Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, Welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says now it's
Speaker 1: time to leave the capsule if you dare. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about, you know, junk in space, space junk,
Speaker 1: space junk, or orbital debris if you prefer, if you
Speaker 1: want to be all official about it. So let's talk
Speaker 1: What is space junk? What is it? Uh? It's uh,
Speaker 1: I'll take the pressure off. Okay, space junk. It's debris
Speaker 1: in space. It's stuff that's defunct, it's no longer working.
Speaker 1: It is stuff that is accumulated in orbit around Earth
Speaker 1: that we can no longer control or use in any
Speaker 1: meaningful way. That now is kind of a an issue.
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say, I was be
Speaker 1: it can be any number of things. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot lots of different things. Are we we we've put
Speaker 1: a lot of junk in space. Yeah, And just to
Speaker 1: be clear, we're pretty much going by the NASA approach
Speaker 1: to to defining this. They call it orbital debris usually
Speaker 1: and they define it as man made objects. So this
Speaker 1: does not include things that would occur out there due
Speaker 1: to like asteroids or meteoroids, none of that. We're talking
Speaker 1: specifically about man made objects or really pieces of man
Speaker 1: made objects that are in orbit around the Earth. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different types of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about everything from defunct spacecraft that were left
Speaker 1: up there, spacecraft being anything like staticraft well some cases.
Speaker 1: In some cases we're talking about like whole space if
Speaker 1: you'd call a satellite spacecraft because it is capable of
Speaker 1: moving through space. And yes, you know what's funny is
Speaker 1: uh the idea that after a spaceship they stop using it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just fall now it's days in orbit for
Speaker 1: depending on how high altitude it is, it may stay
Speaker 1: there for a couple of years or more than a century.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that. So yeah, yeah, it all
Speaker 1: depends on the the altitude of the orbit. So first
Speaker 1: of all, we're talking about things like defunct satellites, upper
Speaker 1: stages of launch vehicles, which early in the early days
Speaker 1: of space of the space uh A race, those launch
Speaker 1: vehicles would separate in uh an orbit. It wouldn't you
Speaker 1: know the more of these days, they usually fall off
Speaker 1: into the ocean before they hit orbit. Yeah, they they
Speaker 1: usually are at an altitude where their their orbit degrades
Speaker 1: so rapidly as to be practically non existent. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they and their designed so that they will fall back
Speaker 1: to Earth into an ocean, which is you know, that's
Speaker 1: pretty much where you're going to hit statistics three times
Speaker 1: on a four because of because of how much ocean
Speaker 1: is covering the Earth, but also carriers for payloads, So
Speaker 1: just think of that as like a cargo truck, like
Speaker 1: the truck part and that's kind of left up there.
Speaker 1: The debris created as a result of different collisions and explosions.
Speaker 1: Some of those collisions were on purpose, some of them
Speaker 1: were accidental. I'll talk about the on purpose ones in
Speaker 1: a minute. Solid rocket motor effluence. So solid rockets use
Speaker 1: solid rocket fuel and sometimes they don't burn it all up,
Speaker 1: and sometimes bits of that solid rocket fuel will end
Speaker 1: up being exposed to space and become this space debris
Speaker 1: that's flying around. Um debris that was intentionally released during
Speaker 1: spacecraft launch or vehicle release. So this might be something
Speaker 1: that when you're blowing the seal between one part of
Speaker 1: a spacecraft and launch vehicle ends up being ejected out
Speaker 1: into space as well. Even tiny specks of paint are
Speaker 1: considered space debris. So paint can chip off due to collisions,
Speaker 1: whether something is getting hit by tiny little particles, or
Speaker 1: even thermal stress. So if it's undergoing lots of different
Speaker 1: heating and cooling, sometimes paint chips off, and that ain't
Speaker 1: can represent space debris. I've also heard that there's stuff
Speaker 1: such as discarded astronaut gloves, spatula's cameras, and crystals of
Speaker 1: human p depending upon depending upon your crystals, yeah, depending
Speaker 1: upon your your belief in various conspiracy theories. There might
Speaker 1: be some cosmonauts floating around up there too. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are just a few chainsaws, you know. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget when leather Face went to space. None of those
Speaker 1: say that someone will make that, like made Jason in space,
Speaker 1: and they made the leprechn in space. I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: you don't remember that. Yeah, Canada had the rocket chainsaw
Speaker 1: program where they spent several decades just rocketing chainsaws and
Speaker 1: powered by maple syrup or powered by rockets by chainsaw
Speaker 1: magic chainsall magic, all right, Joe's a little loopie, guys,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the more interesting stories.
