What it reminds me of, is a conversation I had with two of my American friends months ago, they took me out, to teach me the ropes of salvaging, which, is interesting in Star Citizen, essentially if you have not played the game, there are wrecks of this and that, and you essentially use, what I would describe as plasma cutters, to basically strip them and then pull it all back in.
Now, they were interested in teaching me how to play the game, which I still don’t handle incredibly well, quite a learning curve, but my mind immediately raced to the concept of space pollution.
Pollution on earth is one thing, pollution in space, is actually a rather big concern, a little nut or bolt travelling at thousands of miles an hour hits your rocket, it actually, can do incredible damage, as most people know.
My concept though many months ago, was essentially, space drones, and recycling, now, while in computer games when we do all these sort of “salvaging” activities, things are static, the issue we have with our orbit is these things are whizzing about at thousands of kilometres a second, so its not as if its stationary, like it is in most of the games we play.
I suppose its also important to point out to gamers at this point also, “Asteroid Fields” are not like that, at all, tightly lumped all rocks together stuff we usually see in games, not true to what we understand through observational astronomy, now rings, of planets, such as Saturn and otherwise, yes, you start getting more into that sort of look, but, the whole Han Solo, through the asteroid field to escape the Star Destroyer scene we all know and love (cracking good scene, one of the best in classic Star Wars in my opinion, slightly biased though, Blue Harvest was my favourite film) no that’s not really a thing, well, in our Solar System anyway, perhaps elsewhere in the universe, but not in the SOL System.
So we have all this junk, floating around in space, I hypothesized at the time, space drones, plasma cutters, re-use, recycle yeah, there is a lot of metal and such floating about up there, and if we do eventually get Artemis Base going… I assume … it is public knowledge everyone knows about the plans for Artemis Base? If not, my bad NASA, then if we re-use and recycle all that rubbish up there, much easier, for us to then point it to the moon, touch down, and manufacture in the shipyards there.
But how do you capture it, when its moving so fast? Honestly, most of its metallic, so I was thinking, you have like, giant electro magnets, along trajectory paths, think like a satellite, but instead its just like, magnets right, pulls all the stuff in towards it, with a bit of propulsion shift here or there to catch this or that, it aggregates a bunch of the rubbish, the along you come with basically, a tug boat style spacecraft, couple it out, pull it out to around near the moon, close enough orbit, send out some space drones with plasma cutters and such, chop it up, bundle it up, then ship it down to the moon, where it can be recycled and repurposed.
That way, we use our rubbish, and don’t turn our low earth orbits, and outer earth orbits into what we have seen with the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, which is … regrettable, all be it, solvable, if we put our minds to it, its something most people don’t really think about, because you don’t see it, but yeah, there is a patch of garbage floating out there, larger than some of the states you live in, its pretty bad, but good people are working on cleaning it up.
My point is, we have seen what wanton pollution with no forethought has done to our oceans, shall we make the same mistake again in space? I think we can learn from our mistakes, and not only that, make use of them! That way when we are building Starships in dockyards around orbit of the moon, we don’t have to waste as much time and money shipping, or should I say, rocketing, all the materials up there.
We always have a tendency to de-orbit, and crash our larger things, into the ocean, if we can, Point Nemo, I believe is that place, gosh, if I had a holiday destination, on a cruise ship, it would be, to be on a ship, at a safe distance, to watch the ISS come down, what that thing has done for science is, phenomenal, its really a shame to see its reaching the end of its life, personally? I would have coupled some SpaceX rockets to it and tugged it towards the moon and try and throw it in orbit around that, but not to be I’m afraid.
I will say this in closing, you know what I find particularly interesting, and those of you in the know, will know what I’m talking about, for all the talk people give about the space fairing billionaires, does no one else in the services find it interesting, they don’t talk about the private companies, that have “that tech” they never get headlines, they never give interviews, they never even get a mention, and I wonder if these guys even talk to them? Not saying any more than that, as they say “if you know, you know”
Real talk though, to close this out, since I am talking environment, you know what I always wanted to see? An American Redwood Tree, those things are like the tallest in the world, we don’t have them here in Australia, and, can you imagine how tall their ancestors must have grown when oxygen levels were higher? It is a strange thing of earth people, that often, we forget, we live, in a symbiotic relationship with our flora, literally, we breathe out, what they breath in, and vice versa.
Viva La Space Recycling?