Space Debris and Other Threats From Outer Space Read Online Free PDF

miniscule space junk.
    Chapter 10 recaps the major points from the book. Thus this chapter seeks to provide a synoptic overview of the various types of space threats to space assets and even to people residing on Earth or flying through Earth’s atmosphere. The strategies and technologies that address these various hazards are summarized as the “Top Ten Things to Know about Space Threats”.

Joseph N. Pelton SpringerBriefs in Space Development Space Debris and Other Threats from Outer Space 2013 10.1007/978-1-4614-6714-4_2 © Joseph N. Pelton 2013

    2. The Space Debris Threat and the Kessler Syndrome
    Joseph N. Pelton 1   
    (1)
    40th St. North 4025, Arlington, 22207, USA
     
     
    Joseph N. Pelton
    Email: [email protected]
    Abstract
    One might logically ask this question. If we typically have less than a hundred launches into space each year—after discounting suborbital flights and sounding rockets—why can’t we quickly bring the problem of space debris under rather quick control now that we have international guidelines in place? This is not really a mysterious problem, but it is certainly a complex one. The simple answer is, debris begets debris.
    The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
    It is the source of all true art and science.
    –Albert Einstein

    Why is the Problem Getting Worse?
    One might logically ask this question. If we typically have less than a hundred launches into space each year—after discounting suborbital flights and sounding rockets—why can’t we quickly bring the problem of space debris under rather quick control now that we have international guidelines in place? This is not really a mysterious problem, but it is certainly a complex one. The simplest answer is that debris begets debris.
    There is a perhaps a somewhat useful metaphor here, which might be helpful to set the problem in context. Although this is certainly not a completely accurate picture it might help to visualize the problem and set the issues of orbital debris clean up in context.
    It is not hard to shoot out a large number of street lights, but it can take a long time to clean up the broken glass, repair the sockets and wiring, and restore that which was rapidly destroyed. Further the streetlight, when first installed, consists of a lamp pole, a light bulb and a glass lamp cover. The streetlight that is destroyed may involve hundreds of pieces of debris to be cleaned up and carefully disposed. If just one light were to be shot out in outer space, the pieces would over time spread out over a huge area that would eventually encircle the entire planet. As a thought experiment thin know what if one had allowed this sort of damage to continue in this manner for a half century many thousands of times with no effective repairs. It should be clear that a quick clean up and recovery may take quite a while to complete.
    The other thing to consider is that if two largest items collide in space at about 25,000 km an hour, the result is not four or six debris items, but perhaps more like 3,000 tracked objects and many more thousands of smaller, untrackable objects.
    The collision in this case is more like an atomic explosion in terms of energy release than a stick of dynamite exploding. This type of incredibly high speed crash not only generates a huge new amount of debris elements, but the debris elements over time tend to widely disperse. Figure 1.4 above indicates the dispersal of the 3,000 debris elements from the missile destruction of the International Space Station which is clearly imperilled by this debris. We sincerely need to hope that no more such large collision events occur before we find a way of removing large debris elements from orbit to illustrate the point. The thin white line represents the orbit.
    The very careful and rigorous study by J.-C. Liou and Nicolas Johnson indicated in 2006 that just the current amount of debris could generate a tripling of the space junk over the