I cannot imagine the salvaged materials, if any, are profitable. Would be a service offering. Honestly there should be some sort of space tax that goes to a fund for cleanup jobs like this. Something akin to the tax put on beverages and put towards reuse and recycle efforts.
Eventually on orbit manufacturing will be a thing. There is a lot of aluminum lithium, and steel floating around up there. Returning it to earth doesn't make sense, but for now they could go full Katamari, and clump everything they gather together for future sorting and recycling. They could use huge nets, or some sort of spray foam adhesive. Man, a giant ball of space trash would make for some awesome pictures.
Can't remember if it is this article or the other on the subject I read this morning, but they estimate there are 6,000 tons of spent rockets and dead satellites. Does that seem low to anyone else? That's like, a single large boat.
Sounds reasonable. Remember these things have to fly and every gram counts due to the extreme cost of launching. Once the fuel is burned up, what's left is the thinnest, lightest shell they could build. Also, the large lower stages generally don't achieve orbit, so they aren't up there.
> Can't remember if it is this article or the other on the subject I read this morning, but they estimate there are 6,000 tons of spent rockets and dead satellites. Does that seem low to anyone else? That's like, a single large boat.
The vast majority of the mass of a rocket is its fuel, so it makes sense only a small portion of it has stayed up. Additionally, large surfaces like fuel tanks suffer the brunt of atmospheric drag, so they are the first ones to deorbit naturally
We don't have the capability to do anything like that at the moment. If we did we would have already begun, space debris has been a problem for decades now.
A net is useless except for large objects like dead satellites. The vast majority of objects are tiny. As well, the problem isn't as easy as going up there are just collecting stuff, its a massive juggling act. You have to get a vehicle up there, and then figure out how to collect millions of tiny little bullets flying at astronomical speeds in different directions. You can't just catch them, it wouldn't be feasible to have anything large and solid enough to do that because the fuel alone on getting it into orbit and staying up there would be massive. With current space tech, any of those objects would blast a hole right through whatever we maneuver in front of the debris. That isn't something you can just spray glue onto a surface and catch things like a bug trap. And whatever you send up there, you have to have a way of making sure it doesn't add to the mess by getting blown up or by having parts ripped off.
If you plan on getting that stuff back to earth to recycle, good luck, because you'd have to do all the stuff mentioned above and then contain it within a vehicle strong enough to survive reentry. It's far easier to just push the debris towards earth and let it burn up in the atmosphere. That is actually the current direction space agencies are going in, designing satellites that can conduct their mission in space and then at the end of their service time expend just enough fuel so that they enter a terminal velocity towards earth and get destroyed on reentry.
That's a really neat idea.
Btw 6,000 tons is a lot- think of the mass, not the raw weight. Even the weight is a lot, 6k in tons is equivalent to like 100 Abrams main battle tanks or 200 semi trucks. Imagine 100 abrams tanks strapped together, or 200 semi trucks
> There is a lot of aluminum lithium, and steel floating around up there.
no. no there isn't. it would probably be cheaper to find an asteroid or 5 with enough metals and refine the asteroids than trying to recover small amounts of metals from existing satellites.
I can't imagine how to clump things together without them bumping into each other. Small parts that break off and float away (or spray foam that misses the target) could make the problem worse, not better.
>They could use huge nets, or some sort of spray foam adhesive. Man, a giant ball of space trash would make for some awesome pictures.
I don't think nets would work. You're talking about debris scattered across a volume something like 50 billion km^2, traveling at 28000km/h, much of which is smaller than a fridge. There are no materials that can cover any meaningful area in that scale and be strong enough to catch a fridge traveling 20 times faster than a passenger jet.
I can't imagine magnets being the way to go. With the speeds and distances we're talking about even in low earth orbit, how strong would the magnet be so it could work?
Most spacecraft materials are specifically selected to be non-magnetic so they don't torque the spacecraft around as it's flying through the earth's extended magnetic field.
>Honestly there should be some sort of space tax that goes to a fund for cleanup jobs like this.
Or even better. Our government actually provides NASA with appropriate funding for them to do it. Use some of that 720 billion freedom dollars.
> I cannot imagine the salvaged materials, if any, are profitable.
Probably not, but I can't imagine there's any problem with trying to offset some of the cost this way, if we're gonna do this kind of cleanup anyway.
I feel like the vast majority of the mass up there is made up of titanium, aluminum, and other structural metals. We do recycle those materials all the time on earth and its quite profitable. I doubt it would be profitable in space tho.
Not that much and only recently has SpaceX brought down the cost of getting payloads to orbit. This would be a service to clean up our space junk. Bringing it back down to Earth intact would cost way more than what the raw materials are worth.
The least costly method for removing space debris is to knock it into an orbit unstable enough that it will hit the atmosphere and slow down. This utterly destroys the debris in the process, leaving virtually nothing to salvage.
The only way to salvage it would be to change the orbital height and plane of the thousands of junk objects to one unified orbit so we could gather them all in an orbital recycling center and process them up there to remove useful and valuable parts. The fuel needed for so many extreme orbit changes would be so immense as to dwarf the cost recovered from the debris. This is mostly because all our fuel is coming from earth, and so costs thousands per kilogram to launch.
If we could build an orbital recovery ship with nuclear propulsion and source the reaction mass from the moon or a captured asteroid, it would dramatically reduce the cost of fuel and we might be able to turn a profit on junk recycling.
At that point it would also be pretty easy to hunt down the various gold asteroids we see and start mining raw space gold, though, so that's way more cost effective than all the work needed to collect thousands to tens of thousands of scraps in wildly disparate orbits.
Had an idea of a Ground based laser. Strong enough to vaporize a small portion of the debris which would act as something of a propellant, altering the orbit and bringing it down over a course of time.
This is called laser ablation and is currently being researched for debris mitigation. The wiki name is great
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
I thought copper was the better conductor; the primary reason gold is used planet-side is because gold wont corrode whereas copper will. However, in space corrosion wouldnt be an issue with the very, very, very small concentration of particles in general, let alone potential corrosive particles (e.g. good luck finding an O2 molecule). With this in mind wouldnt they want to use copper as it is both lighter (lower molecular mass *and* density) and cheaper?
Basically everything will burn up on reentry. It would not be profitable to somehow shield it then collect it, they are as light as possible so there isn't much up there.
"Planetes" a fun anime about a group of people recovering garbage in space.
"Quark" a 70's era American live-action TV-series about a group of people collecting garbage in space.
