NationStates Jolt Archive

Space Junk

Noting the enlarging amount of obsolete satellites, space vehicles, spent rocket casing and other debris currently in orbit around inhabited planets due to various nations space races, orbiting weapons platforms, exploration of space, deliberate dumping of junk into orbit, visiting space faring nations ect.

Worried about the possible loss of life and/or property that could occur when some of this junk survives re-entry, and crashes onto the planet, or collides with working equipment in orbit, manned or unmanned.

Concerned for space faring nations trying to negotiate their ships through this rubbish heap, to enter the planet's atmosphere and land.

Believing it is time nations using space took responsibility for their own garbage and cleaned up their own mess.

Mandates:

1 - Any UN nation that uses space is responsible for anything put into orbit from that nation.

2 - All UN nations using space must be able to identify any equipment put into orbit from their nation, whether by government or private agencies, and must immediately accept responsibility for any piece of their equipment that poses a danger, at the time it is identified as a danger.

3 – All nations using orbital space must take immediate proactive measures to repair, retrieve or destroy safely any piece of their equipment that is identified as posing a danger to their own and/or other nations people or property.

4 - Nations that have orbiting weapons platforms must regularly check the viability of the weapons, and service, repair or replace any that pose a danger of a decaying orbit that could result in the weapon crashing down onto the planet below.

5 – All UN nations using space for any reason are strongly encouraged to co-operate with each other and share information and technology to reduce the amount of space debris in orbit, and to improve methods of repair, retrieval and safe destruction of malfunctioning equipment.

6 – Space faring nations are encouraged to offer their services to assist with the clean up. Payments and terms of contracts for this job will be at the discretion of the nation concerned to negotiate with the customer.

7 – Nations that use space are responsible for any and all costs incurred in dealing with their own space debris. If you can afford to build it and put it up there, you can afford the clean up.

This is an idea I came up with on the spur of the moment and posted on Reclamation (http://s15.invisionfree.com/Reclamation/index.php?showtopic=77&st=0&#last).

Thought I'd post it here and get some feedback on the general idea and what I can do to improve the proposal. It started out as a bit of a joke, but after some positive comments, I decided to give it a serious go. It is nowhere near ready for submission yet.

I do want to avoid excess use of technical jargon to keep it easy for everyone to read and understand, and also to keep the light and slightly humourous tone intact.

3 - Planet bound nations may call on space faring nations to destroy any of their debris in orbit if they recognise the existence of such nations. Space faring nations can require a fee for this service if they wish, or just use the debris for target practice.


What exactly do you mean by "if they recognise the existence of such nations"?

Nations may not recognise the existance of "Extra-terrestrials" (There is an issue about it somewhere). Any space faring nation that is not from the planet UN member nation is from may be considered as an Extra terrestrial and not be recognised to exist.

Also there is very limited times where FT and MT nations RP together due to the tech difference as such many MT nations do not recognise FT nations exist at all.

Loophole on 3:

"Could you please destroy relic NXC-5914-5192-19427CT since you don't seem to be using it"

"Sure, but it comes with a fee of 1.9 Quadrillion Angels"

"Dude, that's like the next 100 years GDP for my entire nation. Surely it doesn't cost you that much to destroy it!"

"Your right, it doesn't. But if you want it removed, you've got to pay our military budget for the next year"

Loophole on 3:

"Could you please destroy relic NXC-5914-5192-19427CT since you don't seem to be using it"

"Sure, but it comes with a fee of 1.9 Quadrillion Angels"

"Dude, that's like the next 100 years GDP for my entire nation. Surely it doesn't cost you that much to destroy it!"

"Your right, it doesn't. But if you want it removed, you've got to pay our military budget for the next year"

That loophole could be considered closed by clause 6. If the nation can't afford to pay a space faring nation to destroy the debris, then they will have to find another way to do it themselves. If they are advanced enough to put the junk up there, then they should be advanced enough to get it down safely.

