Comments on: China creates space debris, intentionally

By: Canuck

Canuck — Wed, 18 May 2011 13:44:15 +0000

The numerous Reagan run programs created absolutely ZERO extra debris and used magic teleportation devices to suck up all the shredded debris that the numerous “Star Wars” programs created with its tests.

By: DDthreeSocks

DDthreeSocks — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:34:41 +0000

And there it is folks, almost a scenario about this article coming to life……Space debris from this particular satellite came within 3 miles of the international space station today, 4 years after this article. The debris was 5 inches in diameter and traveling at 18000 MPH. Ironic!

By: KatG

KatG — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:17:11 +0000

I’m thinking we should learn from this. Search for intelligent life could be found by looking for garbage orbitting earth like planets. ;)

By: You're Dumb

You're Dumb — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:51:34 +0000

yeah i honestly feel stupid from reading that. “the only solution is to wait it out for thousands of years” “a paint splat can be deadly” OO i mean really? i’m sure if that was ever to happen, very unlikely, seeing as how it’s not all on big “apocalyptic” chain of events, mankind could think of a way to clean up orbital space, if not now then surely in “thousands of years”. that was quite possible the worse explanation i’ve ever heard, using your ” science” to convince people of that. and btw, that wasn’t a dumb move; obviously if they’re practicing shooting down space satellites, they don’t WANT anything orbiting above them

By: China And Travel

China And Travel — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:00:43 +0000

If you’re planning a vacation to China, you’re the one knowledgeable that there’s a good amount of homework turn out to be done before you start piecing your vacation together and choosing what you need to see. A rural area covers this kind of huge area and it has this sort of rich history and diverse culture that you might spend years taking everything in. Because of this, if you’re considering China and travel, you’ll do best to talk to a travel agency, or anyone who has toured China before for advice.

By: Travel Deals China

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By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:29:31 +0000

Im not an expert but why don’t they just make satelites with small thrust rockets which can be controlled from earth and also include a selfdestruct bomb..

job done… fly away > boom.. ?

Or… just let every satelite fly home and recycle it.. they do the same with cars.. metal = metal

By: Operator

Operator — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:18:24 +0000

There are literally thousands of objects we are currently tracking… They’re given a number (called an IRON) if they are larger than a dime. The outer band that you see is nothing to worry about (The part that looks like a ring). Those are in a geosynchronous orbit, and have assigned “parking spots”. the stuff that poses the threat is the junk that’s near us, because it can collide with the LEO satellites, creating more debris. Those are the satellites that give us DirecTV and Sirius and whatnot. Unfortunately there’s not much we can do about cleanup, it would cost billions. It’s up to us (the US) and China to be responsible and not make more of a mess just to prove how big our “junk” is. Lulz, like how i tied that in?

By: kevinjk

kevinjk — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:42:26 +0000

actually absorbing them would be ideal. a few large masses of soft material such as lead or even raw clay will absorb the impacts even though expensive to get to orbit. if you had them all put into one chunk though you wouldnt want them to come to earth, more economical would be to create a second moon or merge it with our current moon for a space station. in fact the moon itself is absorbing space debris as we speak. then if you needed some lead or whatever the space debris is collected as you could harvest it from space instead of having to create everything on earth and launch it to orbit. im sure theres a ton of precious metals in the older sattelites. all we need is a city on the moon! ill help build a city on the moon for free if anyone else wants to lol….

By: Alyosha Gorham

Alyosha Gorham — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:49:39 +0000

People will probably think me stupid or crazy, but i hope the kessler syndrome happens. The person who posted this article asks,
“How colossally and terminally short-sighted can humanity get?!”. In my opinion, how shortsighted can humanity be that the general
conclusion is, well we can’t solve our problems here on Earth, let’s make them bigger, waste the resources we don’t use responsibly
now to bung a few people into space. Just from a base profit\loss view of the situation of space travel it’s all loss. Billions of dollars
time, energy, to what, satisfy simple curiosity, the desire to be first? Plant a fruit tree, live simply, seek contentment, not thrills.
There is only so much for all the people on this planet and thrills are expensive. Contentment is easy.

By: yas

yas — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:53:55 +0000

the junks gonna stay up there and were all gonna die thanks AMERICA!

