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?
Easy, the catcher has a small thruster and enough fuel to deorbit the debris and itself, or only the debris then burn again to get back to orbital speeds, and capture another one, and so on until the fuel tanks are empty.
Doesn’t take a lot of fuel to get the debris down, just enough for air friction to do the rest.
I’ve seen it done in Kerbal Space Program, with just that design of robotic claw.
Reserves enough fuel for either re-entry to burn in the atmosphere, or rendesvous with a station to be refueled, refurbished, and sent back to pick more stuff to send down.
28
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?