Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space

Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by mdotshell on Monday January 18, 2021 @07:54AM (#25821297)

Because of orbital mechanics, anything that would be traveling faster than the scaffold would be at a higher orbit and wouldn't be able to be caught.

The exception to this would be if the object were in an elliptical orbit, which would allow for contact to be made with the scaffold at its perigee, which be impossibly rare.

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Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by usrusr on Monday January 18, 2021 @08:24AM (#25821527)

If you'd ever build an artificial "sponge moon" with the goal of assimilating as much spacejunk as possible you'd probably not want to circulate its orbit. But I doubt you'd ever face that decision, given the absurd materials requirements imposed by orbital collisions.

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Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by JshWright on Monday January 18, 2021 @08:11AM (#25821444)

Faster orbits are lower, not higher.

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Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by steerablesafe on Monday January 18, 2021 @09:06AM (#25821887)

This is in fact correct, orbital velocity is sqrt(G*M/r) for circular orbits.

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Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by f-word on Monday January 18, 2021 @08:06AM (#25821406)

Wouldn't this be a matter of simply getting it to an useful starting position?

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Re:Decluttering low-Earth orbit: It's time to tidy up space by Chris2048 on Monday January 18, 2021 @10:41AM (#25822790)

what if that thing had an elliptical orbit?

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