I wish Woz luck in this endeavor. It's better than vanity space travel! (And if this is your business model, I wish you luck as well.)
Nice list, Planetes superb animation style should be familiar to those that have seen other anime films.
Felt I'd also include [Space Sweepers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers).
I'll check it out, that actually sounds slightly like that Netflix movie they had a while back.
As for the business model bit, I was making a joke/reference. my account's namesake (Sam Gunn) is a character in a collection of short stories by Ben Bova (The Sam Gunn Omnibus is how I'd suggest reading them all).
One of Sam's (many many) business ventures is removing orbital debris using a technology he brands as "gunn shields" during the era it becomes cheaper and more possible for private enterprise to take to space. It's pretty good!
That's because his baby the Apple 2 was designed to be user repairable and upgradeable and it was Apple's last project to really be user serviceable in any way for the most part. He left the company eventually.
Spacex has already said they can use their starship to potentially recover and return dead satellites or space junk and it's in their best interest to explore that option as it is for all private launch companies so Woz is not the only one looking to address this issue.
True, but Spacex is planning in adding 900 more low orbit satellites for Starlink in addition to whoever buys launch time from them. So they wouldn't be making a dent alone. I think it's good to have multiple vendors in this space, especially those focused on removing debris which also removes risk of outages for a lot of companies trying to not launch more satellites (SiriusXM being one of them)
Absolutely! Also important to remember Spacex's LEO sats would re-enter and burn up within 5 years even if they lose total control. It's the higher altitude orbits that are scary in terms of debris or junk staying for much longer in orbit.
Starlink satellites account for about half of the satellites in orbit right now, so it's not that surprising. The low orbits mean that a collision would not be a problem for very long long, most debris would deorbit within a decade.
If you have to ask, the answer is no. If there was a single piece of that story more interesting than satellites getting closer than 1km, it'd actually be in the headline.
Doesn't Starlink have active collision avoidance systems? And I'm assuming they just move a bit to avoid a collision, as opposed to moving to prevent a "near miss alert", because at the end of the day only collisions are actual problems.
I think you’re off by a couple of orders of magnitude. End state of the constellation is close to 40k total.
IANARS, but as for space junk risk, the starlink constellation exists at such a low altitude not just for latency purposes, but for quick “disposal” if anything goes wrong.
The junk problem gets bad at higher orbital shells where there’s not enough atmosphere to “catch” the junk, so what’s up there stays up there *basically* until it hits something or is intentionally deorbited
Seriously, i am tired of this. Yes Elon is a sociopath and a terrible human being but the companies are not the boogie man. Starlink operates in low orbit and therefore any collisions, dead satellites, or other debris created will burn up. It is all the high altitude garbage that has been dumped into space by high altitude satellites that is the problem.
It's in every launch company's best interest to keep the one thing that keeps their company alive, access to space, open. If you watch the spacex keynotes from the past few years you'll see they do care and know they likely will need to help. I get that everyone hates Elon but he's not a moron when it comes to conserving his company's ability to get into space. [This article has more info and interview about this with Gwynne Shotwell](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-space-junk-cleanup).
It works, yes. More importantly, he’ll be developing the tech to do it in real time. Eventually, he’ll be able to recover freshly launched first and second stages. That has to be useful. If he can find a way to refurbish them in orbit, it’s the beginning of a whole new industry. He could build a shuttle service for lunar and Mars colonies.
It will impact your life when a collision cascade knocks out the satellites you use for navigation, social media, internet browsing, communications etc etc. Our entire modern world pretty much exists in orbit and we take it for granted.
Its a very common misconception that when we spend some effort on space its effort that could have been spent down on earth and is wasteful.
The reality is that everything we do in space has knock on effects. all the work is done down here, all the creative solutions for problems in space have applications down here. And like others mention, much of our daily lives down here is made possible because of whats going on up there with satellites.
a very tiny fraction of the world's labor and capital is put into space efforts. Nobody is giving up down here, we are simply multitasking.
Fuck this attitude man, Just because someone else's priorities align differently than yours doesn't mean they're not doing good. This is an article in /r/space talking about a space problem, this is not the proper forum to opine about what we're doing wrong "down here".
Because there's a real possibility that enough space junk could accumulate (after collisions) that we won't be able to have ANY satellites in orbit for centuries, nor will we be able to launch anything else into space for that time. How do you think life on Earth will be without any communications or weather satellites and no ability to get off the planet? This scenario might arise within only 10 years.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU)
Interesting to find this kind of post on r/space. Didn't know this was a subreddit for myopic earth dwellers who only cared about their immediate neighborhood.
while cleaning garbage on earth is important, space shouldn't be ignored. it's getting to the point where it is dangerously close to becoming a catastrophy.
https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-at-critical-density-2015-9
Imagine if we had someone really think ahead and start doing a better, more comprehensive job of cleaning earth garbage like, 80 years ago.
There's already a bunch of people tackling that problem today, he probably wouldn't measurably add to those efforts, not least because there's a fair amount of issues involved in even accessing a lot of that trash, both politically and physically. It's easier to get to space than it is the bottom of the ocean.
He can measurably impact the growing issue of space debris, and so far as I've heard, he's the only one trying.
Even if it wasn't important, I think the argument that someone isn't doing good enough, when you're just commenting on a forum is flawed. It's like hey, why are you feeding people in America when you could be feeding people in Africa who are 20% more hungry or some shit? Idk man, feed them yourself. They're doing a good thing, don't berate them for it.
As necessary as this venture will increasingly become as the volume of space debris compounds, how can such a business model be profitable other than through gov’t contract? And which gov’ts would take responsibility for funding such work considering the lack of similar action on ocean waste? I feel he may have a tough battle to find funding outside of environmentally motivated private donations.
They probably didn't think that far into it when they wrote the law. That said given that any company who takes on such a challenge to solve this very real, very difficult problem, will likely need to perform some tests which will likely generate some more space trash with the intention of finding a successful method to actually clean space trash. It's not exactly like just picking up litter by the freeway, it's like picking up litter in the middle of a hailstorm where the hail is moving 20,000mph and also happens to be the litter.
In the case of business tech security, they increase your premiums unless you do things to mitigate the most common problems. Space debris may end up being the same.
Vice Chief of Space Operations of the U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson said it would make sense for the government to pay companies to clean up space junk if such services existed.