I could add "resonable fee" to that line, but if space faring nations want to earn some extra cash doing this job, then it is in their own best interests not to price themselves out of the work. I will look into that clause and see what I can do about it.

But Clause 6 (nor Clause 3) requires that the space-faring nation destroy its debris immediately. As such, they can always say that failure to pay the fee means that they can leave it up there.

Ok, I will have to rewrite a fair bit of this to make things a bit clearer.

Ultimatly responsibility for space junk rests solely with the nation that put it up there. If they approch a FT nation to take care of the problem, but can't afford the fee asked, then it is up to them to find another way to destroy, repair or retrieve that item before it's orbit decays.

That is the timeframe I want to put across. It doesn't have to be done immediatly the item concerned stops working ect (though that would be nice), but must be done in a timely manner if and when the item starts presenting a danger. That danger could be crashing back to earth, collisions, dropping bombs indiscriminatly ect. I don't expect nations to be up there retrieving every lost screw, but if an obsolete satilitte is falling out of orbit, then the nation that put it up there in the first place must do something about it before it re-enters the atmosphere and bits of it can crash back down onto the planet.

Um.....

OOC: Ok, since satelites fall from orbit at something like a weekly rate (seriously, it was on West Wing in the first season - just can't remember the number they said. Considering how those things are built and the amount of friction they build up on reentry, you'll find that the vast majority of satelites can do burnthrough with little concern to the people below).....that comment seems off. Large objects like weapons platforms, space stations (MIR) and some other larger satelites you might have an argument for, but the average satelite presents next-to-no danger.

I'm not pretending to be a techy whizz here, just the science dunce who wrote this thing :p.

That sort of info is valuable to me though, because I can use it in a rewrite to make this sound more feasible.

One thing though, while this proposal is mainly concerned with debris surviving a re-entry, I also want it to cover things such as junk crashing into working satillittes, space stations, ships ect while in orbit. That could present just as much of a danger as the re-entry scenario. If you have a manned space station up there, you don't want some other nation's old equipment crashing into it.

I'm not pretending to be a techy whizz here, just the science dunce who wrote this thing :p.

That sort of info is valuable to me though, because I can use it in a rewrite to make this sound more feasible.

One thing though, while this proposal is mainly concerned with debris surviving a re-entry, I also want it to cover things such as junk crashing into working satillittes, space stations, ships ect while in orbit. That could present just as much of a danger as the re-entry scenario. If you have a manned space station up there, you don't want some other nation's old equipment crashing into it.

Another science error.....

Most satelites are running on geosyncronous orbit - meaning they pretty much go around the equator so that you can point your satelite dish at them and get the feed. Their speed is set based upon their altitude - you go too fast or too slow, you leave/fall from orbit. So everything at the same altitude is going at the same speed. If you want, I can give you a much more scientifically complete explaination of why it works this way.

Now, there are satelites working on a different orbit (can't remember what that's called off the top of my head), and there might be concerns about that.....but there's so many issues with those that I honestly don't know the math behind them. With the Earth not exactly being a sphere, I don't know how much of a speed difference you have on different angles relative to the planet or what they tend to do with orbits

.........

It might not be a bad idea to have a orbit distance standards......

Sigh, that is exactly what I want to avoid. Going into all the serious technical and scientific jargon that neither I, or a decent number of other UN nations, will understand.

The idea of this proposal is that it stays broad, light in tone and gives nations wriggle room. I don't want to present this as a hammer over the head type of thing.

Basically I just want to push towards nations taking responsibility for anything they put into orbit that later presents a danger either to the planet it is spinning around, or other space users. I don't want to get into micromanaging the possible scenarios that cause the problem, or options available because the nation concerned can sort that out themselves.

