Zapping space junk with lasers

[searcher]

Japanese startup plans to vaporize space junk using ground lasers​

To combat the issue of space debris, Australia’s EOS Space and Japan’s EX-Fusion will develop a laser system to remove it from Earth’s orbit.

EX-Fusion, an Osaka-based startup, plans to develop a ground-based laser system to help knock out space junk from the ground. This innovative approach, if successful, could be a valuable way of clearing up the increasingly crowded space around our homeworld.

Zapping junk with lasers

Space junk, or space debris, refers to defunct human-made objects in Earth’s orbit, like old satellites and spent rocket stages. These fragments, varying in size, pose collision risks to operational spacecraft and the International Space Station. Even debris as small as a few millimeters can create problems when it hits functioning satellites and spaceships.

More:

Japanese startup plans to vaporize space junk using ground lasers

EX-Fusion, a startup based in Osaka, is attempting to remove tiny pieces of space debris by firing laser beams from the ground.

interestingengineering.com

 

[WinkWink]

 

[Cigarlover]

So how does blasting it into a billion pieces lower the risk?

 

[Casey Jones]

That's the **GOOD** reason for developing this technology.

What can blast a piece of space junk into nothing, can also be aimed at the roof of your own home. Or Trump's home. Or of anyone who's suddenly "Inconvenient" to the Status Quo.

I suspect this is the real reason that certain elements are so hepped for this.

 

[pmbug]

So how does blasting it into a billion pieces lower the risk?

...
The method involves firing the laser intermittently in the opposite direction of the debris travel to slow it down. This decrease in orbiting speed should, in theory, cause the debris to enter the Earth’s atmosphere, which will burn up.
...

 

[pmbug]

@Casey Jones - this group is wanting to build a ground based laser (that aims into space). There are other companies trying to build satellite based systems (like in the movie Real Genius I suppose).

 

[searcher]

Elections, let's not forget them. Zapping voting machines from space can do some strange things, or so I've heard.

 

[Goldhedge]

they'll weaponize it and take out friendly satellites...

 

[chieftain]

Wait, you guys think that this is new tech?

 

[Angry Old Man]

Back in my day, we didn't have ground based space lasers - or space junk. We kept our trash on Earth and that's how we liked it!

 

[nickndfl]

What if outerspace aliens are cats?

 

[Casey Jones]

Wait, you guys think that this is new tech?

No, it's new engineering.

Development of a system - be it, additives to gasoline or laser weapons - is several steps.

First, the working parts, the laser, or the chemical additive, whatever, have to be discovered or created. Then engineered into fuel or into satellite systems - that they have the energy, the accuracy, the durability, the communication.

We have lasers. We're relatively green on using them as weapons.

They're not in KNOWN satellites, right now. It may well be we saw two tests, in Texas and Hawaii, but what really happened in those places remains a State Secret.

 

[chieftain]

The SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) on the surface was the biggest money pit of the 1980's but looks can be deceiving.

Follow the money and one will see that they not only succeeded in deploying a space based weapons platform, but excelled at it. The extension by corollary was the ground based platform. Think directed energy weapons...

 

[searcher]

^^^^^^^
Some interesting reading.............

103. The Final Frontier: Directed Energy Applications in Outer Space | Mad Scientist Laboratory

The image of the “space war” is ubiquitous from popular Cold War and contemporary renderings: fast attack fighters equipped with laser cannons, swooping in

madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil

 

[chieftain]

^^^^^^^
Some interesting reading.............

103. The Final Frontier: Directed Energy Applications in Outer Space | Mad Scientist Laboratory

The image of the “space war” is ubiquitous from popular Cold War and contemporary renderings: fast attack fighters equipped with laser cannons, swooping in

madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil

Tip of the iceberg.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA560558.pdf

Even that isn't scratching the surface.