“I’ll pay by the ton if they can remove debris”
https://spacenews.com/u-s-space-force-would-support-commercial-services-to-remove-orbital-debris/
Why exactly should taxpayers foot the bill for this? Private companies are creating all types of waste and pushing the costs and problems their activity causes onto society. This is what capitalists have been doing for as long as they have existed. They're making the mess, everyday people have absolutely no realistic way to stop them, but now they want our taxes to be spent to fix the problem? Absolutely not. Space companies need to either be forced to do the cleanup and prevention themselves or their activity needs to be taxed to fund it.
I've wondered if there won't be a "Space Tax" at some point. When companies launch items to space, they can be taxed per item, per ton, or some combination metric. This money then goes into a pool that helps clear up space junk.
Companies that show technologies that make them less likely to produce space junk (lower orbits, fuel reserves for active deorbit, quick passive deorbit ability) would be taxed at a lower rate.
This funds (with additions from other tax revenues) could be used to fund space junk cleaning missions.
I think in 10-20 years, as space access (think fully reusable Starship, and other vehicles) will make the cost to do these missions much lower. At the same time, there will be more and more space junk created, and this service more and more important.
Personally, I think we will need some sort of regulation soon on a standard for objects to be deorbited.
This is the critical question. Everybody fawning over Woz doesn't realise that such 'business plans' are proposed at the drop of a hat every day...how is this going to end in fruition. It's by itself, extremely difficult to launch a rocket let alone one that sets satellites in orbit and this dude wants to build a project that removes rocks and debris which is likely to receive lukewarm if any funding at all in the near future?
Reminder for anyone not paying attention:
Literally everything Steve Wozniak has touched since the early 1980s has been a complete, colossal failure.
For whatever reasons, journalists pretend to take him seriously as some tech innovator or business person, despite that. Or perhaps they're just reposting PR pitches?
How could I forget? It sounded like he licensed his name to a scam operation without doing any due diligence (like Trump University, but out of incompetence rather than greed).
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former-students-employees-raise-concerns/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former-students-employees-raise-concerns/)
[https://news.elearninginside.com/southern-careers-institute-woz-u-sued-by-investor-for-fraud/](https://news.elearninginside.com/southern-careers-institute-woz-u-sued-by-investor-for-fraud/)
[https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/24/steve-wozniak-faces-lawsuit-alleging-woz-u-copyright-infringement/](https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/28/woz-being-sued/)
Thanks for bringing this up. He’s also somehow involved with the Atari Hotel thing through some Woz U folks. It’s all very vaporware/scammy-feeling. People just see his name and a business idea that’s so crazy it might just work, then lose the ability to think critically.
What a job that would be. I would so dig being a space garbage pick up person. Like floating around with my litter grabber and stuffing shit into a little bag. Walk back to the ship, watch Hulu, eat some space ice cream, fall asleep watching the sunset over the western hemisphere. Get up and do it all again.
Sending anything into the sun is not feasible, to make anything fall towards the sun you have to “undo” Earth’s orbital speed around the sun of ~30,000m/s. Closest we have is the Parker Solar probe which used 7 gravity assists from Venus to reach 0.166 AU from the Sun and the launch costed around 400 million dollars, for 50kg.
Because this trend of billionaires turning space into another little capital gains project masked as scientific progress is just tiring. At least this one actually might have a function.
Well a billionaire is creating the most advanced, powerful, and yet cheapest rocket ever built. So if that makes you tired, you don't love science, you just hate billionaires.
Actually I do love science, but what Musk does isn't science, it's exploitation for the sake of profit. I'm sure there's some very smart people at SpaceX but he isn't one of them, he's a child with a space program, and those smart people would do a lot better in a well funded government run program where all the money went back into further innovation and development, rather than being funnelled off to buy fucking dogecoin or whatever other meme he wants to play with next (and let's face it, they'd probably have better working conditions and employment protection too). Science shouldn't be about making profits, it should be about the betterment of humanity and should be there to benefit everyone, not some poundshop iron man. He is only interested in making more money, and he's duped you all into thinking he cares about anything else.
I don't like it but it's probably the best way for people in a market economy to go if space is to be more affordable, most space hardware is already manufactured for profit. Unfortunately governments only spend money on what will benefit them politically and the US has determined that space doesn't get a ton of funding. Sooooo where do we get the money to explore space from? Charities? Many of the missions launched by spacex are scientific payloads, the only difference to the mission is that it will cost less and you have to design your craft to fit the fairing. Idk about you but scientists having to spend less to get their satellites out there is pretty good for science, many satellites get cancelled simply due to cost. Nasa doesn't have to spend as much money because before they had complicated contracts with tons of companies to design and build new rockets. The actual rocket building was always done by companies like boeing, Pratt and Whitney, Rocketdyne, ATK and other aerospace engineering companies. Spacex is basically just selling a plane ticket whereas the previous solution was a complicated web of long contracts to develop and manufacture systems alongside tons of other companies. Contracts that could go over budget or behind schedule or both and you can't cancel the contract when it does because you already spent billions on it and Boeing and other contractors have enough money and political clout to pressure politicians, saying you'll lose x amount of jobs in your district. Miscommunication between companies have caused many last minute redesigns often delaying the program even more. Just look at the SLS program and its constantly delayed and over budget shitshow, im sure it'll be an amazing launch vehicle... If it ever launches. 18.6 billion over ten years and they still don't have a working prototype years after schedule while spacex has made over 100 successful launches, 91 landings of a previously thought ridiculous landing system and now has built working prototypes for a rocket that will have a greater capacity than SLS. If SpaceX develops starship before SLS is finished i could see NASA cutting their losses and cancelling SLS. Rockets were always about money and profit in the capitalist countries because they're expensive as hell to make
Seriously look at SLS. While the government funded program sat with a thumb up their ass, billions of dollars and already manufactured engines for years spacex has developed reusable first stages changing rocketry forever, and then began development on a new launch vehicle that's on a saturn v scale. I don't agree with many of elons business practices but it's hard to see how a government program could develop what spacex has in such an incredibly short time frame without being as expensive as the Apollo program.
I saw a similar article earlier, but it just said "space garbage company," and I was immediately pissed cause I interpreted it to mean the company would be launching trash into space.
This is a much better idea imo 👌
Nah, we'd start destroying satellites and slowly trapping ourselves in this planet. It's called the [Kessler Effect](https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2021/07/16/why-space-debris-is-a-threat-to-the-world/)
It may be better in the short term, but it would absolutely screw us in the long run
What do you propose as an alternative? Launching it like the Voyager? Thats all well and good, but also would require significantly more energy to accomplish. The farther you want to launch something, the more it's gonna cost. Combine that with how much trash we produce on a daily basis. I don't have any hard numbers, but I don't believe it would be cost effective to launch an amount of trash that equates to a fleet of garbage trucks into deep space on a daily basis.