Our delegation would be one of those that would be completely flummoxed by a proposal that contained complicated scientific details about orbits, etc. (We are extremely proud of ourselves that we can even spell "geosynchronous".) It seems to us that the problem could be avoided by simply limiting the scope of the proposal to objects that pose a reasonable threat of damage to persons or property if their orbits decay -- which the first operative clause of the proposal comes close to doing. Perhaps just a bit of expansion of that clause would be worthwhile.

Lorelei M. Ahlmann
Ambassador-at-Large

Some alterations done. I've changed clause 1 a bit to include Ausserland's suggestion, and added a bit to cover single planet nations.

Issue #1069241-4019

Corporations: while in the real world, no corporation has been able to successfully put extensive amount of equipment (if any) under its own power, that is more due to the politics than because of ability. Quite simply, NASA is selling below cost, so corporate competitors can't compete.

However, the concept of corporate space stations, derelicts, etc is not beyond plausability in the alternate world that is NS and actually appears in many Sci-Fi games.

Another issue: the majority of satelites in orbit, while put there by government equipment, actually belong to companies. Why is this relevant? Because it is questionable who is responsible of dealing with destruction/re-entry issues in your draft.

As I've said before, the nation itself is responsible for anything put up there from their nation. How they decide to deal with dangers that presents within their borders is up to them.

In the case of corporations, nations can introduce laws within their own nation that force those corporations to either cover the costs of repair/retrieval/destruction or demand they perform the whole operation themselves. How they divide the responsibility and response is their choice. Whether a nation's government fix the problem, or they take measures within their borders to pass the responsibility down the line, they would still be complying with this proposal, because that would still be seen by outsiders as the nation "dealing with its own mess".

That is one of the reasons I want to keep the proposal broad and not go into too much detail in metholds of how exactly nations are to accomplish this. Nations of different tech levels, different government styles, different cultures will find different ways to clean up whatever mess they make. The proposal just says you must do it, I'd rather leave exactly how to the nations themselves.

We cannot support this with some of the provisions involved. We are not going to put little flags on our spy or stealth satellites denoting which nation they belong to. This would be a tremendous mistake. Of course all acknowledged military and civilian satellites would get a nice little flag with a tortoise on it. Space junk should be for non-functioning garbage, not working equipment. We would gladly be happy to clean it up for you. Another problem with this is most modern tech nations wouldn't be able to find a lot of the junk-- stuff under 10cm is not visible using current technology for most nations. This is a barrier. It would be better if this fell under an alliance of people for the cleanup, and individual nations for the fines for not cleaning up.

I think other nations would notice you putting your spy and military sattilites up in space, so don't see why putting your flag on them would be a problem. Of course I am assuming you share your planet with other nations that have the technology to monitor and identify that sort of stuff. If not, you may have a point, but then the other nations wouldn't know what the heck you were putting up there, if they noticed at all, so again, putting the flag on shouldn't be a problem.

When the RL US wanted to put its star wars up above our heads in the 80s, do you really think other western nations, especially the USSR, wouldn't have known exactly what it was and where, even without a flag?

any debris they create that has the possibility of surviving a re-entry of the atmosphere and crashing back onto the planet below in whole or part(s), with consequent possible loss of life and/or destruction/damage to property.

Stuff under 10 cm, and a lot of stuff bigger than that would never survive a re-entry of the atmosphere, and could never be a danger. Therefore it isn't covered by this proposal, so nations don't have to be up there collecting every nut and bolt.

Stuff under 10 cm, and a lot of stuff bigger than that would never survive a re-entry of the atmosphere, and could never be a danger. Therefore it isn't covered by this proposal, so nations don't have to be up there collecting every nut and bolt.

True and I would concur, yet we should not ignore the threat (if this has not already been remarked upon) of possible contact with small-sized debris with space-craft. A fact of note is that a piece of space debris the size of a cherry pip going at a rate of 5000 kph can explode with the force of a hand-grenade upon contact with another object.

May the blessings of our otters be upon you.

