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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russian space agency plans to incinerate space junk with powerful laser beam |
| 2018-06-16 |
| [a French reporters tweet summarizing the RT article] The Russian space agency would like to deploy a laser in space to "incinerate space debris" -- the kind of dual system that would build an anti-satellite capability |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #5 Considering whats out there won't it just be easier to turn up the gravity and burn the debris on the way down? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2018-06-16 09:41 |
| #4 #2 Yep |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-06-16 09:07 |
| #3 There isn’t any oxygen in space, so it won’t burn. Simply melting it would produce a more concentrated mass, that’s not helpful. So, “incinerate” would mean vaporize, which takes a whole lot of energy delivered precisely at great distance. That’s very difficult. (It’s not the same as the much easier task of disabling a satellite or weapon.) But a space-based laser could vaporize part of an object such that the resulting vapor jet would de-orbit the object. |
| Posted by: KBK 2018-06-16 07:38 |
| #2 oops. Got your latest GPS satillite too. Our bad. |
| Posted by: Omererong Bucket7760 2018-06-16 05:37 |
| #1 Wonderful. Tons of charred aluminum foil in orbit. Optically difficult to see and who knows what the radar cross section will look like. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-06-16 04:25 |