Untitled Image
A computer-generated artists impression released by the European Space Agency depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth.
The WSJ ran this along side their story about the collision of a defunct Russian military satellite with an Iridium satellite. (I first mistyped that as “collusion”. That would be a lot scarier.)
Business idea for the near future: contract to governments and aerospace companies to cheaply deorbit problematic chunks of space junk. I have no idea how to do this (ground-based laser?). Another thing you might be able to do, if you had the satellite deathray, is track all the debris over a threshold size, and sell subscription policies to aerospace companies that say you’ll blast whatever is necessary to keep their orbits clear. Kind of like a space dredger or plowing company. The Street loves recurring revenue.
UPDATE: I bet you you could get DARPA funding to develop the technology from the whiteboard stage if you pitched it as a space supremacy program, then you could also diversify out of aerospace with defense contracts.
“Industry officials say Iridium has identified the Russian craft as a Cosmos series satellite launched in 1993, weighing more than a ton and including an onboard nuclear reactor. That couldn’t be independently verified. Experts have said the chance of radioactive debris surviving a fall through the atmosphere and reaching inhabited areas is very small.”
“But the odds of a direct hit between satellites were considered so small as to be basically unthinkable. “
The lesson of the new decade is that Not All Distributions Are Normal. Corrolary: Sometimes Its Hard To Tell.
you beat me to it. altho I was going to post this image.
a bunch of those things have onboard nuclear reactors if I’m remembering correctly.
hi res version.
gallery of images.
(via sippey.)