Speaker 1: I think of the events that have led to large
Speaker 1: amounts of space debris being spread over the Earth, right
Speaker 1: because we I mean a lot of this stuff is accidental,
Speaker 1: but we in the past have created space debris almost
Speaker 1: on purpose. Yeah. It wasn't necessarily because we wanted to well,
Speaker 1: definitely wasn't that we wanted to make things more difficult.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to try, and we just wanted to
Speaker 1: blow stuff up. It's yeah, I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: like littering. It's easy. It wasn't easy. It was rocket
Speaker 1: science actually, So in the nineteen sixties and seventies there
Speaker 1: was this little thing going on full speed. By then
Speaker 1: it had been in development for years. It's called the
Speaker 1: Cold War. Do you guys remember that? Actually I do
Speaker 1: remember that, you guys wouldn't. And so I saw some
Speaker 1: James Bond movies and the third Rambo movie. I think
Speaker 1: I got it. Okay, all right, you've got a good grounding.
Speaker 1: So the Cold War between the United States and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union. Uh, that was what
Speaker 1: a lot of the space race was about, was who
Speaker 1: can who can dominate space? First, it was really who
Speaker 1: can launch things powerful enough to get into space? And
Speaker 1: therefore probably also at your nation, well, especially the early
Speaker 1: days where the launching of satellites really meant, hey, look
Speaker 1: how far we can shoot this thing. We could probably
Speaker 1: hit you as well, because if you look at those
Speaker 1: early satellites like Sputnik, the original Sputnik, uh, the technical
Speaker 1: sophistication of that was that it could go beep frequently,
Speaker 1: that was it. Well, but it could go beep frequently
Speaker 1: and and and loud enough for various people with ham
Speaker 1: radios to pick it, and therefore you know, it was
Speaker 1: proven right. It was one of those things that scared
Speaker 1: people because it said, oh, look how far they can shoot. Well,
Speaker 1: the space debried kind of comes out of that same
Speaker 1: thought process. The idea was to develop missile systems that
Speaker 1: had anti satellite capability so that you could shoot down
Speaker 1: your enemy satellites because that was another fear was that
Speaker 1: if they can put something up there, they can spy
Speaker 1: on us. And if they're going to spy on us,
Speaker 1: and that's bad, we need a way of taking care
Speaker 1: of that and wiping out those spy satellites. And so
Speaker 1: there were tests both in the United States and the
Speaker 1: uss A are where they would launch these anti satellite
Speaker 1: missiles that would collide with satellites and then blow up
Speaker 1: and then cause a lot of space debris, both from
Speaker 1: the missile and from the satellite that was the target practice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh that, by the way, not not. We didn't just
Speaker 1: leave that off in the sixties and seventies. By we
Speaker 1: I'm talking about humans in general, not the three of us. No,
Speaker 1: not the three We have never as to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: none of us, and I'm gonna even include Noel. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be generous and include Noel or Producer in this.
Speaker 1: None of us, to my knowledge, has ever shot an
Speaker 1: anti satellite missile at a satellite and cause more space
Speaker 1: to b I can neither confirm nor deny. Moving on
Speaker 1: before we put on more lists. In nine the US
Speaker 1: changed its official policy to minimize the creation of new
Speaker 1: orbital debris, saying that this is that was That was
Speaker 1: after we kind of realized that that this was becoming
Speaker 1: an issue. The fact that it wasn't just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's harmless. Space is really big, most of it will
Speaker 1: fall down anyway, it's to it's fine. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was when they they realized that, no, we're starting to
Speaker 1: clutter up some very valuable regions of space, not the
Speaker 1: not what I think most people would call the most valuable.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that the most valuable space real estate
Speaker 1: around the Earth is is relatively safe from space debris,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. But on June third, there
Speaker 1: was an explosion of Pegasus. Hydrazine auxiliary propulsion system exploded,
Speaker 1: and at that time it became the worst space debris
Speaker 1: incident in history because the altitude and orbit of that
Speaker 1: particular satellite, it presented a potential threat to both the
Speaker 1: Hubble Space Telescope and two Space Shuttle crews, which prompted
Speaker 1: NASA to really study the effects of space debris on
Speaker 1: potential operations with greater urgency. Specifically, they wanted to look
Speaker 1: at how could this affects, say an astronaut it's on
Speaker 1: a space walk, and how do we mitigate this, How
Speaker 1: do we plan so that we minimize any threat that
Speaker 1: these astronauts would undergo in this kind of situation. Um
Speaker 1: And then before two thousand seven, according to NASA, the
Speaker 1: principal source of debris was from explosions of old launch
Speaker 1: vehicle upper stages. Left in orbit with stored energy sources
Speaker 1: such as residual propellants and high pressure fluids. But on
Speaker 1: January eleven seven, China caught up with the US and
Speaker 1: the USSR by firing a missile at the thing Young
Speaker 1: one Sea weather satellite. So this was another test of
Speaker 1: an anti satellite missile system. I remember when this happened.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about in the news, um and uh, Well,
Speaker 1: from their perspective, it worked. They they the missile collia
Speaker 1: with the satellite and went boom. But it also means
Speaker 1: that it created what Encyclopedia Britannica calls the worst space
Speaker 1: debris event at that time that has since been surpassed.
