A place spacecraft go to die | Hacker News Reader

A place spacecraft go to die

bbc.com

51 pointsmmariani18 comments

Rocket debris in Kazakhstan. Which I am always looking for reasons to post.

I seent it

This is that Korolev cross with the four boosters maxing a cross pattern (at least that's what I remember this from) also a random cool thing is the yo-yo despin with the strings/mass pretty sweet.

Note that this only applies to low earth orbit. Geosynchronous spacecraft don't re-enter; they instead are retired to the “graveyard”, a supersynch orbit about 500 to 1000 km above GEO.

Curious is it safer to not just fly them off into space (requires more energy) or they want to know where it is rather than unkown?

Requires too much energy.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29785/is-the-esc...

Not sure if I understand right to get to that circular orbital velocity 70% of escape velocity is required so since it's still in orbit it still has that 70% then is 1% enough or do you need the other 30%? And even if it's just 1% that's probably a lot with regard to mass shed from off the pad.

Laser space brooms haha. Or drone ion thrusters that can latch onto things and push them. Not sure if there is an exothermic rocket that is electric with high impulse (not take forever)

The drone thrusters is from the show The Expanse haha

If you're flying 70m/s at a stable circular orbit then you need to accelerate to 100m/s in order to escape. That's an increase of 42%.

Reminds me a lot of Skylab debris (mentioned in the article): http://mentalfloss.com/article/70708/nasas-unpaid-400-litter...

Wasn't there some speculation about destroying satellites with ground-based high-powered lasers?

One could try to blast this thing into multiple smaller pieces, most of which would likely burn up in the atmosphere.

If it doesn't work, the failed attempt shouldn't increase the risk for anybody.

You can't destroy (melt?) a satellite with a ground-based laser. What you perhaps mean is to use a laser to slow down satellites such that they fall back to earth. Currently we don't have any efficient means to deorbit space debris. A laser is one possible method.

Even if it were feasible I doubt any government would admit to being able too. That would be an incredible escalation point.

Is there a protocol for warning people if an out-of-control satellite crash is imminent in a populated area?

Who is responsible for covering damages caused by this satellite?

When skylab landed on australia they sent a littering bill to Nasa. The general rule is that, if you want your hardware back, you have to pay damages. A sat isn't generally a big deal even over a populated area. It's a lot less damaging than a small plane crash. Those happen every day.

Depending on who you talk to, much more natural rock falls to earth every day (asteroids etc) than satellites. A hundred pound rock might make a local newspaper headline but only if someone sees it.

> Who is responsible for covering damages caused by this satellite?

Space Law is a developing and mostly uncodified field of International Law, but it is generally considered very uncontroversial that the nation(s)/cosporation(s) responsible for causing the satellite to go out of control should foot the bill for any cleanup/damages. It could be the entity that made a faulty satellite or the entity that failed to launch it to the proper orbit or even an entity that created the debris that caused another satellite to lose orbit.

The launch country is responsible for it, but you can't sue them directly (only the country you're living in can).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention

what about the reactors? surely this must have some environmental impact...

Reactors? The article doesn't mention any reactors.

If you're talking about radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) used on spacecraft, they are limited to deep space (Voyager, Cassini, etc) and long duration planetary missions (Curiosity rover) only. Only a handful of 1960's military satellites used RTGs on Earth orbit [0].

RTGs also tend to be rather small, the environmental impact of the small amount of Pu-238 shouldn't be very large (compared to nuclear testing or nuclear incidents for example). There may be Hydrazine (propellant) or other nasty environmental hazards on spacecraft that would be more significant.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

thanks!

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