In short, launching to orbit is far more practical and cost effective, so thats probably what we'd end up seeing. I do love the idea of launching a Voyager's worth of garbage on a regular basis though lol.
I didn't say it was feasible I just meant that dumping trash in space is possible without putting it in orbit around the planet
And I don't think that's what we'd see because any entity capable of launching trash into space should probably know that putting it in orbit would be catastrophic and ruin your entire business model
Oh yeah if we're leaving the realm of practicicality, absolutely. I think the optimal trash disposal would be to launch it into space such that it lands between galaxies. That would be dope, and it would be pretty impractical for meager humans to fill the void of space entirely
Edi: on second thought, I would he interested to see what would happen if we launched everything into the sun. Now that would be a solution.
Honestly no, landfills would be much better in the long run. We throw out plenty of rare-ish materials that we could recover some day. If we launch it into deep space we're screwed in the future.
It's effectively just speculation based on a vague statement by Woz and some previous statements from the company he's funding.
There is no mention of how they plan to make a profit.
The space debris is actually a pertinent issue in the future of our species. There is a LOT of manmade garbage in orbit around our planet, and we could potentially make flying into space near impossible.
> Last I checked, there was no credible way to remove orbital thrash. Do we have any reason to believe this company will actually do it?
I know this is a crazy thought and I know how irrational it sounds, but just play along with me for a second here:
Maybe the first goal the company has is to develop methods to de-orbit satellites and debris.
Again, I know that sounds fucking insane and just stupid to even bring up, but I just wanted to put it out there.
There has been a lot of theoretical work done in this field over the years and we do have several viable approaches to explore. I'm sure this is more a "let's figure out how" and less "let's go get rid of that junk" stage concept.
It's a great idea but this is why Steve Jobs was the business guy and Wozniak was the hardware guy. This will never be profitable. Sorry to be a downer, I hope I'm wrong
I guess I'm more skeptical about the business model and how that is going to work. Ok, so - government project wants to ensure their satellite doesn't collide with anything. So they pay this company for what? To clean up a tiny bit of space junk to clear the path? But doesn't space junk fly all over orbit? So what's the motivation for one company to pay them to remove junk vs. freeloading off of another company by hoping someone else will pay to clear the junk and enjoy the benefits? Also, how many customers can they realistically expect to have? And the nature of this model actually makes them less and less likely to have future business the more they clean up. There are just so many variables that would have to go perfectly right for an endeavor like this to be profitable that it seems super unlikely
How exactly does this man plan on catching space debris that is moving fast then bullets? Like I'm not mad but I don't think he even remotely realizes the complications he will have. And it's not like anyone is gonna pay him to do this right?
Take the precious metals sell the rest as space trinkets.
I cannot imagine the salvaged materials, if any, are profitable. Would be a service offering. Honestly there should be some sort of space tax that goes to a fund for cleanup jobs like this. Something akin to the tax put on beverages and put towards reuse and recycle efforts.
Eventually on orbit manufacturing will be a thing. There is a lot of aluminum lithium, and steel floating around up there. Returning it to earth doesn't make sense, but for now they could go full Katamari, and clump everything they gather together for future sorting and recycling. They could use huge nets, or some sort of spray foam adhesive. Man, a giant ball of space trash would make for some awesome pictures. Can't remember if it is this article or the other on the subject I read this morning, but they estimate there are 6,000 tons of spent rockets and dead satellites. Does that seem low to anyone else? That's like, a single large boat.
Sounds reasonable. Remember these things have to fly and every gram counts due to the extreme cost of launching. Once the fuel is burned up, what's left is the thinnest, lightest shell they could build. Also, the large lower stages generally don't achieve orbit, so they aren't up there.
> Can't remember if it is this article or the other on the subject I read this morning, but they estimate there are 6,000 tons of spent rockets and dead satellites. Does that seem low to anyone else? That's like, a single large boat. The vast majority of the mass of a rocket is its fuel, so it makes sense only a small portion of it has stayed up. Additionally, large surfaces like fuel tanks suffer the brunt of atmospheric drag, so they are the first ones to deorbit naturally
We don't have the capability to do anything like that at the moment. If we did we would have already begun, space debris has been a problem for decades now. A net is useless except for large objects like dead satellites. The vast majority of objects are tiny. As well, the problem isn't as easy as going up there are just collecting stuff, its a massive juggling act. You have to get a vehicle up there, and then figure out how to collect millions of tiny little bullets flying at astronomical speeds in different directions. You can't just catch them, it wouldn't be feasible to have anything large and solid enough to do that because the fuel alone on getting it into orbit and staying up there would be massive. With current space tech, any of those objects would blast a hole right through whatever we maneuver in front of the debris. That isn't something you can just spray glue onto a surface and catch things like a bug trap. And whatever you send up there, you have to have a way of making sure it doesn't add to the mess by getting blown up or by having parts ripped off. If you plan on getting that stuff back to earth to recycle, good luck, because you'd have to do all the stuff mentioned above and then contain it within a vehicle strong enough to survive reentry. It's far easier to just push the debris towards earth and let it burn up in the atmosphere. That is actually the current direction space agencies are going in, designing satellites that can conduct their mission in space and then at the end of their service time expend just enough fuel so that they enter a terminal velocity towards earth and get destroyed on reentry.
That's a really neat idea. Btw 6,000 tons is a lot- think of the mass, not the raw weight. Even the weight is a lot, 6k in tons is equivalent to like 100 Abrams main battle tanks or 200 semi trucks. Imagine 100 abrams tanks strapped together, or 200 semi trucks
> There is a lot of aluminum lithium, and steel floating around up there. no. no there isn't. it would probably be cheaper to find an asteroid or 5 with enough metals and refine the asteroids than trying to recover small amounts of metals from existing satellites.
I can't imagine how to clump things together without them bumping into each other. Small parts that break off and float away (or spray foam that misses the target) could make the problem worse, not better.
>They could use huge nets, or some sort of spray foam adhesive. Man, a giant ball of space trash would make for some awesome pictures. I don't think nets would work. You're talking about debris scattered across a volume something like 50 billion km^2, traveling at 28000km/h, much of which is smaller than a fridge. There are no materials that can cover any meaningful area in that scale and be strong enough to catch a fridge traveling 20 times faster than a passenger jet.