Speaker 1: You'll be happy to know, I'm sure, um, but it
Speaker 1: created more than three thousand fragments and the mass of
Speaker 1: the particles was spread out over the course of two
Speaker 1: years to create a cloud of debris that encircles the Earth.
Speaker 1: So you can actually look at some great images online
Speaker 1: that will show you the specific pathway. It's like, it's like,
Speaker 1: imagine one line of orbit around the Earth just cluttered
Speaker 1: with debris, and that's just from this one satellite. Now
Speaker 1: imagine that with lots of other degrees so that you
Speaker 1: have all these other rings encircling the Earth at different
Speaker 1: points some in some cases they criss cross with each other. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you can start to see the problem that if
Speaker 1: you want to put anything within these orbits, this this
Speaker 1: range of altitude, you're going to encounter big clouds of
Speaker 1: space debris, or potentially you'll encounter them. Keeping in mind,
Speaker 1: even at that altitude, space is big there. It's not
Speaker 1: like you're guaranteed to get hit, but you are certainly
Speaker 1: um more prone to getting hit by space debris. And
Speaker 1: if you're hit by space debris, here's the really bad news.
Speaker 1: You create more space debris, all right. And and and
Speaker 1: also I mean that space debris, even if it's a
Speaker 1: it's a fleck of painter crystal of p that crystal
Speaker 1: is moving at thousands of pometer. It's an hour which
Speaker 1: we're going to get into in a moment um. I
Speaker 1: think there were a couple more notes on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Two thousand nine, Yeah, we're not done with the happy
Speaker 1: stories yet. Two thousand nine that's when an American and
Speaker 1: a Russian communication satellite collided. Uh. The Russian satellite was defunct.
Speaker 1: The American one at that time was not It was
Speaker 1: afterwards UM, and that ended up being a massive collision
Speaker 1: that now, according to NASA, the results of that collision
Speaker 1: account for one third of all cataloged space debris, so
Speaker 1: not necessarily all space debris ever, but all the stuff
Speaker 1: that NASA has cataloged, one third of it comes from
Speaker 1: this collision. On January teen, a piece from that fing
Speaker 1: Young one Sea satellite that the Chinese shot with the missile.
Speaker 1: One piece of that collided with a Russian b l
Speaker 1: I T s Blitz satellite, which was this really cool
Speaker 1: kind of it's think of a sphere, a mirrored sphere
Speaker 1: in space, and it changed the orbit and spin period,
Speaker 1: actually broke it into at least two pieces. And the
Speaker 1: purpose of that satellite was to test a retro reflector
Speaker 1: design and act as a laser ranging device, and now
Speaker 1: it it don't work no more. So that's just an
Speaker 1: overview of some of the events that have created this
Speaker 1: massive cloud of space debris UM, which kind of guess
Speaker 1: leads to the question of how massive are we talking about?
Speaker 1: And and it's it's bad news if you're if you're
Speaker 1: looking at objects that are larger than ten centimeters. NASA
Speaker 1: says they're about twenty one thousand pieces out there. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a whole lot. But then again, the Earth
Speaker 1: is pretty big. Yeah. Yeah, of course, if you if
Speaker 1: you were to look at objects between one to ten centimeters,
Speaker 1: so ten centimeters are are larger, that's twenty one pieces.