Leonard Otterby
Ambassador for the Republic of Compadria to the U.N.

I remind you that the piece of insulation that damaged Columbia's heat shield so that it ended up dissintigrating was not that big - and it only fell a portion of the length of the aircraft from rest so we aren't talking great speed.

Also, your proposal does not actually SAY anything from their nation, it says anything by

Initially you would know where the satellite was, but if you use stealth technology on a satellite, a not so crazy idea in Nationstates where everybody seems to want to destroy your satellite system, you would quickly lose track of what was up there. Stealth satellites are not so far fetched. Also a lot of the older junk might be ignored at other space programs peril. I would support a space clean up initiative. There are a lot of nations that have disappeared that have had space programs. With so many space programs, it could get interesting. Plus, I would make money on the initiative, my new space garbage truck has launched.

Initially you would know where the satellite was, but if you use stealth technology on a satellite, a not so crazy idea in Nationstates where everybody seems to want to destroy your satellite system, you would quickly lose track of what was up there. Stealth satellites are not so far fetched.
What is far fetched about this is the idea that a nation would not keep track of its satellites whether it's stealth or not.

Bob Flibble
UN Representative

Thanks for your comments everyone.

I've been thinking about this and feel it is just too complicated a subject for a UN resolution. Either it stays in the style it is in now, and people won't like that because it doesn't go into enough detail, or it goes into detail and most of us won't be able to understand what it actually says because of all the techy jargon that will have to be used.

So, I've decided to drop the idea as an UN proposal, but will attempt to write it up as a daily issue instead. That way I can keep the broadness and expand on the humour a bit, without worrying about the nitty gritty science stuff.

If this issue came up in the UN, I would wholeheartedly support it. There are a few reasons why this resolution makes a lot of sense:

1. The argument against this based on the size of the particles is moot. A spaceship colliding with a paintchip at 10,000 MPH is still going to be a significant problem, let alone hundreds of tons of scrap metal and debris that are simply jettisoned into space. This resolution greatly reduces some of the common problems encountered by space travellers.

2. A planet or sector of space will no longer be able to be "blockaded" by simply dropping a bunch of trash, should war break out between two planets or other interstellar governments. Neutral parties can also be significantly affected, especially if the debris crosses path with a heavily travelled "interstellar highway" (for those who use STL or FTL engines). This resolution ultimately reduces civilian casualties in interstellar warfare.

3. Any debris large enough to actually cause damage after it passes through the atmosphere is still a great danger. Dumping massive canisters of radioactive trash and having them "conveniently" crash land in the middle of cities of competetors is a real threat to the security of all nations. This resolution reduces the countless abuses that could be committed by other nations in the name of "freedom to drop trash where ever we feel like it".

I feel that this resolution is not only a wonderful idea, but required to ensure the future safety of all UN members.

I really like this resolution it should go forward. Please put it up. My cleanup ships have picked up a bunch of the trash. As part of the cleanup we are refurbishing old satellites. 20 refurbished communications satellites, have been put in earth orbit for free public use by UN nations.

this is rediculous, with the acception of MIR, No space junk has ever made it through the atmostphere to hit earth. Noone has ever been injured by space Junk. Though i agree that there is plenty of space junk up there, It woudl be the equivalent of doing a thorough sweep of the earths surface (oceans and all, for anything larger than a pea! Just let it float up there. If it hurts a satellite, then let that nation who owns it fix it themselves.

this is rediculous, with the acception of MIR, No space junk has ever made it through the atmostphere to hit earth. Noone has ever been injured by space Junk. Though i agree that there is plenty of space junk up there, It woudl be the equivalent of doing a thorough sweep of the earths surface (oceans and all, for anything larger than a pea! Just let it float up there. If it hurts a satellite, then let that nation who owns it fix it themselves.

News Flash (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/11/newsid_3867000/3867739.stm).

