[Server-sky] A kind of thinsat to help deorbiting small debris

[Michael Turner]

A posting on the LinkedIn group for Orbital Debris, about Astrium's
plans(?) for relieving near-Earth orbits of the bigger chunks

  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-14/real-life-gravity-space-debris-spells-business-for-astrium.html#!

This spurred a response from Claude Phipps of Photonic Associates

  http://photonicassociates.com

... which in turn drew this response from me:

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It really looks like this problem needs to have a treaty behind it,
moreover a treaty with teeth.

I like LODR [http://photonicassociates.com/documents/LODRshort.pdf]

http://photonicassociates.com/documents/LODRshort.pdf

Maybe it's true, as the article [about Astrium] says, that dragging
the bigger wreckage away will keep smaller debris from mounting
dangerously. But can we count on that?

One can only hope that LODR would at least be /construed/ as not being
a weapon forbidden by other treaties. However, fostering a positive
perception would probably require a treaty-based organization that can
credibly manage the international community's expectations.

LODR could feed synergistically into some other space development
agendas. Claude, as you know from your own research and your years of
hosting a laser ablation conference, high-powered lasers could be key
to a couple of schemes for reducing launch costs dramatically. Maybe
they need to become a broom that sweeps before they can become a broom
anybody magically rides.

Pardon my laziness about an idea that's probably old - I just can't
remember seeing anything about it before. Here it is:

I can appreciate that keeping LODR lasers earthbound is sensible.
They'll be quite massive, and will require massive power sources. But
what about the mirrors? Could these be a constellation of very thin
satellites, with their attitudes determined by magnetorquing? Couldn't
you increase the flexibility of the overall system considerably, with
the added range of angles? Of course such mirrorsats should be
engineered to represent a minimal debris risk themselves, with various
"demisability" features. Ideally, you can use LODR techniques to
deorbit one more easily than other objects in the same weight class,
if there's a malfunction that turns it into space junk itself.

This approach would seem to open the way to using lower-power lasers
that are geographically more widely distributed. Which in turn might
help soften resistance to needed treaties, especially if no single
political entity is allocated enough laser power to use the system
unilaterally as a weapon.
====

It didn't occur to me until afterward that a /very/ thin mirrorsat
wouldn't need magnetorquing, if it used the attitude control proposed
for Server Sky thinsats. I wonder if this could be a transitional
technology for Server Sky.


Regards,
Michael Turner
Executive Director
Project Persephone
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Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
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turner at projectpersephone.org
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