OT: Governmental Space Agencies or Private

[Jack Simth]

PVK:
Well, yeah - cleanup of the junk thats already up there is going to be extremely impractical any way you slice it: little of it is plotted, much of it is too little to see and plot easily yet large enough to cause severe problems if it happens to hit you or yours, and it is spread over a humongous volume of space in many different orbits - the main problem in disposing of it is finding and retrieving it to dispose of it; that wasn't the idea of my post. The idea was to stash further grabage in such a fashion (except on things where you can be certain of a clean re-entry burnup - the standard disposal method for current new satelites - then you can just dump it into Earth's atmosphere). Sorry I wasn't clear on that point.

[geoschmo]

Eventually it could become a real problem. But that's where Q.U.A.R.K. comes in.

[ June 01, 2004, 20:50: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Suicide Junkie]

My plan involves giant metal shovels in counter-rotating orbits to sweep up all the junk and deflect it down into the atmosphere.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by bearclaw:
The key differance between space travel and ocean travel is that there were obvious financial benifits to traveling to the New World and Asia. Trade, gold, land, exotic plants/animals, etc. Without some sort of financial reason to go to space, all this could be moot.

Actually we know the resources are there that would make the trip worthwhile. It's only a matter of getting the costs down to a level where it makes economic sense to go to space to get them. Tourism is the idea that gets everybody excited in the short term, and if that helps drive the technology the more's the better. But eventually it will be a minor part of the picture as industry starts to move to space for finding raw materials and manufacturing. Not in our lifetime likely on a large scale, but it will happen eventually.

[geoschmo]

That sounds like something Doctor Evil would come up with SJ.

People of earth! I will rain down space junk upon your heads unless you pay me one Million DOLLARS!

[Narrew]

bah, there would be some fool that would pay millions to put it in their collection. And if we could get to the moon and bring back the Apollo Lander and such equipment, that would bring in the bucks...

Of course the nazis...err...NASA people would confiscate it *sigh*