Getting rid of LEO debris

Pat Flannery wrote:

Although the blast would generate significant radiation (on the Orion
design, each pulse unit would have a 30 kt yield)

Whoops, correction here!
For the smaller Orion design with the ten meter diameter pusher plate,
the pulse units would generate a less than a kiloton yield each; the
bigger one with the twenty meter diameter pusher plate would use ones
that generated 3-5 kilotons yield, and the biggest one considered
practical for propulsion would generate 15 kilotons yield.
The ten meter pusher plate bomblets were to weigh 141 kg each, and the
ones for the twenty meter pusher plate 450 kg.
Of course, those yields were chosen to allow the pusher plate to survive
the repeated impacts of the tungsten plasma clouds, whereas with Casaba
Howitzer you would want the effect to be as destructive as possible, so
the nuclear yield would probably be far higher to accelerate the
tungsten plasma cloud to extremely high velocity, vastly increasing its
impact energy.
In fact, since the 30 kt yield nuclear device shown in the graph on page
15 of the Orion Report Volume 3 from 1964:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1977085619.pdf
....doesn't seem to be related to the Orion spacecraft itself discussed
in the report, I wonder if that is the Casaba Howitzer warhead, and the
whole Orion concept came about as a offshoot of the Casaba Howitzer
program, by scaling back the bomblet yield to where a spacecraft could
survive its effects.

Pat

Pat Flannery writes:

Whoops, correction here!

Whoops is right...

In fact, since the 30 kt yield nuclear device shown in the graph on page 15 of
the Orion Report Volume 3 from 1964:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1977085619.pdf

...doesn't seem to be related to the Orion spacecraft itself discussed in the
report, I wonder if that is the Casaba Howitzer warhead, and the whole Orion
concept came about as a offshoot of the Casaba Howitzer program, by scaling
back the bomblet yield to where a spacecraft could survive its effects.

But elided Howitzer doesn't exist! Right?

In other words... From the classic Congressional Record mythology...

[Closed session testimony to House Armed Services Committee from General X
regarding readiness of Strategic Armed Forces...

....
with the result that elided per cent of our strategic forces remain on
alert status at all times. With blah blah blah
....

a page or two of testimony with a few Q's & A's with the committee members,
then this gem when asked about maintenance requirements...

.... net result being roughly 33 per cent of the force structure is under
maintenance at any given time.

....]

I suppose it's possible this doesn't give away the store if you assume
it could be a lower per centage if you factor in vacations and
holidays for the strategic forces...

;-)

Dave

Pat Flannery writes:

Ever hear of the "West Ford Needles" experiment?

No! But thanks for that link Pat! Damn interesting! :-D

http://www.damninteresting.com/earth...ject-west-ford
Those just floated down into the atmosphere without burning up when they
decayed out of orbit.


Those tin foil hat folk better watch out for shorting conductors falling
from space! And never *ever* look up, you could lose an eye that way! :-)

So another issue with trying to use HAARP, how much LEO 'junk' is in polar
orbit vs equatorial orbit? HAARP is not ideally placed to create bulges to
sweep junk from equatorial orbits. You'd probably want to put in a sister
facility, at much lower latitude, maybe at one of our bases in the South
Pacific.

Hmm, come to think about it, given that the HAARP bulge would be located
over Alaska, doesn't that mean the south-to-north sats swept out of orbit
by passing through the bulge come down over Russia? Is that a violation of
some ABM treaty or some such? Not to mention probably secondary effects on
the Ozone layer, thus giving baby seals cancer, or some such means of suing
the Feds for $$$...

;-)

Dave

David Spain wrote:

...doesn't seem to be related to the Orion spacecraft itself discussed in the
report, I wonder if that is the Casaba Howitzer warhead, and the whole Orion
concept came about as a offshoot of the Casaba Howitzer program, by scaling
back the bomblet yield to where a spacecraft could survive its effects.

But elided Howitzer doesn't exist! Right?


It never got built, but it did get studied. Again though, the problem
was that multiple warheads on strategic missiles screwed up all the ABM
plans, as then you needed to deploy at _least_ one ABM for every
warhead, rather than one per missile.
This effectively meant that either side could cause the other to spend
more money defending against a single ICBM or SLBM than it cost to build
and deploy it. It was a no-win game, so they went back to MAD.
As far as ASAT work went, it was a lot more palatable to do that with
conventional rather than nuclear means, because the Argus Effect would
mean damage via EMP to areas under the Casaba Howitzer detonation as
well as trapping electrons at high altitudes that could damage the solar
arrays on orbiting satellites, like happened on the Starfish Prime test,
where they eventually crippled 1/3 of all the satellites in LEO.
That little side effect seldom gets mentioned by fans of reviving the
Orion concept.
Despite the side effects, the US did deploy little-known nuclear ASAT
systems on Johnston Island and Kwajalein Atoll under the code names
Program 505 and Program 437:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/proam505.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/proam437.htm
I assume the idea was to generate the EMP effects way out in the Pacific
where they couldn't do much harm.


In other words... From the classic Congressional Record mythology...

[Closed session testimony to House Armed Services Committee from General X
regarding readiness of Strategic Armed Forces...

...
with the result that elided per cent of our strategic forces remain on
alert status at all times. With blah blah blah
...

a page or two of testimony with a few Q's & A's with the committee members,
then this gem when asked about maintenance requirements...

... net result being roughly 33 per cent of the force structure is under
maintenance at any given time.

...]

I suppose it's possible this doesn't give away the store if you assume
it could be a lower per centage if you factor in vacations and
holidays for the strategic forces...


I'm just glad they didn't go with General Thomas Power's idea of
deploying 10,000 Minuteman missiles rather than the 1,000 that did get
deployed, as it was nice to grow up in North Dakota without a missile
silo in my back yard.

Pat

David Spain wrote:


Those tin foil hat folk better watch out for shorting conductors falling
from space! And never *ever* look up, you could lose an eye that way! :-)

So another issue with trying to use HAARP, how much LEO 'junk' is in polar
orbit vs equatorial orbit? HAARP is not ideally placed to create bulges to
sweep junk from equatorial orbits. You'd probably want to put in a sister
facility, at much lower latitude, maybe at one of our bases in the South
Pacific.

Hmm, come to think about it, given that the HAARP bulge would be located
over Alaska, doesn't that mean the south-to-north sats swept out of orbit
by passing through the bulge come down over Russia? Is that a violation of
some ABM treaty or some such? Not to mention probably secondary effects on
the Ozone layer, thus giving baby seals cancer, or some such means of suing
the Feds for $$$...

Russia launches its polar orbiting recon satellites into orbit in a
northerly direction from Plestek, we launch ours to the south from
Vandenberg.
I was trying to think of something that's electrically conductive that
would be light enough to spend time floating around at very high
altitudes without falling back to Earth in fairly short order, and about
all I can come up with are microscopic carbon fibers.* Those might stay
aloft for quite a while, like volcanic dust does after a major eruption,
but the high altitude winds would soon disperse any cloud of them that
was sent up to that altitude.

* So we use Mookology and make carbon nanotubes that we fill with
hydrogen and then float up into the high atmosphere like tiny strands of
black Ziti pasta.
The tiny organic tubes shall tangle in the sunlit heights and bombarded
by the solar radiation and HAARP radio wave emissions shall soon mutate
and come alive, feeding on the methane produced by all the farting
cattle of our planet, as the mass grows and evolves into something
terrifyingly powerful.
Yes, the _Flying Spaghetti Monster_ will be of our own making! Mankind
shall once again make a god in his...er, his pasta's...own image.

Pat