So I know there are some initiatives and even a Swiss company that wants to clean up our space junk. Has there been any thing written(and Im sure there has, Im curious to read it) about when we will hit a tipping point that it becomes dangerous to even launch into space?
If this happens, the astronauts/cosmonauts will need to jetpack to a neighboring station to escape the debris storm and return safely to earth using a Soyuz capsule.
There are a lot of papers that have been written on the topic, dating back all the way to Kessler and Cour-Palais [1]. There's a recent NASA technical report that catalogs a lot of the work that is being done on debris population studies that's worth glancing at [2].
I'm involved in the European Stardust network [3] and am working on remediation technologies for space debris. There are some particular candidates for active removal that we know pose a great risk. One of the highest-risk objects is Envisat [4]. There's a concerted effort in Europe through the Clean Space Initiative and the e.Deorbit mission in particular to figure out how to remove large, dead satellites like Envisat [5].
For the last six months, I've been working on building a model for preliminary design of missions that could potentially target multiple debris objects in one shot [6][7]. Turns out that it might be more cost-effective to design multi-target debris missions (paper will be o arXiV by the end of the year).
As of next month, I'm going to be leading a new project called Scarab that'll last 12 months. I'm going to be working with a team to develop an end-to-end simulator for the removal of dead rocket bodies (e.g., Ariane) that pose a significant risk to operational satellites, focussing on robust Guidance, Navigation & Control for proximity operations.
So yea, there's a lot of work being done in the field and there's a general consensus that we need to act now to subvert the doom scenario of an uncontrollable collisional cascade that will most definitely render vital orbital bands useless.
there's definitely a need to reduce and mitigate orbital debris, but the monetization is polarized to NASA, ESA, SpaceX, and possibly Bigelow Aerospace when they get their structures operational and I think YC will want something that's not restricted to a few agencies and space companies. I'm jus tthikning out loud however
Not entirely. Space law is moving pretty fast at the moment, so I think it's safe to say that commercial ventures that launch satellites will be required to guarantee safe de-orbiting in some fashion. There are significant monies in Europe at the moment through ESA and the EU, but I'm convinced that new money streams will open up within the coming 5 years. The public funding opportunities also provide some sort of a basis for a business model centered on providing active removal services. I'm going to be at the CODER workshop in a couple of weeks at University of Maryland to present my work, and there are a number of companies that are going to be present too [1]. One of the panels will specifically address "entrepreneurial opportunities" (Panel 7).
