Riding a laserbeam into space

[rocketeddy]

Back when I was 17, I went through the process of applying for university courses. I knew I wanted to study Physics with a specialization in a space related field, but at the time it wasn't really clear to me what the difference between "astrophysics" and "space science/technology" was. Somebody, and I confess I have sadly forgotten who, explained

Comments

[rocketeddy]

It wouldn't spread anything around in the same way spreading dirt from a tidy pile across the floor would. Debris isn't stationary, it's flying around at HUGE speeds. The laser would simply change its direction slightly so that it misses another spacecraft (or even another piece of debris) instead of flying straight into it.

There have been lots of studies looking into cleaning up the debris, but it's a really difficult thing to do. You can't just go up with a hoover. The two biggest problems are:
1. the immense distances between objects. This makes it difficult for your womble to get to and clean up more pieces of debris than you added by launching it - and more expensive.
2. the huge speeds involved. We're talking about several km per second, or thousands of mph. How do you "collect" something that is capable of punching a hole straight through you like a rail gun? If you try to match speed with each object, the propellant you'd need to carry with you goes up exponentially.

Of course, cleaning it up is a much better goal - but we don't seem to be able to find a way to do it, and the laser might be a reasonable "stop gap" option until we do.

It also opens up a number of possible cleanup options. For example, if you can direct debris pieces one by one into similar orbits as each other then you might conceivably be able to create a giant "dustbin orbit" where we can "park" debris pieces safely, without endangering other spacecraft. We actually already do something similar with "dead" spacecraft which cannot be safely de-orbited.