[Ground-station] Debris Mitigation - call for comments

[Phil Karn]

On 9/23/20 14:33, Jeff WE4B via Ground-Station wrote:
> I wonder how well the laser ‘pulverized’ these objects in orbit. It’s
> a very interesting solution. Something will have to be done soon to
> mitigate all of the objects that we have inserted into orbit. If I had
> venture capital money, I would partner with Bob McGwier and try to
> figure out a solution. 

I wonder the same thing. Breaking up one big piece of debris into a
whole bunch of smaller pieces of debris that are harder to track only
makes the problem much worse.

A somewhat more promising use of lasers would be not to break up these
objects but to ablate them strongly enough to provide some delta V to
kick them into lower, shorter-lived orbits. But I'm still skeptical.

I do have one totally wild idea for clearing out parts of LEO. Lob a
suborbital device into LEO space. When it gets there, it rapidly deploys
a big ball of something like polyurethane foam in the path of a cloud of
orbital debris. The ball does NOT need to actually capture the debris,
it only needs to exchange enough momentum to bring down the debris
particle after it passes through. The ball itself, lacking orbital
momentum, soon falls out of the sky.

I got this idea while reading about the use of small pieces of aerogel
to capture (admittedly tiny) comet particles moving at relative
velocities of 50 km/s or so, much higher than the ~7 km/s in LEO.

One problem with this scheme -- and the laser -- is that they look too
much like antisatellite weapons. Which they are. There needs to be a
treaty completely banning intentional creation of long-lived orbital
debris, specifically including antisatellite weapon tests, but with
exceptions for systems designed to remove debris as opposed to creating
it. As long as the debris owners don't object, of course.

--Phil