Following the space debris trail

A couple more articles about space debris:

First, NASA "recalculated" the risks to the Hubble Repair Mission from space debris, i.e., a collision with something more than a dust mote or paint fleck, reducing them from 1-in-185 to 1-in-221. That certainly makes me sleep better at night. If I could enter a raffle with a 1-in-221 chance of winning a cool million bucks, I would likely lay down a Grover.


Space Debris Risk Refined for Shuttle Mission to Hubble

Note that the author of this piece is "James Dean". His movie idol namesake is not exactly the person I'd be thinking of for anti-collision advice. See the picture. And this was a low-speed crash compared to what can happen in orbit.

What are the numbers from this article? Glad you asked:

"The Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network officially tracks more than 19,000 larger objects, from about two inches to several feet in diameter, at altitudes up to about 22,000 miles above the planet."

Here's the other one:

Space Junk Around Earth on the Rise, Experts Say

Well, gee, tell me something I haven't figured out already.

"The threat posed by orbital debris to the reliable operation of space systems will continue to grow unless the sources of space debris are brought under control," NASA's chief orbital debris scientist Nicholas Johnson told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee in Washington, D.C."

OK, I already knew that.

"So in 29 years, the amount of space traffic has quadrupled," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Larry James, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Functional Component Command for Space."

Well, I didn't know that.

"It is clear to me that if the spacefaring nations of the world don't take steps to minimize the growth of space junk, we will eventually face a situation where low Earth orbit becomes a risky place to carry out civil and commercial space activities," said Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), the committee's chair."

OK, I figured that out already.

"Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) said that a while monitoring the space debris environment is vital, a more effective means of cleaning up the orbital junk already in space is also needed. "If you're already charting the course, all we have to do is get something up there that will knock it down," Rohrabacher said. "And that doesn't have to be something so sophisticated. Just a big bulldozer in the sky, you might say."

That's what I've been saying. We need an orbital garbage crew and a space garbage skimmer. It will get to the point of economic necessity, so I'd recommend starting the design phase now. Below is an example from Japan.