Orbital Decay, Space Debris Risks

DecayDebris

Summary: Server sky will greatly reduce the space debris problem. Fully populated, server sky may someday place hundreds of billions of objects in space, but these objects will all be continuously controlled to high precision, precisely located to micrometers, and will be in a 6411 kilometer altitude near-circular equatorial orbit, devoid of other assets, far above low earth orbit, and out of the flight path of launch vehicles aimed at higher orbits.

Server sky arrays can be configured as radars, and continuously track small objects in LEO and above. With precise characterization of millions of debris objects, they will be easy to avoid by active satellites. Collision risks between derelicts can be predicted with high precision, and missions to capture or deflect the derelicts can be prioritized.

Ultrathin sunlight harvesting systems such as Server Sky and Space Solar Power Satellites must be massive enough to maintain stable orbits in spite of light pressure perturbations. Rather than increase launch cost, ultralight systems can be deployed, with captured space debris mass added in orbit. Presuming orbital maneuvering stages to capture debris, and some means to cut it up into appropriately sized ballast masses, debris now becomes a valuable asset, and the combined value of useful mass and threat reduction will make the capture process more valuable than mass launched from the ground.

Space debris is the uncontrolled garbage resulting from space missions, which threatens other space missions.

Uncontrolled: space debris, from shrouds and upper stages to failed satellites, does not have control or thrust, and remains in slowly decaying orbits for a very long time. It is also poorly tracked - radars have limited visibility of the sky through distorting atmospheres, and sensitivity is limited by the inverse fourth power of distance.

Threatened: with poor knowledge of where space debris is, it is difficult for controlled satellites to move out of the way. Space is vastly big, so collisions are actually quite rare, but with millions of large and small chunks of mass in wildly varying orbits, impacts can come at any time from many directions.

Work in progress, more later