those objects into low-earth orbit, yet nobody created a plan to stop space turning into a giant rubbish dump.
The fault, dear humanoids, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
It is not a problem!! Space X is the major contributor and is DELIBRATRY doing this.
This could be the reason we have not heard from others, they stuffed up their world and can’t leave😊
Those who put profits before all else I think you'll find.
@@carly09etSpaceX satellites deorbit at EOL. They are a masterclass in how to do it correctly.
You're right, but you don't, have to, structure, your sentences, like this. Pausing, for emphasis, becomes, much less effective, if you, do it, constantly.
Comma.
So many radical predictions about the Space Age in science fiction, but no one was so radical as to guess that it might just come to an end in as little as 70 years.
In case anyone reads this, I recommend the anime Planetes, is a futuristic series about a group of worker that cleans debris from orbit to avoid the Kessler Syndrome
What I also like is that the company that has them on payroll only does it because they are forced to by regulation that happened * after * a civilian transfer shuttle exploded due to debris collision, and they still do it reluctantly giving them the most obsolete equipment available to do the job. Which is totally how I expect things will play out IRL as well.
4:28 it’s not backed by the Indian Space Agency?!!?!
No, but for real, how are we closer to solving the litter crisis in space than in the country of India. What an existence we humans live in!
Hey dude. Nice blouse,,,,my mom has one just like it.
The future is always lasers!
How hard is it to catch small debris in space?
Remember, the orbit surface area is 4 pi times orbit radius squared. So, for low earth orbit at altitude 1000 km, add earth's radius 6,378 km (equatorial), you get 54,434,884 (km)^2. And you're looking for an M8 nut there, the probability is dividing ~(pi*8^2)/4 mm with that, or ~ (8^2)e-6/((7378^2)e+10^6) = ((8/7378)^2)e-12 = (1.176e-6)e-12 = 1.176e-18.
That's very small, it's 1 in quintrillion, that's why satellites still works. I have to admit that I didn't factor effective functional orbit in to account for higher probability. But, you see, debris flies into unknown orbit, so it might as well totally random.
if ure looking for a M8 nut, the probability of finding it in american space debris is (1-1^50)/sqrt(8^2)e-6/((7378^2)e+10^6)
Probably unsolvable if we let it happen.
I prefer using a web made from giant space spiders. They construct the web in orbit between a handful of charging stations that act as the edges of the web. Then the web catches debris and the spiders use the material to make more webbing. Whatever they can't use is dumped to Earth in the web. What could go wrong?
A few years ago Elon Musk said that when Starship starts making regular orbital launches, its huge cargo bay could be used to help clean up orbital debris. Now that SpaceX is close to this goal Musk should be held to this claim. Starship would have the benefit of returning the debris back to Earth intact rather than just burning it up in the atmosphere. To SpaceX's credit, the Starlink satellites that now make up 60-62% of everything that's been launched into orbit are designed to avoid collisions, and are low enough to burn up in the atmosphere within about five years if they become uncontrollable.
Also, might this be a good time to push for the Breakthrough Starshot project? When not accelerating micro probes towards Proxima Centauri, the powerful ground-based lasers the project envisions could perform other useful functions, such as cleaning up orbital debris or perhaps even helping to deflect threatening asteroids or NEOs.
Go look at how many claims Elon has made that were just straight lies. We shouldn’t rely on him to fix this
Musk says he'll do a lot of things. Just don't hold your breath.
Basically complete nonsense. There is no known way to reduce Kesseler debris.
He also said he would have self driving cars by now
"A few years ago" Elon is not the Elon we have now. He lost his mind around 2020 and has betrayed everything he claimed to stand for
❤ yes thank you for bringing the attention on the matter. Do we need half the satellites to adjust their course in order to avoid this mess ?
The answer to the Fermi Paradox.
No Alien civilization has managed to get past the point where they full their planets lower earth orbits completely with space junk that makes it is too dangerous to launch alien beings beyond the junk
Kessler deserves a Nobel Prize for coming up with a brilliant solution to the Fermi Paradox.
My main argument with those that preach kessler syndrome catastrophe is that they use graphics that have the same flaw of every solar system model. You can't possibly be faithful to the immensity of the space between objects and still have it fit in a screen.
I don't see evidence that we're close at all with such a syndrome in higher orbit objects, and lower orbit objects don't tend to last very long, the damage would not be that long. Anything that is orbiting below 600 km will not last more than 5 years without working engines. The ISS would've fallen a long time ago by gravity if it wasn't for humans constantly accelerating it.
Now, objects above 600 km do take a long time, but the space available grows exponentially.
You need megatons of mater in orbit if you want a proper Kessler syndrome
it's just sizes, math, and statistics. Forget the visual representation just look at the numbers. It's not so much about the big objects it's more about the small objects that are orbiting at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. Even a paint chipping can kill you in space.
@@HD-mp6yyShow your math, because current research says you're off by orders of magnitude
It's just statistics. A piece of a screw weighing roughly as much as a bullet travelling at ten times the speed of said bullet relative to it's target, say, a geostationary communications sattelite, will go through electronics like... a bullet, really, disabling the satellite, knocking it off of its orbit, and probably knock loose several pieces, which will go on to hit other targets at relatively large speeds, setting up a chain reaction of debris generating more debris and breaking our stuff.
That's what the Kessler Syndrome is all about. Statistically, as the amount of crap spinning around the globe that we are unable to track increases, it will cause more collisions which will cause more untrackable crap to spin around the globe, making keeping anything in the more popular orbits for long periods of time impossible.
I always thought that orbits were difficult to get into without the proper planning of a trajectory. How is it that a collision between satellites (mostly moving at the same speed) causes them to fragment into many tens of pieces that continue on in almost perfect orbit?