Let me start off by saying how I came upon this subject. I was watching Wall_E with my son. And there is one scene where Walle and the ship he was
holding on too was leaving Earth's orbit, and there was litereally a cover of satellites and manmade objects surrounding the Earth. This was based in
the future, so they had so many sattellites it was like a haze around the planet.
So this led me to wonder how many satellites do we have an orbit now? I came across this website:
How Many Satellites are orbiting the Earth?
And apparently there are 560 operating now. Which is more then I thought. But there are 8,000 man made objects in total.
Just what are the other thousands of man made objects?
And will we continue to clutter space as our communication and technological needs grow?
I thought this was an interesting bit of info too:
Satellites have an operating lifespan between five and twenty years. Currently, the former Soviet states launch about 1,300 satellites into orbit
per year, the USA about 1,000, Japan 100, China 50, France 40, India 30, the UK 25, and a few from Australia and Israel. The company Sea Launch — a
consortium of four companies from the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Norway — launches a few satellites into orbit from international waters
every year.
|
I think that old satellites will be a great problem in the future and some international treaty about that problem should be signed. A while ago I saw
that some Ebglish company has a concept of spacecraft that would refuel and repair old satellites in geostacionary orbit. It would refuel them through
engine nozzle and if necessary (usualy not) repair them. I think such projects should be sponsored to solve the problem.
|
Have you ever seen that java app that shows you all the objects?? forgot the site but its good to see!! "i will try find it" You can download data
from most so they track em alot in real time.. like weather ones! or landsat ect
But its a good subject. What do we do with them? all this junk? shoot em down??? pointless!!
We should just Think better about what we are doing with "minimoons" All the stuff in space could be placed on the moon as static objects and do the
same stuff "most" of them as the world spins and the moond does not!
Just an idea!
|
Dont know how true it is but I did read somewhere that we have something already that can go up there, bring satelites down for small repairs and
such, then send them back on their way. But like I said, I dunno how true that is.
|
That does exist. It's called Spaceshuttle  But it's far to expensive. You have to have an spacecraft in orbit and repair/refuel satellites in
orbit to bring the costs down... It would still be pretty expensive...
|
That is a lot of junk up there but it all has a small lifespan. Eventually they all have to come back to Earth due to the decay of their orbit.
|
|
Perhaps is crazy, but..
if it is so costly to put material on orbit, .. its not posible to reuse it to build new things,
i supose the problem is it has to be automatic, but..
can the be done in more standard pieces for reuse or can they be melted, or forwarded to the moon to be melted,
i supose energy is cheap to send to orbit or moon (laser,..)
i know its a kids question but,.. all that extreme cost of kgs of material to put in orbit, for a few years, perhaps it can start to be used to grow
a permanent station if a melting or reprofit facility is made..
|
