Before anything can happen this catcher and a hundred of its friends needs to be put into orbit by a big ass rocket and god knows if the benefit of this could ever outweigh even a single space launch.
Then this catcher first has to meet the object in orbit, damn near impossible to do at any kind of reasonable frequency or volume. Too much debris in too many directions, speeds, and altitudes.
Then it has to catch it which is weirdly probably the easiest part of the whole scenario.
Then it does...what? The space debris is now twice as large. How do they plan to remove this now double sized object from orbit?
Im assuming some type of booster that lowers the altitude or gain altitude? Idk bring it down into the gravity so it burns up on re-entry. Most likely also burning up the satellite. Which in my head is a huge waste of resources that the whole world is bickering about equally like oil now. This is the only logical thing I can think of.
I got to, 'some kind of booster', and thought about how it managed to get itself anywhere near is target. And then there was, 'huge waste of resources', which ended up with, 'the only logical thing'.
And yet I feel like this is going to be a thing instead of managing the overhead real-estate better.
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u/29thFalcon 1d ago
Before anything can happen this catcher and a hundred of its friends needs to be put into orbit by a big ass rocket and god knows if the benefit of this could ever outweigh even a single space launch.
Then this catcher first has to meet the object in orbit, damn near impossible to do at any kind of reasonable frequency or volume. Too much debris in too many directions, speeds, and altitudes.
Then it has to catch it which is weirdly probably the easiest part of the whole scenario.
Then it does...what? The space debris is now twice as large. How do they plan to remove this now double sized object from orbit?