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Before snagging a chunk of space junk, Astroscale must first catch up to one (arstechnica.com)
4 points by Bender on Feb 20, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


However interesting and brag-worthy it might be...laborious orbital rendezvous by a specialist tugboat satellite strikes me as a cost-maximizing / throughput-minimizing strategy for space junk.

Instead, use small sub-orbital interceptor missiles - with "water balloon and firecracker" warheads - to dump near-stationary clouds of water droplets in front of big junk when it's near apogee. It doesn't take much delta-v to drop the perigees of most junk orbits into the atmosphere.




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