Speaker 1: If you look between one and ten centimeters, you're talking
Speaker 1: more about half a million, five hundred thousand pieces flying around. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you go down to less than one centimeter, then
Speaker 1: you're getting into huge numbers. Uh. And even the tiniest
Speaker 1: particles are problem now. Granted, a lot of the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: in fact, the spacecraft that is being designed today has
Speaker 1: shielding as part of the spacecraft for just for these
Speaker 1: kind of um, these possible collisions, So most of them
Speaker 1: have shielding that will protect them from collisions of things
Speaker 1: up to about three or four centimeters in size. But
Speaker 1: that's where we get into some of the problems with
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's small, it's still a huge issue, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I want to say that
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing that NASA can apparently identify and
Speaker 1: track objects as small as three millimeters from ground radar
Speaker 1: stations in space. That's idea. I had no idea until
Speaker 1: I started researching this. I mean, that's an incredible level
Speaker 1: of precision, you know, considering that I can't find my
Speaker 1: keys in my own room. That's I'm going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that I can't find when I'm wearing them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you mentioned earlier about how even a little paint
Speaker 1: chip to cause a problem. Well that's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to imagine because these things are built really strong, and
Speaker 1: if you just stand next to them throwing a paint
Speaker 1: chip at them, or even i'd say like a baseball
Speaker 1: or something, it doesn't seem like you can do very
Speaker 1: much damage. Yeah, well you can see that. Here's where,
Speaker 1: um some Newtonian physics comes in. Um let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about momentum for a second. Well, actually, I think what
Speaker 1: we want to talk about it's similar, is kinetic energy. Sure,
Speaker 1: kinetic energy is uh the four seat you get when
Speaker 1: it's the the ability of something moving do work. Um So,
Speaker 1: the kinetic energy of an object, say, flying through space,
Speaker 1: is one half mass times velocity square. Alright, no velocity
Speaker 1: is speed plus a direction. Yeah okay, so uh m okay,
Speaker 1: well the you know, a paint chip, what's the mass there?
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really small. But when you look at
Speaker 1: the speed, so speeds, we're talking about debris traveling at
Speaker 1: around seven or eight kilometers every second. And and furthermore,
Speaker 1: when if you know, for example, they're traveling in opposite
Speaker 1: directions like that, um that two thousand nine American and
Speaker 1: Russian communications satellite collision happened at some kilometers per hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at that speed, when you get when you get
Speaker 1: a lot of speed, it doesn't know the mass of
Speaker 1: the object is I mean, obviously it's important because it's
Speaker 1: going to be a factor in that equation, But even
Speaker 1: a small particle has the potential to do huge amounts
Speaker 1: of catastrophic damage. So yeah, you're talking. When you're talking
Speaker 1: at those speeds, there's no such thing as oh, well
Speaker 1: that's that's that's tiny. Well, I mean yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: if you extract, if you go beyond Newtonian physics and
Speaker 1: get close to relativistic speeds where you're talking about a
Speaker 1: paint chip going near the speed of light, that paint
Speaker 1: chip turns into a nuclear bomb. Yeah. And while well
Speaker 1: that paint chip might not do any damage against say, spacecraft,
Speaker 1: because of spacecraft has some uh some shielding on it
Speaker 1: that will protect against those small particle collisions. If it's
Speaker 1: an incredibly unlucky astronaut on a spacewalk, it has the
Speaker 1: potential of doing at least some damage to the space suit,
Speaker 1: which could be catastrophic for the astronaut inside. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's moving around these incredible speeds, and when you've got
Speaker 1: that that level of momentum in the equation, you have
Speaker 1: to be cognizant of it um. As for where all
Speaker 1: this stuff is, most of it is in uh an
Speaker 1: altitude that's within two thousand kilometers of the Earth's surface,
Speaker 1: which sounds, you know, pretty pretty big. In fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of it um is between seven fifty and eight
Speaker 1: d kilometers above the surface of the Earth, and debris
Speaker 1: below six entred kilometers altitude will end up falling to
Speaker 1: the Earth within a few years. You remember when I
Speaker 1: said it might take more than a century. Well above
Speaker 1: a thousand kilometers, that's where you're running into it, where
Speaker 1: the it's going to take at least a century, possibly more,
Speaker 1: for the orbit to decay enough for that object to
Speaker 1: start to fall to the Earth. Keeping in mind in
Speaker 1: orbit is essentially just a sustained fall. Anyway, you're falling
Speaker 1: at a speed turning motion. Yeah. Yeah, you're falling towards
Speaker 1: the Earth at the same you know, at a rate
Speaker 1: that's comparable to the rotation of the Earth. So and
Speaker 1: you're falling at an angle where it's like you're just
Speaker 1: in constant freefall. Um. So that's that's a real problem
Speaker 1: for any spacecraft that needs to be in that in
Speaker 1: that range. Not all spacecraft do need to be in
Speaker 1: that range. Things that are in geostationary orbit are much
Speaker 1: higher up because that's something like thirty five point seven
Speaker 1: and in that range there's really not that much space debris.