Mir isn't the only bit of junk to crash back to earth. Just lucky for us Aussies that America's rubbish fell over the sparsely populated western third of our nation and not the heavily populated eastern third.

But we aren't talking about RL earth, we are talking NationStates. Two totally different kettles of fish. Also if you had read my last post, you would have noticed I had dropped this idea as a UN proposal, though the two posts after it have me rethinking that position. No decision yet though.

I think you definitely should go through with this proposal. The main problem seems to be not with the actual purpose of the resolution, but who the economic burden of cleanup goes to. To simplify things, I would suggest simply making it the trash-dumping nation's responsibility to clean up any debris. However, I would support this resolution either way; it addresses an issue that is rarely brought up, but is a serious and real threat.

Go foreward

Yes there's going to be a bit of technical data we're going to be pouring over, and I must apologize for that, but it can be turned into something usable for the average user as we determine what is and isn't relevant to this proposal.

And it never hurts to learn more about what these Science geeks are putting up with :P

Why not simply mandate that a nation must clean up it's space junk, and define space junk as any flaoting debris (over a reasonable size) that is not being used for something logical. It's simple, to the point, and effective. None of this clean up your garbage for a fee if somebody asks you.

A PMT or FT nation could make money off of the cleanup if they have cheap access to space. Something like a Liftport space elevator. There is a lot of metal, uranium, beryllium, solar cells, computer equipment, and other materials that go into making a satellite. The cost of a functional satellite currently is about $32 million dollars, not a little bit of money. With the ability to repair satellites, space junk could be quite profitable. Not to mention if you were able to get ahold of an abandoned space station like MIR, it would be worth a lot of money. MIR is a multi-billion dollar piece of junk.

I will go ahead with this idea as a UN proposal.

That decision is because some of you said to, and because I found it really hard to try and turn this into a national problem, as an issue is. Just couldn't figure out a way to make it something that would only be a concern within one nations borders, when the problem by its very nature, is international.

Will have a go at rewriting the proposal over the next day or so, and will try and include some of the suggestions here.

Just did some rewriting and posted it in post 1. Hopefully have answered some of the problems mentioned in this thread.

I've made it plain that nations take responsibility for anything that comes from their nation, not necessarily just what the government might put up there. Cleaned up the bit about higher tech nations assisting with the clean up, and added, deleted and changed some of the other wording.

Looks great to me! I'd say this proposal is ready to go!

We will take your garbage for free if you vote for this proposal and are in the Sol system. We have built a space station out of external fuel tanks, old electronics from satellites, discarded solar power satellites, old weapons platforms, shielded it with slag from asteroid mining, and other things. We want to expand. It includes some newer material as well, but we like the idea of a cheap space fortress...

Initially you would know where the satellite was, but if you use stealth technology on a satellite, a not so crazy idea in Nationstates where everybody seems to want to destroy your satellite system, you would quickly lose track of what was up there. Stealth satellites are not so far fetched. Also a lot of the older junk might be ignored at other space programs peril. I would support a space clean up initiative. There are a lot of nations that have disappeared that have had space programs. With so many space programs, it could get interesting. Plus, I would make money on the initiative, my new space garbage truck has launched.

How precisely would you go about concealing something in open space that radiates heat?

Magic booties, perhaps?

You would make a small satellite that looked and acted like garbage. Something designed to blend in with the junk quickly after launch.

Apparently there is one. I can't really figure out how it works though.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6782264/ . It would go well with my high altitude surveillance airships. Apparently there is some kind of detection shield.

How precisely would you go about concealing something in open space that radiates heat?

White body technology on the side that faces the detectors and black body technology on the side opposite. Most objects are partial black bodies meaning that they absorb radiation but also emit radiation based on their internal tempurature according to the black body emission curve. A true black body absorbs all radiation. A white body on the other hand reflects all radiation but at the same time does not radiate any heat whatsoever. (It could conduct heat however through contact.)

