Buell Cake!

[thrstrmech]

awesome, congrats to you both

 

[Miami78]

Very cool, especially like the shallow dof in the first one!

 

[Bossanova]

Happy for you dood! Congrats [up]

 

[driftingswiftly]

Thanks guys! She is pretty amazing.
@natty Yes man made debris (jettisoned stages, debunked satellites and collision aftermath). As far as numbers, it depends on how small you consider debris to be. Off the top of my head I think one count estimated 40,000 pieces of junk larger than 4mm...and that's just in low earth orbit (where shuttles and space station and other manned missions fly). They are traveling many times faster than bullets from the fastest guns.

 

[gtp3800]

dont let her go man! thats awesome congrats!

 

[BuellyBagger]

Sweet.... pun intended

 

[netty2424]

@natty  Yes man made debris (jettisoned stages, debunked satellites and collision aftermath).  As far as numbers, it depends on how small you consider debris to be.  Off the top of my head I think one count estimated 40,000 pieces of junk larger than 4mm...and that's just in low earth orbit (where shuttles and space station and other manned missions fly).  They are traveling many times faster than bullets from the fastest guns.

Very interesting. Not to jack your thread, but what do you do to eliminate debris like that?

 

[driftingswiftly]

Well that's the problem...and its nontrivial. No one has a mission designed that would be efficient enough. There are many ideas, but they all have their own hangups. I am currently working on an brand new approach, but its nowhere near ready to fly yet. You have any ideas? NASA and the Air Force would be very interested to hear them.

 

[Kid1620]

Anything that small would burn up on reentry. If you could get everything down around 5 inches or so wouldn't it be easier to find away to get it to reenter earths atmosphere?

 

[netty2424]

Is most of that debris metal of some type?

 

[driftingswiftly]

A lot of it is aluminum, but its not all just metal and its not all the same stuff. More importantly, we don't know what each piece is or how big they all are or their mass.

@kid yes, pretty much everything will burn up in the atmosphere. the challenge is interacting with in to change its orbit. It takes exactly one butt-load of fuel to transfer from one little piece to another. then you can get rig of one small piece out of tens of thousands. You run out of fuel after 4-5 interactions. The other main thought is using lasers or guns to act at a distance. This is a good solution, but it is essentially launching a weapon which has political consequences. Right now those types of missions are not really an option. Definitely a fun and interesting problem to work on. Glad you guys are interested.

I tried linking a paper I wrote first introducing the idea. Ill I could find online (available to the public without having to pay) is the 100 word abstract that is in the program. That paper is AAS 11 - 256, I am Jonathan.
21st_Space_Flight_Meeting

 

[Kid1620]

Man I could solve this problem in like 15minutes if I was stoned lol

 

[zuumn]

Congrats!! And awesome cake. Maybe enter photo for 2013 calendar?

 

[jasonxb9]

That is an awesome cake!!!

 

[sk8ace]

Very cool cake! [up]

and interesting topic, I'll have to think about that.

 

[netty2424]

Is there not a way to use some type of magnetic field to attract the metal? Does that not work the same way in space?

 

[Kid1620]

If you use some type of magnetic field it could bring in stuff that you don't want. Like working gps satellites

 

[ArmyMP09]

Awesome congrats!

 

[BuellyBagger]

wow catchin space junk is a cool topic... im gonna think about this all day now. I love tryin to solve wild problems.

 

[driftingswiftly]

No, magnetic fields would not work. Physically they do not. Aluminum (primary metal used) is non-ferrous (magnets don't work on it). Also, kid is right about having to worry about junk we want up there. If some kind of field were to be used, it would have to be easily turned on and off when desirable junk was in the proximity. Also, keep in mind that such fields dissipate with an inverse square rule. Something twice as far away is 1/2 the strength, but something three times as far away is only 1/9 the strength. Therefore, you usually have to be very close for things like fields to have an influence. If you have to be that close, you might as well grab that mess.

These are creative ideas so far! I'm impressed.