Speaker 1: And most operators who have some sort of spacecraft up
Speaker 1: in that range, you know, we're talking about like telecommunication satellites,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff that needs to be in geostationary orbit.
Speaker 1: That's where we've got this uh satellite that's above a
Speaker 1: kind of a fixed point along the equator of the Earth. Um.
Speaker 1: It's very valuable real estate, like they consider it a
Speaker 1: natural resource. That's very important. So operators who are working
Speaker 1: on spacecraft that is about to go to the end
Speaker 1: of its life, you know, at the end of its life,
Speaker 1: instead of just leaving it there, they will usually boost
Speaker 1: it out of that orbit, you know, which takes a
Speaker 1: lot of energy, but it does mean that you free
Speaker 1: up that space for something else to take up because
Speaker 1: there's only a limited number of spaces in that in
Speaker 1: that orbit that you can use. So this way you
Speaker 1: end up conserving that by allowing someone else to take
Speaker 1: the space that that satellite used to be in. But
Speaker 1: which is why that's one good thing. Like if we
Speaker 1: were to talk about a massive problem with space debris,
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't see a huge impact on things like
Speaker 1: weather satellites and communication satellites because they tend to be
Speaker 1: at altitudes higher than where a lot of the space
Speaker 1: debris is. So that's some good news, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of other satellites that would be affected, not
Speaker 1: to mention any kind of operations for things like the
Speaker 1: Hubble Space telescope, other space these telescopes. Also just getting
Speaker 1: things into space would eventually start becoming a problem. Sure
Speaker 1: getting past this kind of you know, field of junk.
Speaker 1: I think of that not entirely scientifically accurate scene in
Speaker 1: Wally where they're trying to escape the Earth they have
Speaker 1: to like bust through. I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that's not entirely scientifically accurate. But yes, so you know
Speaker 1: the but it is true that real estate up there
Speaker 1: is limited. Yeah, I mean, and you you could run
Speaker 1: out of space in space, and long before you ran
Speaker 1: out of space, you'd probably run out of space that
Speaker 1: it was safe to use simultaneously or even just like
Speaker 1: you were saying, Lauren, or just just flying to get
Speaker 1: like even if you're going beyond that point, you still
Speaker 1: have to get through that section. Uh. And yeah, as
Speaker 1: I said these, the amount of space debris increases over
Speaker 1: time even if you don't shoot anything else up there,
Speaker 1: because anything that's up there now, eventually it's going to
Speaker 1: collide with something else. It's really just a matter of time,
Speaker 1: assuming that you don't have it, uh come back down
Speaker 1: to Earth. Eventually it's going to collide with something, which
Speaker 1: means that it creates more space debris. So uh, even
Speaker 1: if we halted all space operations right now and never
Speaker 1: send anything else up we would see space debris increase
Speaker 1: over time, at least until a dozen years century or so.
Speaker 1: You know, once you get through a century, then you'd
Speaker 1: probably end up having significantly um. Now. Uh. The reason
Speaker 1: why I thought it would be interesting to talk about
Speaker 1: this right now is because you know, a few weeks
Speaker 1: back a movie called Gravity came out and I went
Speaker 1: and saw this movie. Have either of you seen it? Nope, No,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to. It's it's it's a fantastic film.
Speaker 1: It's um I've got problems with it there. There are
Speaker 1: some problems with its physics. But it's a fun, highly
Speaker 1: stressful film. So if you don't deal with stress very well,
Speaker 1: then I don't necessarily say that you should go out
Speaker 1: and see it. Uh. I certainly wanted to see it
Speaker 1: because I yearn for films that get the h I
Speaker 1: say this like I've been to space. I haven't been
Speaker 1: to space, but I say get the terror of space right,
Speaker 1: at least as I would imagine it. I mean, just
Speaker 1: knowing what you know about how empty and huge and
Speaker 1: all inspiring and inspiring and horrifying at the same time.
