[HN Gopher] Senators Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900k Pieces ... ___________________________________________________________________ Senators Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900k Pieces of Orbiting Junk Author : T-A Score : 71 points Date : 2022-09-15 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.commerce.senate.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.commerce.senate.gov) | LightG wrote: | How about space companies pay the f@cking cost of their | externalities? | | An estimate is made for the total cost of clearing significant | space junk. | | Space companies pay a fee per launch. Amount gets pooled. | | Pool pays for it estimated total cost. | | But no .... no one wants to pay for their sh!t ... just like here | on Earth. | cryptonector wrote: | Debris can be caused by defunct companies that put sats up when | this all wasn't a concern. | | Also, deorbiting a sat at end of life is one thing, but | deorbiting debris from an accidental collision (or an | intentional one, just not intended by the sat's owner!) is a | completely different thing. Companies do plan for end of life | sat deorbiting, but it's hard to ask them to plan for | unintentional collision debris deorbiting. | | Paying for debris cleanup could be a thing that new sat | deployment could be required to have covered, but without first | knowing the cost of debris cleanup, it's hard to charge enough. | Debris cleanup has never been done, so we don't know the cost | of it! Also, if the government were the escrow agent, you know | the money would just be spent, so the escrow would have to be a | private entity. | | Lastly, a lot of debris in orbit is due to anti-sat missile | testing by nation states, so you're really asking _them_ to | clean up their debris. | | But ranting is more fun? | rr888 wrote: | Does the US government have any authority on this? I thought | there were a dozen countries launching satellites now. | azernik wrote: | This is specifically funding for R&D. | Jtsummers wrote: | What authority do you think this bill is claiming that would be | impacted by other countries launching? You can read it here: | https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/... | | It's establishing (assuming it gets passed and signed) the work | for a demonstration program on active debris removal from | orbit. It's not imposing the US government's will on anyone | else. | enraged_camel wrote: | Having the world's most powerful military gives them de facto | authority. :) | MichaelCollins wrote: | Space is "international waters". Any country has the right to | remove dangerous debris from the ocean or from space. | andrewclunn wrote: | Anyone remember the Hanna Barbera cartoon where Yogi and the gang | are trying to find the "perfect place" free of pollution? They | eventually end up in space, thinking this must be it, only to see | it becoming more cluttered and full of junk. They finally decide | to go back home and clean it up, because they won't find the | perfect place, they have to make it. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Essentially the same plot line as Dr. Seuss' "I Had Trouble In | Getting To Solla Sollew". | zackees wrote: | 6stringmerc wrote: | Giant lasers! Pew pew pew. | | _cue Tears for Fears_ | CyanBird wrote: | Planetes is coming one day closer to becoming reality, I am all | for this | | And ofc having a cleaner leo is also a good thing on itself ofc | 1-6 wrote: | How about all the drug debris in SF. Why not take care of matters | closer to home? | romellem wrote: | _Why solve this problem when there are other unrelated problems | I care about?_ | supernova87a wrote: | So: | | Study the issue, publish debris catalog, fund pilot programs to | deorbit debris, encourage agencies and other countries to develop | standards about debris... | | Everything except "generate less debris". | Jtsummers wrote: | > Other Washington companies like SpaceX, Amazon's Kuiper | Systems, and Stoke Space Technologies are also looking for new | ways to reduce debris from accumulating in space in the first | place or have been threatened by debris. | | Good news! Concurrent efforts can work concurrently! Reducing | future debris is already an area of active work. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793236 <- Posted two | days ago. | m0llusk wrote: | There have been moves to get nations to sign on to a ban on | antisatellite weapons. The largest recent contributions to | space debris have been tests of antisatellite weapon systems. | So that is at least being attempted, but it is a separate track | based mostly on foreign relations. | x3n0ph3n3 wrote: | This recent article actually discusses reducing debris more | quickly. [1] Are you suggesting fewer launches? | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793236 | Rebelgecko wrote: | 2 ways to reduce orbital debris: get rid of stuff that's | already there, and generate less. This law seems to me like it | would tackle both. | | More stringent deorbiting standards and better methods for | satellites to commit sudoku will reduce the amount of | satellites that become debris. | | But that doesn't change the fact that the majority of debris in | orbit today comes from 2 sources: the Chinese ASAT test and | leaky Soviet nuclear reactors. The proposed ASAT test ban helps | that from being an issue, but you still need a way to clean up | the existing debris (other than waiting decades or centuries) | Ferrotin wrote: | How on earth would a leaky Soviet reactor create orbital | debris? | thatcherc wrote: | Commenter is probably referring to this incident[1] where a | sodium-cooled nuclear reactor on a Soviet satellite ended | up spraying a bunch of small beads of sodium into Earth | orbit. The number and density of the beads makes them a | long-lived hazard. | | [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 | Cyphase wrote: | I think you mean seppuku, not sudoku. :) | zardo wrote: | > encourage agencies and other countries to develop standards | about debris... | | > Everything except "generate less debris". | | What else would the standards be about? | findingaway wrote: | If you've looked at our environmental efforts over the last 50 | years. The trends should be pretty obvious :-) The scam that is | recycling exists as an industry mostly to allay the fear of the | populace, not address the issue. It's a nice side benefit that | sometimes companies can save on costs for certain products. | [deleted] | babypuncher wrote: | I guess I'll take this time to shill for the mid-'00s TV show | Planetes, which is basically about exactly this; cleaning up | orbital debris in order to maintain safe space travel. | ja27 wrote: | Or 1977-78's Quark | MishaalRahman wrote: | Definitely the first thing I thought of when I saw the title | Veedrac wrote: | Debris removal is less an R&D problem than a market problem. The | highest impact thing a government can do is put a price on debris | removal, and then guarantee that price for existing debris for an | extended period of time. | | Flight volume is an easily solved problem with the near future | market, and that cost is the main reason junk isn't deorbited | already. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Or combine it with a fine for creating debris? | _jal wrote: | I think it is past time to make launchers publish their plan | for lifecycle management, and perhaps post bonds against | them, in case they go bankrupt. | | Making sovereigns pay for trashing the commons is tricky for | obvious reasons. But we don't have those problems with | corporations. | cma wrote: | Throwaway LLC creates the debris and goes bankrupt from | fines, main company does the cleanup. | progbits wrote: | > The highest impact thing a government can do is put a price | on debris removal | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina... | Veedrac wrote: | Objects in space are merticuously tracked. It would be very | hard to get away with something like that, and none of the | relevant fliers would dare bet their business on trying. | progbits wrote: | I meant it bit of a tongue-in-cheek way, but for the sake | of argument it wouldn't be hard for a clean up mission to | have an "accident" and actually generate more debris for | later missions to clean up. And it might not even be | malicious, just side effect of more pressure to launch | something to do the clean ups. | | To be clear, I'm not saying OP is wrong, it would probably | work out fine. But this seems like a fun angle to consider. | tomrod wrote: | I can't find xboneslife's comment to reply to, so | replying here | | > You can just put the same price on debris addition. | | Indeed. A small tax that matches the cost of debris | capture payment + minor administrative overhead would | encourage the outcome that junk isn't thrown into | unrecoverable orbit. | [deleted] | bpodgursky wrote: | You could always slip China a fiver to get them to blow up | another satellite or five. | IXxXI wrote: | Aspiring asteroid miners should start with space junk in orbit. | jwagenet wrote: | We talk about all this junk polluting orbit, but I can't | imagine it is dense enough to to efficiently fish for and | return to earth. | toss1 wrote: | Yup. | | If it were sufficiently dense to fish, it'd be worth more to | collect and keep it in orbit -- that junk has a lot of high- | grade materials and a lot of already-imparted momentum. Just[ | _] move it all into a few large objects that can be managed | as large craft, and the debris problem is solved, and there | 's a mineable resource already in orbit. | | [_] "Just" is doing some escape-velocity-class lifting there | -- all that junk is in such massively different orbital | planes and altitudes that silly amounts of DV are needed to | fetch each one and then to pull it back to dock with the new | orbital junkheap. | el_don_almighty wrote: | How much is removing 1kg from Low-Earth Orbit worth? | | Launch cost is ~$3,000 to $5,000 per kg | | What's the value of pulling it back down and what drives this | value? | Jtsummers wrote: | The value will be based on the value of the reduced risk of | damage/loss from orbital debris and reduced cost from orbital | adjustments to avoid debris (which uses fuel or mass which | reduces the lifespan of the satellite). Once we end up with | 100k or more LEO satellites it'll be very valuable to reduce | the amount of debris at those altitudes. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | It's the cheap price of a cover story for capabilities with | military applications. | WJW wrote: | You can't reasonably measure this by the kg. Pulling down a | single 10000 kg satellite is fairly cheap; all you need to do | is latch onto it and deorbit. This can be done with a single | vehicle. Deorbiting 10k 1 kg fragments would be vastly more | expensive. 1 million 10 gram fragments would be more expensive | still. | krastanov wrote: | There are techniques with which deorbiting 1 million 10 gram | fragments might end up being quite cheap. E.g. the use of a | single laser-equipped base that selectively hits the debris | to cause localized evaporation and thrust, disrupting their | trajectory. | godelski wrote: | There's two fold for missions like this | | 1) Debris is dangerous to orbiting objects. So the value of | bringing it down is more valuable than the per kilogram value. | It is highly dependent upon potential damage it can do. Space | debris is already causing damage to satellites and the ISS. As | we place more objects in space this danger increase super- | linearly. | | 2) If you can decommission debris you can decommission | satellites. This has obvious military applications. In fact to | properly do this you actually have to get pretty close to other | satellites without colliding. By solving the debris problem | you're solving a lot of the same problems you need for these | military applications. | | So both incentives are valued far greater than the per-mass | value of the trash. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-15 23:00 UTC)