DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.
Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.
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Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I applaud this effort, but I seem to recall a time when we could salvage entire satellites from orbit.
NEVER from anything beyond Low Earth Orbit.
Orbital dynamics is the death of many a good idea. Anyone have any insights on fuel requirements and deltaV changes that would help or hinder this from happening?
By the time this gets started they would have been better off just making satellites modular.
Put together like LEGO’s. Got a bad solar panel? Just replace the thing.
And everything, and I mean EVERYTHING would have to be modular. As soon as you have any part other than the frame that is not replaceable you mine as well just make the whole thing custom. Because as, Murphy’s law will always take effect, that one custom part will be the one to crap out first.
Now that would require a repair robot be in the same orbit as the satellite and have the spare part available.
Granted you would have to be patient enough to wait for the robot to get to the satellite and that could take a year using a low low fuel orbit change but it could be done.
Everything would have to preplanned and preplaced into orbit. Otherwise its just a waste of a launch.