Re^5: "Practices and Principles" to death

Before I'd support your approach, I'd want to see answers to how we plan to get rid of the debris from one collision. After that I'd like to see a plan to handle the potential problems from a careless company cutting corners and having a few more space accidents. And before you wave the free market magic wand, with known techniques it takes a lot of work to get a single flying screw down. How do we supply a profit motive to reward private enterprise for that work?

So true... doesn't work on the ground (yet), so why should it in near space? Just changing a few words...

Before I'd support your approach, I'd want to see answers to how we plan to get rid of the land mines, cluster bombs and depleted uranium from one war. After that I'd like to see a plan to handle the potential problems from a careless country cutting corners and dispersing their toxic nuclear waste by way of uranium bombshells. And before you wave the free market magic wand, with known techniques it takes a lot of work to get a single land mine defused. How do we supply a profit motive to reward private enterprise for that work?

Pretty much to do here, yet, to be dreaming of near space occupation...

Update: It hasn't been a collision, they blew up one of their satellites.

--shmem

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----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Comment on Re^5: "Practices and Principles" to death

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Re^6: "Practices and Principles" to death by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 03, 2008 at 22:16 UTC
I never said it was an accidental collision. I don't know the details of the device used, but in general in space there is no need to explode anything. Just kinetic energy from hitting it that fast is enough for total destruction. For instance the recent US effort to destroy their aging spy satellite did not use an explosive, they just ran a rocket into the satellite. At the worst you might explode the missile very, very gently before impact to guarantee multiple impacts. I have no idea whether China did that, or just collided them. I assume collided.	[reply]
Re^7: "Practices and Principles" to death by ack (Deacon) on Mar 06, 2008 at 05:03 UTC
How does one 'explode' anything 'very, very gently'? For what it's worth, you're exactly right...nothing has to 'explode'. It really is all kinetic energy...the closing velocity between two objects at the altitudes discussed are about 14 km/sec (or a little under 14 miles/sec). About 15 years ago I was associated with a project to test hypervelocity impacts on the ground...by hypervelocity we meant velocities in excess of about 2 km/sec...which was the most we could create with very specialized devices called rail-guns (which were electromagnetic accelerators that could fire a small piece of steal (about the size of a thimble, but solid rather than hollow like a thimble) by a long series of elecromagnets that would successively accelerate the thimble faster and faster). They fired it into an embankment of heavy clay dirt...to see what it would do (seems like the old saying 'The difference between boys and men are the cost of their toys'). It basically left a crater about the equivalent of 50 to 60 feet across and about 10 to 15 feet deep...from a heavy thimble! Another annecdote is the infamous (well...infamous in my business) paint fleck (about 2 mm square and about a few thounsands of an inch thick) that struck one of the space Shuttle's forward windows. Those windows are about 4-6 inches thick specially made glass-like material. The collision, estimated at about 4-5 km/sec gouged out a crater about 1/2 way through the window and was about 4-5 inches across at the surface of the window. At 14 km/sec...the collision doesn't just vaporize most of the matter...it actually creates an ionized plasma out of much of the matter. The rest is varying degrees of dust and debris of a surprisingly large variety of shapes and sizes. So 'explosions' are of no particular value...the kinetic energy of the collision is plenty. ack Albuquerque, NM	[reply]
Re^8: "Practices and Principles" to death by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 06, 2008 at 05:27 UTC
By exploding it very, very gently I was thinking of something along the lines taking a bucket of gravel and letting a puff of gas free in the middle. Causing the gravel to spread out. Thus guaranteeing many impacts all over the target. The purpose of which would be to be sure that no sizable fraction of the target remained in one piece. Thank you for your concrete examples demonstrating exactly what impact means at those speeds. I knew it was impressive, but was unsure of exactly how impressive.	[reply]
Re^6: "Practices and Principles" to death by rhesa (Vicar) on Mar 01, 2008 at 13:01 UTC
There are more than enough human beings around to spend a little effort on all those things at the same time.	[reply]
Re^7: "Practices and Principles" to death by shmem (Chancellor) on Mar 01, 2008 at 13:55 UTC
...and there are more than enough human beings around to spoil the tidings before they are complete.	[reply]
Re^8: "Practices and Principles" to death by Anonymous Monk on Mar 01, 2008 at 14:57 UTC
i'm blowin' up here	[reply]