Speaker 1: Space is. So many movies make it so mundane. Space
Speaker 1: is a sound stage spaces Space is just the bit
Speaker 1: you go through to get from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: and and not really anything to consider beyond that. But
Speaker 1: if you were to think of it in the terms
Speaker 1: of you, you are in a self contained environment within
Speaker 1: the space suit that you cannot get out of because
Speaker 1: if you did, you would die as space, as we
Speaker 1: have said many times, is trying to kill you. Um
Speaker 1: and you were to become separated from your spacecraft with
Speaker 1: no actual means of propelling yourself back toward it, that
Speaker 1: I can't you know, you would just imagine you would
Speaker 1: have a rapidly escalating panic attack, leading possibly to despair
Speaker 1: if you didn't pass out from the stress of it all.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what they are depicting in the
Speaker 1: film Gravity and and Gravity. You've got a ludicrously underprepared
Speaker 1: astronaut who is working on the Hubble space telescope when
Speaker 1: there is a catastrophic impact with space debris caused by
Speaker 1: Russians firing a missile at a satellite. So this is
Speaker 1: not an unprecedented event, as we've talked about in this
Speaker 1: very podcast. Um So, the space debris becomes a hazard
Speaker 1: and ends up separating this astronaut from her spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the film is pretty much her attempts
Speaker 1: at surviving in the least survivable environment we can think of,
Speaker 1: short of being suddenly finding yourself like either in a
Speaker 1: molten core of the Earth or underneath the you know,
Speaker 1: in the Mary honest trench or something, but it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty in hospital a bowl, so uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting to bring up because a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff they bring up really does play
Speaker 1: into this, that that terror you're talking about. Even if
Speaker 1: everything's going right, I would imagine that a lot of
Speaker 1: astronauts feel a small sense of I'm a little I'm
Speaker 1: a little I'm a little scared. You know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: so easy to forget that we live on a ball
Speaker 1: of iron hurtling around a fire so big that you
Speaker 1: cannot imagine it. Yeah, yeah, I often forget that, you know,
Speaker 1: watching my TV. Um. So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the approaches to fixing this problem. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit about improving the mean the
Speaker 1: script problems and no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: mean the space junk problem is script problems and gravity
Speaker 1: are beyond our help because the movie has already come out.
Speaker 1: Although I did enjoy gravity, but I have some knits
Speaker 1: to pick, but that's a different podcast. So telling you
Speaker 1: about space, John can how to to solve that one
Speaker 1: is to try and minimize producing more space jung by
Speaker 1: better designing our space vehicles, so creating that kind of shielding,
Speaker 1: being able to decommission the spacecraft at the end of
Speaker 1: their useful lives by bringing them back to the Earth safely,
Speaker 1: uh that kind of thing. But even if we did
Speaker 1: all that and everything was working great, the stuff that's
Speaker 1: already up there is already causing damage and is just
Speaker 1: going to continue to do so and continue to cause
Speaker 1: headaches for anyone who's trying to plan out a space
Speaker 1: exploration uh mission. So some of the solutions involved some
Speaker 1: pretty interesting approaches, mostly um, grabbing stuff and then hauling
Speaker 1: it down or pushing it down to the Earth. And
Speaker 1: there are a couple of different approaches. I saw one
Speaker 1: that involved harpoons, where we would send up a essentially
Speaker 1: a little spacecraft, a satellite essentially that would have power
Speaker 1: and would be able to harpoon space debris. And then yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have one, and that would aim at the ocean
Speaker 1: and maybe even hit a white whale on the way down.
Speaker 1: But the idea would be that it would it would
Speaker 1: uh you know, pierce whatever the debris is and then
Speaker 1: tow it back down into the Earth's atmosphere and where
Speaker 1: it would be destroyed essentially from the massive pressure and heat.
Speaker 1: Then there's the clean Space one that was the Swiss one,
Speaker 1: right with with the Claw game. Yeah yeah, So so
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the Claw game, you know, or
Speaker 1: toy story you know what I'm talking about, the Claw
Speaker 1: game that you would see in fair grounds or claw
Speaker 1: reaches out. You use it to pick up a toy
Speaker 1: hopefully rigged cheater machine. Someone someone has from children, someone
Speaker 1: has never someone has never won a toy from the
Speaker 1: Claw game. Um uh yes. So anyway, if you imagine
Speaker 1: one of those claws mounted on kind of a cube
Speaker 1: that has a thruster on the back of it, that's
Speaker 1: more or less what the clean one looks like, the
Speaker 1: clean Space one rather, And the idea is to launch
Speaker 1: this in and the test is to try and retrieve
Speaker 1: a cube sat, a little cube satellite that the Swiss
Speaker 1: launched in either two thousand nine or two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: because there's actually two potential targets. Those are those little
Speaker 1: um ten cimeter per side, what's at like three three
Speaker 1: and a half free point four inches to a side.