Mind you reflecting all radiation would make it absolutely obvious to anyone with a radar system, but the definition does not require the radiation to return in the direction it came from.

So it would be possible, but exceptionally difficult to do.

White body technology on the side that faces the detectors and black body technology on the side opposite.

Wouldn't the difference in emissions from those two sides impart a propulsive force and thus move the satellite?

Wouldn't the difference in emissions from those two sides impart a propulsive force and thus move the satellite?

Yes, but without having physics books in front of me I can't tell you for sure how much motive force black body radiation of moderate temperature would be. This force may be smaller than other forces that would act to adjust the orbit of te satelite and would probably be compensated for in a similiar manner to all other forces.

I just submitted this for a dry run through the list, but am confused by something. I put it under the environmental catagory, and it came up as affecting the automobile industry, which it doesn't. Is that normal, or did I miss something?

Have not used this catagory before so don't know much about it.

I just submitted this for a dry run through the list, but am confused by something. I put it under the environmental catagory, and it came up as affecting the automobile industry, which it doesn't. Is that normal, or did I miss something?

Have not used this catagory before so don't know much about it.

OOC: If it's 'Environmental' then it has to affect either all industries or just one of them, and when I looked at the category there were only a few that could be affected individually: I don't know whether you got that result by default (as it would be first in alphabetical order) or in some other way, but as the "Automobile" industry probably includes all vehicle-producing industries for the purposes of game mechanics (going by the fact that I saw one of the mods tell somebody, several months ago, that the "Trout Farming" industry actually covers all forms of fishing...) it seems reasonably appropriate to me...

ctf: (consider the following) what if instead of revoking this equipment or returning it to earth, use it as storage space for earth junk? this would get rid of junk on earth and give a use to obsolete space equipment...

Thanks St Edmund, you are probably right about that. It won't make quorum this run because I'm not TGing for it, but I will use my eyes better next time and put it under all businesses. That way any form of debris up there is covered.

ctf: (consider the following) what if instead of revoking this equipment or returning it to earth, use it as storage space for earth junk? this would get rid of junk on earth and give a use to obsolete space equipment...

The idea of the proposal is to get the junk out of orbit, not put more up there. I'm not sure I like the thought of an old space station stuffed full of nuclear/toxic waste crashing back onto the planet below, and that is just one scenario ;):).

I've just submitted this again for a serious TGing try at getting it to quorum. Left it affecting the automobile manufacturing industry, it seemed to fit the best and space vehicles are just another form of transport I guess.

Could all those who like the idea endorse please :).

Link to Proposal (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal1/match=Junk).

Why remove the space junk when alien life forms have been proven to be out there? They may see these, land, and further us in technology.

Why remove the space junk when alien life forms have been proven to be out there? They may see these, land, and further us in technology.
Sounds a bit of a long-shot, hoping for alien technology while also hoping that your own tech doesn't crash into the planet.

If aliens have the technology to reach us, and are prepared to share such technology, they will be able to land on the planet to do so.

Why remove the space junk when alien life forms have been proven to be out there? They may see these, land, and further us in technology.

Or they may see obsolete rubbish spinning around in orbit and think to themselves "eww, what a dump", and move onto the next solar system. If we want to attract and impress alien visitors, I don't think making them play dodgeball with our junk just to get onto the planet is a very good idea ;).

Why remove the space junk when alien life forms have been proven to be out there? They may see these, land, and further us in technology.

And, if we're lucky, abduct you for anal probing.

Quorum.
?????? It has 88 approvals.

This message has been deleted by Teruchev. Reason: Teruchev's UN staff are all cross-eyed and can't read a proposal list right. It's firing time!

Fire 'em all!

Now, on a more serious note, we hope this proposal does reach quorum, as we don't want any space debris smacking into our extremely expensive military satellites.

lol military sat...

ok well i'd accept the proposal if it came up. =D

thats all. *bow*