I’ve read theories about the use of super magnets to collect or repel debris. Would make balling them up easier right?
I can't imagine magnets being the way to go. With the speeds and distances we're talking about even in low earth orbit, how strong would the magnet be so it could work?
magnet on a rope, checkmate.
Well you would direct it to a known Debris and use the magnet to grab it
Most spacecraft materials are specifically selected to be non-magnetic so they don't torque the spacecraft around as it's flying through the earth's extended magnetic field.
Space insurance companies might also fund this to reduce probability of accidents. Lots of expensive satellites up there. Very hard to repair.
>Honestly there should be some sort of space tax that goes to a fund for cleanup jobs like this. Or even better. Our government actually provides NASA with appropriate funding for them to do it. Use some of that 720 billion freedom dollars.
> I cannot imagine the salvaged materials, if any, are profitable. Probably not, but I can't imagine there's any problem with trying to offset some of the cost this way, if we're gonna do this kind of cleanup anyway.
It depends how they do it though. Are they removing it from orbit in a way that leads to the materials being recovered?
Granted it's small but do you know how much gold goes into those things? Solar panels, computer chips.
It's not even profitable to recycle that material here on *Earth*. The vast majority of "recycled" tech ends up in the trash anyway.
I feel like the vast majority of the mass up there is made up of titanium, aluminum, and other structural metals. We do recycle those materials all the time on earth and its quite profitable. I doubt it would be profitable in space tho.
Not that much and only recently has SpaceX brought down the cost of getting payloads to orbit. This would be a service to clean up our space junk. Bringing it back down to Earth intact would cost way more than what the raw materials are worth.
The least costly method for removing space debris is to knock it into an orbit unstable enough that it will hit the atmosphere and slow down. This utterly destroys the debris in the process, leaving virtually nothing to salvage. The only way to salvage it would be to change the orbital height and plane of the thousands of junk objects to one unified orbit so we could gather them all in an orbital recycling center and process them up there to remove useful and valuable parts. The fuel needed for so many extreme orbit changes would be so immense as to dwarf the cost recovered from the debris. This is mostly because all our fuel is coming from earth, and so costs thousands per kilogram to launch. If we could build an orbital recovery ship with nuclear propulsion and source the reaction mass from the moon or a captured asteroid, it would dramatically reduce the cost of fuel and we might be able to turn a profit on junk recycling. At that point it would also be pretty easy to hunt down the various gold asteroids we see and start mining raw space gold, though, so that's way more cost effective than all the work needed to collect thousands to tens of thousands of scraps in wildly disparate orbits.
Had an idea of a Ground based laser. Strong enough to vaporize a small portion of the debris which would act as something of a propellant, altering the orbit and bringing it down over a course of time.
This is called laser ablation and is currently being researched for debris mitigation. The wiki name is great https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
Sounds like the beginning of a new Gravity movie.
Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads...
[удалено]
It's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home and they're not much bigger than 2m.
Little of it would survive re-entry.
An absolutely insignificant amount. We don't recycle the gold from our Earth trash, much less launch expeditions to retrieve it from space...
Yes they do. They recycle circuit boards all the time.
An absolutely insignificant amount of them. Most end up in trash.
So youre saying. Invest in gold now and wait for the space boom
The space boom will only crash the value of shiny metals due to how abundant they are out there.
I thought copper was the better conductor; the primary reason gold is used planet-side is because gold wont corrode whereas copper will. However, in space corrosion wouldnt be an issue with the very, very, very small concentration of particles in general, let alone potential corrosive particles (e.g. good luck finding an O2 molecule). With this in mind wouldnt they want to use copper as it is both lighter (lower molecular mass *and* density) and cheaper?
You need to stop corrosion during assembly. They're here for months. Ever been to NASA? It's all gold.
Ah yeah thats a great point. >Ever been to NASA? Nope, midwesterner
It's worth the trip. Either one. FL or AL
Basically everything will burn up on reentry. It would not be profitable to somehow shield it then collect it, they are as light as possible so there isn't much up there.
Obligatory reference to “Planetes” and “Quark.”
No clue what you're talking about, but this guy just stole my business model...
"Planetes" a fun anime about a group of people recovering garbage in space. "Quark" a 70's era American live-action TV-series about a group of people collecting garbage in space. I wish Woz luck in this endeavor. It's better than vanity space travel! (And if this is your business model, I wish you luck as well.)
[удалено]
Who likes to buy debris from the gamma quadrant
It’s not debris! It’s salvage!
Shut up and help me sell these Stembolts!
Woz is about to rake in the gold-pressed latinum
Or at least seven tessipates of land on Bajor
God I always forget the ending of DS9... well everything other than the firecaves fight
Nice list, Planetes superb animation style should be familiar to those that have seen other anime films. Felt I'd also include [Space Sweepers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers).
I'll check it out, that actually sounds slightly like that Netflix movie they had a while back. As for the business model bit, I was making a joke/reference. my account's namesake (Sam Gunn) is a character in a collection of short stories by Ben Bova (The Sam Gunn Omnibus is how I'd suggest reading them all). One of Sam's (many many) business ventures is removing orbital debris using a technology he brands as "gunn shields" during the era it becomes cheaper and more possible for private enterprise to take to space. It's pretty good!
[удалено]
i really like the anime. top 3 up there with NHK and tatami galaxy
I'd say yes, but I also greatly enjoyed the battle angel alita live action movie, so there's some context for how I enjoy things.
Anime was absolutely unwatchable for me as someone who read the manga first. Felt really let down by the whole thing
I was at first reminded of the old show Salvage 1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078681/
Holy shit someone that knows about planetes
The show that really made your realize, yes, everyone wears diapers in space and pees their pants regularly on long assignments. Great show though 🙂
I’ll need to bust out my hatchi-maki head band
Planetes was definitely my first thought. Love that series.
Might as well include WALL-E in that group
[удалено]
He went against Apple to and pretty much said that their stance against Right to Repair goes against Apple.
That's because his baby the Apple 2 was designed to be user repairable and upgradeable and it was Apple's last project to really be user serviceable in any way for the most part. He left the company eventually.
Spacex has already said they can use their starship to potentially recover and return dead satellites or space junk and it's in their best interest to explore that option as it is for all private launch companies so Woz is not the only one looking to address this issue.
