Australians to move space junk with lasers - Galt's Gulch

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Australians to move space junk with lasers

Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 5 months ago to Technology

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Posted by Susanne 9 years, 5 months ago

I'm not sure how pushing a space object with a source -from- earth will send the object -towards- earth - I would think you need to draw it in to burn in the atmosphere, not push it away - but if successful it may start to clean up the mess from the past 60 years of spacework.

in 1.4 billion years, when aliens come down and reconnoiter this planet for it's archeological history, we will have one legacy that remains - we were a really, really sloppy species that left trash everywhere we went!

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  Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 5 months ago
  
  If you get the right angle, you can slow its orbital speed. Slow it enough and the orbit decays to allow burn-up on atmosphere entry.
  
  Biggest issue, assuming they can get enough power for useful thrust, is calculating the laser burn to control the re-entry point reliably.
  
  That and, the ABM issues inherently opened up when using lasers of that power. I guess they kept up the "star wars" R&D.
  
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Posted by khalling 9 years, 5 months ago

that's cool

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