By: imsmarterthanyou

imsmarterthanyou — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:16:18 +0000

wow ok do more research, they already have dozens of ground satellites tracking every peice of space debris bigger than 2” which is pretty damn good and any thing smalller than that is not even a minor problem for spaceships any way and some of these solutions you are suggesting are ludicris and meant to stay in scifi movies. btw DGHizz is probably an acurate forecast of what will really happen. if you havent noticed america is pretty screwed up right now so reform or at least repair our gov. before taking tthe weight of the world on our broken shoulders

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:58:48 +0000

Space junk is more of a long term problem than the Pacific garbage pack. Even if, somehow, the garbage problem in the Pacific reaches terminal conditions, we’ve only lost this one planet.

If, on the other hand, we lose access to space, we loseall the planets, everywhere (however many billions there may be).

By: DGHizz

DGHizz — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:26:09 +0000

We still haven’t cleaned up the floating island of plastic in the ocean and you are talking about cleaning up LEO? The Politicians will set up a committee to study the feasability of conducting a study that will be in committee for 30 years. Someone else needs to get up there with a private company and show feasability of safe junk mitigation and then offer the service to the countries with sats up there. Not gonna happen soon enough otherwise.

By: Some Dude

Some Dude — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:04:46 +0000

We invest in space tractors! They’d only have to go a bit slower then the debris and just orbit around collecting all the space junk. They could be remote controlled and dock with the ISS for refueling and repairs. And then we can either send the junk up into the Sun or recycle what can be. It’s not the hard, just expensive.

Of course Humanity WILL tear each other to pieces before committing to such a plan.

By: pete

pete — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:12:26 +0000

i think if we equip each satellite with a tractor beam and a really hungry guy the hungry guy can eat all the leftovers in the trash he can also make a fort out of all the other junk so it will protect the sattilite from the chinese bombs im hungry

By: victoria

victoria — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:53:23 +0000

Why not, it’s not like we havent trashed everything and everywhere else might as well take it into space!

By: Boogs

Boogs — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:36:09 +0000

I think that the debris will be a great defence against E.T’s attacking the home land!!

By: R. Wiccan

R. Wiccan — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:10:48 +0000

First we put multiple ring shaped magnets (maybe electro-magnets powered by small nuclear reactors in the rocket bodies) around the top stages of orbital rockets, (the rocket is inside the center holes of the magnets)and fill the spaces between magnets with Silly Putty. These rockets are launched into the orbits of the densest clouds of debris, with velocities just a little faster or a little slower than the debris. Each orbit should vary a little over months or years so the magnets can go near the majority of the debris & the debris can embed itself in the Silly Putty. These rocket/magnet combos should stay in orbit permanently. More debis is sure to happen. Someday we will have to retrieve them (when we have squandered our natural resources) as a supply of metal.

By: Alphonse

Alphonse — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:36:46 +0000

Cripes you guys have limited thinking capacity. We needs to get us some space fly paper. It’ll work cos it’s real light so it’s easy to get up there. Tape it together with space tape to make one giant sheet and then set it orbiting for a few years to collect all the crap. It can have a little rocket motor attached to the bottom corner so that when we are ready it can have a little nudge to send it earthwards where it and all the crap will burn up. Also it won’t be long till space ships have shields anyway. I went to space camp, I know what I’m talking about.

By: Hac

Hac — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:10:05 +0000

you need a new editor.

By: William (green)

William (green) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:37:55 +0000

That’s… a much better idea.

By: DGHarrison

DGHarrison — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:42:44 +0000

Hey, maybe it’s a great opportunity to invest in Roomba. They’d create a bunch of mass-dense objects that simply get in the way of the zooming particles and absorb them. Make the objects so that they do not disintegrate, but become a substrate to which everything else sticks. After these Spaceba have been up for a while, sweeping all the tiny particles up, then send up a bigger unit, an Orba, to sweep up the big pieces. Eventually, rendezvous with the Orba, attach propellant rockets, and either decelerate the junk for burn-up in Earth’s atmosphere, or accelerate the junk to send it on a track toward the sun, where it will burn up.

By: William (green)

William (green) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:09:57 +0000

Todd’s idea may not work like that, but a vast network of microsats working on the same principle might work well. I mean, if you can just get a portion of the debris into trackable-sized chunks, that alone would help significantly.
At least until we have Trek-style Bussard collectors, anyway.

By: Matrix

Matrix — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:16:29 +0000

nicole – don’t you think there will be even more smaller pieces if they destroy it with laser ? That means more of them and more danger !!! By pushing them away with some force will mean that they will at least go a bit farther away… which makes sense.