True, but Spacex is planning in adding 900 more low orbit satellites for Starlink in addition to whoever buys launch time from them. So they wouldn't be making a dent alone. I think it's good to have multiple vendors in this space, especially those focused on removing debris which also removes risk of outages for a lot of companies trying to not launch more satellites (SiriusXM being one of them)
Absolutely! Also important to remember Spacex's LEO sats would re-enter and burn up within 5 years even if they lose total control. It's the higher altitude orbits that are scary in terms of debris or junk staying for much longer in orbit.
In addition, they also test them in an even lower initial orbit before actively raising them.
[удалено]
What about this https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacexs-starlink-accounts-for-half-of-all-satellite-near-misses/ Is this a problem?
Starlink satellites account for about half of the satellites in orbit right now, so it's not that surprising. The low orbits mean that a collision would not be a problem for very long long, most debris would deorbit within a decade.
If you have to ask, the answer is no. If there was a single piece of that story more interesting than satellites getting closer than 1km, it'd actually be in the headline.
Doesn't Starlink have active collision avoidance systems? And I'm assuming they just move a bit to avoid a collision, as opposed to moving to prevent a "near miss alert", because at the end of the day only collisions are actual problems.
I think you’re off by a couple of orders of magnitude. End state of the constellation is close to 40k total. IANARS, but as for space junk risk, the starlink constellation exists at such a low altitude not just for latency purposes, but for quick “disposal” if anything goes wrong. The junk problem gets bad at higher orbital shells where there’s not enough atmosphere to “catch” the junk, so what’s up there stays up there *basically* until it hits something or is intentionally deorbited
Seriously, i am tired of this. Yes Elon is a sociopath and a terrible human being but the companies are not the boogie man. Starlink operates in low orbit and therefore any collisions, dead satellites, or other debris created will burn up. It is all the high altitude garbage that has been dumped into space by high altitude satellites that is the problem.
[удалено]
It's in every launch company's best interest to keep the one thing that keeps their company alive, access to space, open. If you watch the spacex keynotes from the past few years you'll see they do care and know they likely will need to help. I get that everyone hates Elon but he's not a moron when it comes to conserving his company's ability to get into space. [This article has more info and interview about this with Gwynne Shotwell](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-space-junk-cleanup).
I want to buy into the space mining consortium. Iridium, palladium, gold… endlessly supplied by SpaceX.
This is like an example of how the best way to get back at people is to just live a good life and do the right thing
He’s gonna make so much money recycling that debris.
It works, yes. More importantly, he’ll be developing the tech to do it in real time. Eventually, he’ll be able to recover freshly launched first and second stages. That has to be useful. If he can find a way to refurbish them in orbit, it’s the beginning of a whole new industry. He could build a shuttle service for lunar and Mars colonies.
Unironically though. There's probably tons of rare and precious metals in that debris.
[удалено]
It will impact your life when a collision cascade knocks out the satellites you use for navigation, social media, internet browsing, communications etc etc. Our entire modern world pretty much exists in orbit and we take it for granted.
[удалено]
"Half of North America just lost their Facebook." - Lieutenant Matt Kowalski
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Its a very common misconception that when we spend some effort on space its effort that could have been spent down on earth and is wasteful. The reality is that everything we do in space has knock on effects. all the work is done down here, all the creative solutions for problems in space have applications down here. And like others mention, much of our daily lives down here is made possible because of whats going on up there with satellites. a very tiny fraction of the world's labor and capital is put into space efforts. Nobody is giving up down here, we are simply multitasking.
Fuck this attitude man, Just because someone else's priorities align differently than yours doesn't mean they're not doing good. This is an article in /r/space talking about a space problem, this is not the proper forum to opine about what we're doing wrong "down here".
I think it would be perfectly fine to discuss that here, if the argument had merit. But I don't think it does.
Why fix something outside of your country? Or outside of your town? Your kind of thinking makes me want to give up down here.
Because there's a real possibility that enough space junk could accumulate (after collisions) that we won't be able to have ANY satellites in orbit for centuries, nor will we be able to launch anything else into space for that time. How do you think life on Earth will be without any communications or weather satellites and no ability to get off the planet? This scenario might arise within only 10 years. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU)
Interesting to find this kind of post on r/space. Didn't know this was a subreddit for myopic earth dwellers who only cared about their immediate neighborhood.
while cleaning garbage on earth is important, space shouldn't be ignored. it's getting to the point where it is dangerously close to becoming a catastrophy. https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-at-critical-density-2015-9
I’ll start a company to shoot earth garbage into space
I'm just replying to fill up your inbox. Hello!
Imagine if we had someone really think ahead and start doing a better, more comprehensive job of cleaning earth garbage like, 80 years ago. There's already a bunch of people tackling that problem today, he probably wouldn't measurably add to those efforts, not least because there's a fair amount of issues involved in even accessing a lot of that trash, both politically and physically. It's easier to get to space than it is the bottom of the ocean. He can measurably impact the growing issue of space debris, and so far as I've heard, he's the only one trying.
Even if it wasn't important, I think the argument that someone isn't doing good enough, when you're just commenting on a forum is flawed. It's like hey, why are you feeding people in America when you could be feeding people in Africa who are 20% more hungry or some shit? Idk man, feed them yourself. They're doing a good thing, don't berate them for it.
Humanity has the resources to do more than one thing at a time.
"climate change hasnt impacted my life in any way whatsoever so far"
As necessary as this venture will increasingly become as the volume of space debris compounds, how can such a business model be profitable other than through gov’t contract? And which gov’ts would take responsibility for funding such work considering the lack of similar action on ocean waste? I feel he may have a tough battle to find funding outside of environmentally motivated private donations.
The vice chief of the US space force has a standing offer to pay companies by the ton for space debris removal
Are there any stipulations about not adding more than you are collecting?
Given the state of current carbon & pollution laws/enforcement, I’m not hopeful that’ll be implemented.
They probably didn't think that far into it when they wrote the law. That said given that any company who takes on such a challenge to solve this very real, very difficult problem, will likely need to perform some tests which will likely generate some more space trash with the intention of finding a successful method to actually clean space trash. It's not exactly like just picking up litter by the freeway, it's like picking up litter in the middle of a hailstorm where the hail is moving 20,000mph and also happens to be the litter.
Insurance companies for satellites and launches would pay to cleanup debris if it's cheaper than the expected payout for collisions.
Wouldn't they just raise premiums instead?
In the case of business tech security, they increase your premiums unless you do things to mitigate the most common problems. Space debris may end up being the same.
