How bad will the Space Junk problem get?

wrote in message
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How does the foam differentiate between junk and still-functional
satellites (or the ISS), whose orbits cross paths with said junk?

In my story, the Kessler Syndrome had already taken out all of the
satellites in a specific Earth orbit (except for a manned space station,
which was moved), so there were no functional satellites left to be of
concern.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

wrote in message
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On Feb 7, 8:49 am, "Alex Terrell" wrote:
On 7 Feb, 07:30, "

wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
I once wrote a short sf story where I recommended a series of
counter-orbiting foam spheres:

Deadly Debrishttp://members.aol.com/howiecombs/deaddebr.htm

I have no real idea whether such a thing would work in the real world
or
not, though.

If the foam has the total cross-section of one square kilometer, it
would take a few thousand years to do the job.

How do you get this? The thing sweeps an orbit every 45 minutes, or
10,000 times per year. That would allow it to sweep a halo with a CSA
of 10,000km, say 100km by 10km.

This may not work for all space debris, but if there's a specific
problem orbit....


How does the foam differentiate between junk and still-functional
satellites (or the ISS), whose orbits cross paths with said junk?


Functional objects maunevour out of the way.