Speaker 1: You have really small satellites, so this thing is not
Speaker 1: big and the things that's collecting are not big. But
Speaker 1: as we've already established. It doesn't matter if it's big
Speaker 1: in space. If it's moving fast enough, it can it
Speaker 1: has the potential to cause damage. So the clean space
Speaker 1: one has this claw that would come out of the
Speaker 1: front of it and grap grasp this tiny little satellite
Speaker 1: and then it would direct itself back towards Earth for destruction. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's a one way trip for this,
Speaker 1: uh for clean space one. And UH that's also interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see if that works out. But my
Speaker 1: favorite uses something that we talked about on the podcast before.
Speaker 1: In a way, although this is I argue the the
Speaker 1: naming of this, but it kind of involves tractor beams.
Speaker 1: I think that people just like saying the word tractor beams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's why belved Yes, and uh an electrostatic
Speaker 1: beam and electron being electron beam exactly. So you know,
Speaker 1: when things accumulate excess electrons, they build up an electrostatic charge.
Speaker 1: This is the sort of stuff that happens when you
Speaker 1: rub your feet against the carpet and you build up
Speaker 1: that electrostatic charge. And I think that's a really negative attitude. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's not go down this road, Joe. You will not
Speaker 1: like where it leads anyways. But charges can be positive
Speaker 1: or negative. They can be and so with this negative charge,
Speaker 1: like if you're talking about the kind of charge you
Speaker 1: build up when you shuffle your feet against the carpet
Speaker 1: and use app somebody, that's that's pretty that's not a
Speaker 1: significant charge. But the idea here is that we would
Speaker 1: have a satellite that would be able to project an
Speaker 1: electron beam at space debris until it developed enough of
Speaker 1: an electrostatic charge so that if you were to send
Speaker 1: a positively charged probe flying by it, the opposite charges
Speaker 1: would attract one another. Positive attracts negative and vice versa.
Speaker 1: So if relevant, I never said it wasn't relevant. I
Speaker 1: said you didn't want to see where that road land.
Speaker 1: So the Lauren can back me up on this. So
Speaker 1: the positively charged probe flies by the negatively charged debris
Speaker 1: and those those opposite charges attract one another. The probe
Speaker 1: is powered, so it could pull Yeah and um, And
Speaker 1: I think the idea on this one is to actually
Speaker 1: tow them into a higher orbits and then fling them
Speaker 1: away from Earth rather than pulling them down right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this would be the The idea would be to
Speaker 1: to try and move these out of the danger zone
Speaker 1: of Earth orbits entirely. Um, you're having a little Archer
Speaker 1: moment anyway. The the the problem here is that it
Speaker 1: would be a very slow process. It would take months
Speaker 1: of time to move a single piece of space debris,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't turn the electron beam off because if
Speaker 1: you did, the space debris would start to accumulate other ions,
Speaker 1: positively charged ions, and it would very quickly become a neutral. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eventually the charge would just become neutral exactly, So you're
Speaker 1: you're positively charged. Probe would just be flying off without
Speaker 1: it because there would be nothing to attract the two anymore.
Speaker 1: UM relationships just die. The device, by the way, is
Speaker 1: being called the glider, which is written a lot like
Speaker 1: GLaDOS um, which I kind of appreciate, which which stands
Speaker 1: for UM. The geosyncrotis large debris re orbiter. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and that's another thing is that this particular approach would
Speaker 1: be designed for uh, specific types of space debris, wouldn't
Speaker 1: work on everything. So this you know, we're probably gonna
Speaker 1: need a multi tiered approach to addressing space debris in
Speaker 1: a way that uh that actually reduces space to brief
Speaker 1: faster than the generation of space debris just from these
Speaker 1: collisions that are happening. So it's it's a big challenge.
Speaker 1: It's a huge challenge, and NASA, like I said, is
Speaker 1: mostly focused on man amizing the generation of space debris
Speaker 1: and then looking at what what options are realistic and
Speaker 1: which ones are likely to have the best return so
Speaker 1: that we can reduce this issue effectively. So and it's
Speaker 1: going to be really important I think for the for
Speaker 1: the future. I was reading a couple of articles that
Speaker 1: we're looking forward to when we have um you know,
Speaker 1: research or other settlements on the Moon or on Mars
Speaker 1: where they do not have um the kind of atmospheres
Speaker 1: that will burn up debris as it falls, and they
Speaker 1: might not well, I mean in the case of the
Speaker 1: Moon anyway, they don't have stable g syncretis orbits that
Speaker 1: you can use uh to to keep satellites that we're
Speaker 1: going to need up there for for technology, topmnication for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. But yeah, and so how would you know
Speaker 1: what the moon weather is otherwise if you don't have
Speaker 1: a climate a light up there, And so dealing with
Speaker 1: all of that is going to be very important when
Speaker 1: we start moving out into those territories. I have a
Speaker 1: question that you might not know the answer to. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's reasonable to think that space debris could
Speaker 1: become a problem beyond Earth orbit, like at other high
Speaker 1: and beyond say the Moon orbit, but at other um
Speaker 1: just static points in the Solar System, say like the
Speaker 1: Lagrange points. Think if we're going to start forming bands
Speaker 1: of artificial asteroids in in places around the Solar System,
Speaker 1: for example, that would or um uh, you know, artificial
Speaker 1: comments for lack of a better word, that are just
Speaker 1: going to be zipping around. It's certainly possible, especially when
Speaker 1: you're talking about extending space travel to two places like Mars.