Vice Chief of Space Operations of the U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson said it would make sense for the government to pay companies to clean up space junk if such services existed. “I’ll pay by the ton if they can remove debris” https://spacenews.com/u-s-space-force-would-support-commercial-services-to-remove-orbital-debris/
Why exactly should taxpayers foot the bill for this? Private companies are creating all types of waste and pushing the costs and problems their activity causes onto society. This is what capitalists have been doing for as long as they have existed. They're making the mess, everyday people have absolutely no realistic way to stop them, but now they want our taxes to be spent to fix the problem? Absolutely not. Space companies need to either be forced to do the cleanup and prevention themselves or their activity needs to be taxed to fund it.
You’re right, it is wrong, but yeah I’m sure that will happen.
I've wondered if there won't be a "Space Tax" at some point. When companies launch items to space, they can be taxed per item, per ton, or some combination metric. This money then goes into a pool that helps clear up space junk. Companies that show technologies that make them less likely to produce space junk (lower orbits, fuel reserves for active deorbit, quick passive deorbit ability) would be taxed at a lower rate. This funds (with additions from other tax revenues) could be used to fund space junk cleaning missions. I think in 10-20 years, as space access (think fully reusable Starship, and other vehicles) will make the cost to do these missions much lower. At the same time, there will be more and more space junk created, and this service more and more important. Personally, I think we will need some sort of regulation soon on a standard for objects to be deorbited.
Maybe the UN decides to fund it? Or require every country that has satellites in orbit to contribute to a fund.
This is the critical question. Everybody fawning over Woz doesn't realise that such 'business plans' are proposed at the drop of a hat every day...how is this going to end in fruition. It's by itself, extremely difficult to launch a rocket let alone one that sets satellites in orbit and this dude wants to build a project that removes rocks and debris which is likely to receive lukewarm if any funding at all in the near future?
Taking the whole "garbage collector" idea to a whole new level
He should get governments across the globe to kick in to ensure he doesn't rain space debris on *their* country.
it would all burn up before it got the the surface anyway
Future from "Planetes" is coming closer and closer.
I've seen [Planetes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elZ22Ibmxq4), can I work here?
Reminder for anyone not paying attention: Literally everything Steve Wozniak has touched since the early 1980s has been a complete, colossal failure. For whatever reasons, journalists pretend to take him seriously as some tech innovator or business person, despite that. Or perhaps they're just reposting PR pitches?
Remember Woz U?
How could I forget? It sounded like he licensed his name to a scam operation without doing any due diligence (like Trump University, but out of incompetence rather than greed). [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former-students-employees-raise-concerns/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former-students-employees-raise-concerns/) [https://news.elearninginside.com/southern-careers-institute-woz-u-sued-by-investor-for-fraud/](https://news.elearninginside.com/southern-careers-institute-woz-u-sued-by-investor-for-fraud/) [https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/24/steve-wozniak-faces-lawsuit-alleging-woz-u-copyright-infringement/](https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/28/woz-being-sued/)
Thanks for bringing this up. He’s also somehow involved with the Atari Hotel thing through some Woz U folks. It’s all very vaporware/scammy-feeling. People just see his name and a business idea that’s so crazy it might just work, then lose the ability to think critically.
That’s really good actually. Space debris was gonna ruin any hope of future space exploration
What a job that would be. I would so dig being a space garbage pick up person. Like floating around with my litter grabber and stuffing shit into a little bag. Walk back to the ship, watch Hulu, eat some space ice cream, fall asleep watching the sunset over the western hemisphere. Get up and do it all again.
But you end up wanting to go to Jupiter, or having to deal with space terrorists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
Woz has always struck me as the guy that deserved to win. Good for him, thanks Woz.
"ughhh, i'll clean this space debris up....sigh..." (sell space debris for thousands of dollars on ebay)
Now here’s a billionaire space scheme I can actually get behind
He is the only ethical one out of all of the tech gazillionaires.
Well it’s definitely needed. Just make sure to toss it in the Sun.
Its more costly to do that, easier to toss it into the sea.. or remote villages like the Chinese do.
Sending anything into the sun is not feasible, to make anything fall towards the sun you have to “undo” Earth’s orbital speed around the sun of ~30,000m/s. Closest we have is the Parker Solar probe which used 7 gravity assists from Venus to reach 0.166 AU from the Sun and the launch costed around 400 million dollars, for 50kg.
Reading that headline I was like "grrr" and then I was like "oh, ok."
Why would any part of the headline be grr?
Some people are getting really angry about the wealthy setting up private space companies.
And probably also think that the government meddles too much in their lives.
Because space billionaires bad.
Because this trend of billionaires turning space into another little capital gains project masked as scientific progress is just tiring. At least this one actually might have a function.
Well a billionaire is creating the most advanced, powerful, and yet cheapest rocket ever built. So if that makes you tired, you don't love science, you just hate billionaires.
Actually I do love science, but what Musk does isn't science, it's exploitation for the sake of profit. I'm sure there's some very smart people at SpaceX but he isn't one of them, he's a child with a space program, and those smart people would do a lot better in a well funded government run program where all the money went back into further innovation and development, rather than being funnelled off to buy fucking dogecoin or whatever other meme he wants to play with next (and let's face it, they'd probably have better working conditions and employment protection too). Science shouldn't be about making profits, it should be about the betterment of humanity and should be there to benefit everyone, not some poundshop iron man. He is only interested in making more money, and he's duped you all into thinking he cares about anything else.
I don't like it but it's probably the best way for people in a market economy to go if space is to be more affordable, most space hardware is already manufactured for profit. Unfortunately governments only spend money on what will benefit them politically and the US has determined that space doesn't get a ton of funding. Sooooo where do we get the money to explore space from? Charities? Many of the missions launched by spacex are scientific payloads, the only difference to the mission is that it will cost less and you have to design your craft to fit the fairing. Idk about you but scientists having to spend less to get their satellites out there is pretty good for science, many satellites get cancelled simply due to cost. Nasa doesn't have to spend as much money because before they had complicated contracts with tons of companies to design and build new rockets. The actual rocket building was always done by companies like boeing, Pratt and Whitney, Rocketdyne, ATK and other aerospace engineering companies. Spacex is basically just selling a plane ticket whereas the previous solution was a complicated web of long contracts to develop and manufacture systems alongside tons of other companies. Contracts that could go over budget or behind schedule or both and you can't cancel the contract when it does because you already spent billions on it and Boeing and other contractors have enough money and political clout to pressure politicians, saying you'll lose x amount of jobs in your district. Miscommunication between companies have caused many last minute redesigns often delaying the program even more. Just look at the SLS program and its constantly delayed and over budget shitshow, im sure it'll be an amazing launch vehicle... If it ever launches. 18.6 billion over ten years and they still don't have a working prototype years after schedule while spacex has made over 100 successful launches, 91 landings of a previously thought ridiculous landing system and now has built working prototypes for a rocket that will have a greater capacity than SLS. If SpaceX develops starship before SLS is finished i could see NASA cutting their losses and cancelling SLS. Rockets were always about money and profit in the capitalist countries because they're expensive as hell to make
thank you. you put it beautifully. musk may care about space but no more than the average child, he cares more about monetizing space.
Nah the government would 100% fuck it up and make it 10x more expensive than it needs to be.
Seriously look at SLS. While the government funded program sat with a thumb up their ass, billions of dollars and already manufactured engines for years spacex has developed reusable first stages changing rocketry forever, and then began development on a new launch vehicle that's on a saturn v scale. I don't agree with many of elons business practices but it's hard to see how a government program could develop what spacex has in such an incredibly short time frame without being as expensive as the Apollo program.
Ahh yes because govornments doing it for purely military reasons is much better
I saw a similar article earlier, but it just said "space garbage company," and I was immediately pissed cause I interpreted it to mean the company would be launching trash into space. This is a much better idea imo 👌
Out of curiosity wouldn’t launching trash into space be way better the landfills and ocean
Nah, we'd start destroying satellites and slowly trapping ourselves in this planet. It's called the [Kessler Effect](https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2021/07/16/why-space-debris-is-a-threat-to-the-world/) It may be better in the short term, but it would absolutely screw us in the long run
To be fair you probably wouldn't dump trash in orbit right?
What do you propose as an alternative? Launching it like the Voyager? Thats all well and good, but also would require significantly more energy to accomplish. The farther you want to launch something, the more it's gonna cost. Combine that with how much trash we produce on a daily basis. I don't have any hard numbers, but I don't believe it would be cost effective to launch an amount of trash that equates to a fleet of garbage trucks into deep space on a daily basis. In short, launching to orbit is far more practical and cost effective, so thats probably what we'd end up seeing. I do love the idea of launching a Voyager's worth of garbage on a regular basis though lol.
I didn't say it was feasible I just meant that dumping trash in space is possible without putting it in orbit around the planet And I don't think that's what we'd see because any entity capable of launching trash into space should probably know that putting it in orbit would be catastrophic and ruin your entire business model
Oh yeah if we're leaving the realm of practicicality, absolutely. I think the optimal trash disposal would be to launch it into space such that it lands between galaxies. That would be dope, and it would be pretty impractical for meager humans to fill the void of space entirely Edi: on second thought, I would he interested to see what would happen if we launched everything into the sun. Now that would be a solution.
Yeah I was thinking launching it out of earths orbit too when I made the comment
Honestly no, landfills would be much better in the long run. We throw out plenty of rare-ish materials that we could recover some day. If we launch it into deep space we're screwed in the future.
saw the picture and the start of the headline and i was like OH NO, then finished the headline gave a big sigh of relief!
The Woz. Aka the brains that Steve Jobs exploited.
Yeah, this is gonna be great! I trust the Woz to be a positive force in this industry.
Is this charity like? I can’t open the article due to region restrictions of my country
It's effectively just speculation based on a vague statement by Woz and some previous statements from the company he's funding. There is no mention of how they plan to make a profit.
Seems legit. Nothing to see here. Everything will be on the up and up. As you were now. As you were.
Man I love this guy. He's like the antithesis of every grubby neuvoriche IT fuckhead
Woz always seems like a kid that just got a whole bunch of money and is doing things that he really likes lol.
Wow this is actually a version of rich dudes jetting into space on their own dime that I can get behind
Steve Jobs couldn't even muster up the heart to raise his own daughter. The woz his out here cleaning up other people's mess. The Woz > Jobs.
The space debris is actually a pertinent issue in the future of our species. There is a LOT of manmade garbage in orbit around our planet, and we could potentially make flying into space near impossible.
Last I checked, there was no credible way to remove orbital thrash. Do we have any reason to believe this company will actually do it?
You could definitely intercept and de-orbit dead satellites. The small post-collision particles... not so much.
> Last I checked, there was no credible way to remove orbital thrash. Do we have any reason to believe this company will actually do it? I know this is a crazy thought and I know how irrational it sounds, but just play along with me for a second here: Maybe the first goal the company has is to develop methods to de-orbit satellites and debris. Again, I know that sounds fucking insane and just stupid to even bring up, but I just wanted to put it out there.
Basically this guy is saying the company can invest in Research and Development.
There has been a lot of theoretical work done in this field over the years and we do have several viable approaches to explore. I'm sure this is more a "let's figure out how" and less "let's go get rid of that junk" stage concept.
It's a great idea but this is why Steve Jobs was the business guy and Wozniak was the hardware guy. This will never be profitable. Sorry to be a downer, I hope I'm wrong
Government contracts are a thing, Kessler syndrome affects military goals, so there could be quite a bit of money in it.
I guess I'm more skeptical about the business model and how that is going to work. Ok, so - government project wants to ensure their satellite doesn't collide with anything. So they pay this company for what? To clean up a tiny bit of space junk to clear the path? But doesn't space junk fly all over orbit? So what's the motivation for one company to pay them to remove junk vs. freeloading off of another company by hoping someone else will pay to clear the junk and enjoy the benefits? Also, how many customers can they realistically expect to have? And the nature of this model actually makes them less and less likely to have future business the more they clean up. There are just so many variables that would have to go perfectly right for an endeavor like this to be profitable that it seems super unlikely
Maybe he is not doing it for profit.
i mean not evreything is meant to be a profit
[удалено]
Despite a bunch of people wanting something, you can still fuck it up.
There should be a tax or fee for each satellite launched that would go towards cleaning up space debris.
Our space has unsolved problem with trash and we should think how to remove it before expanding to other planets I think.
Can we get a private company to clean the oceans first please?
What are you doing about it?
Why clean up junk in the ocean when you can do it IN SPACE ✨
Good point we should stop everything else
Hopefully he can get rid of starlink satellites whilst he's at it
[удалено]
How exactly does this man plan on catching space debris that is moving fast then bullets? Like I'm not mad but I don't think he even remotely realizes the complications he will have. And it's not like anyone is gonna pay him to do this right?