Speaker 1: I could you know, hopefully we will learn our lesson
Speaker 1: and make sure that whatever approach we use with Mars
Speaker 1: will minimize the chance for space debris. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: you know, there's certain realities we have to face. For one,
Speaker 1: accidents happen, so sometimes we're going to see a malfunction
Speaker 1: that's going to cause space debris, or there could be
Speaker 1: a collision that we did not anticipate that could cause it.
Speaker 1: So I expect that it will always be an issue.
Speaker 1: Thetion is how do we deal with it? And can
Speaker 1: we do it? In such a way where we are
Speaker 1: reducing the impact as much as possible. No pun intended
Speaker 1: with impact, but the you know, that is the that's
Speaker 1: the key, because I don't think there's any way to
Speaker 1: eliminate it. It's just how can you mitigate it as
Speaker 1: much as possible so that space travel is a possibility,
Speaker 1: that space exploration is still a viable, uh pursuit, and
Speaker 1: not something where you know, sure we could launch this
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar telescope into low Earth orbit and yeah, sure
Speaker 1: we'd be able to see further than we've ever seen before,
Speaker 1: but there's a chance that it could get destroyed within
Speaker 1: its first six months of operation due to space debris.
Speaker 1: So no one's going to fund it. I mean that
Speaker 1: would be a tragedy. Sure, yeah, yeah, well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's not that I mean sophisticated enough equipment has
Speaker 1: the capacity to maneuver around like like I know that
Speaker 1: they can maneuver the I S S if they see
Speaker 1: something kind of exactly. They say that about once a
Speaker 1: year they have to maneuver the I S S. The
Speaker 1: they'll track space debris. The I S S is not
Speaker 1: in an orbit that is particularly endangered by space debris,
Speaker 1: but they say that if they track an object that
Speaker 1: looks like it's going to come within a few kilometers
Speaker 1: of the the I S S, they'll then project the
Speaker 1: chance of it hitting. Right. I think that if it's
Speaker 1: specifically like there's a greater than one in ten thousand
Speaker 1: chance of it impacting. And if they say, if they
Speaker 1: say the chances of impact are greater than one in
Speaker 1: two tho, let's go ahead and use the propulsion system
Speaker 1: on the I S S to maneuver it to a
Speaker 1: safe distance. And they say it happens not frequently, but
Speaker 1: about once a year if you average it out, so
Speaker 1: it's not like, you know, the time of year again,
Speaker 1: that space debris coming back around. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of um, the rundown on space junk and how
Speaker 1: it is a real problem. It's not just you know,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I've heard about that. That's annoying. If you
Speaker 1: ever look at NASA's illustrations of space junk and you look,
Speaker 1: you know, I just look like there's a cloud of
Speaker 1: debris just completely enveloping the Earth. It's kind of terrifying
Speaker 1: look at it like that. Though about half of that
Speaker 1: stuff is just cartridges of the et game for the
Speaker 1: are twins exactly, they launched it into low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: as opposed to burying it in a desert. Well, you're
Speaker 1: going to run out of desert eventually. They made that
Speaker 1: many of them. But we're gonna go ahead and humor you.
Speaker 1: So let's wrap this up, all right. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of our discussion about space junk how it is something
Speaker 1: to be concerned about in the long term for for
Speaker 1: human exploration. I have every confidence that they are very
Speaker 1: smart people looking at ways to solve this, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic that we're going to find some ways to
Speaker 1: do this that will make sense from from a scientific
Speaker 1: and financial perspective. Um. I, like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're ever gonna completely eliminate space debris, but I
Speaker 1: have a feeling that given enough time, we're going to
Speaker 1: get a handle on it. It's just a question of
Speaker 1: how long is that I'm going to be Um, I
Speaker 1: think we should prioritize it personally because I lacked space. So, guys,
Speaker 1: that wraps up our discussion. You should definitely go to
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