• DARPA's plan for the electronic graveyard above: How Robots Could Recycle Dead Satellites In Orbit
    9 replies, posted
[quote]Approximately 1,300 nonfunctional satellites sit in a graveyard orbit 22,000 miles above Earth—and Darpa has plans for them. Recycling dead satellite parts in space could be 10 times cheaper than building and sending up new satellites, says Darpa program manager Dave Barnhart. Earlier this year, the agency started the Phoenix project, which will use robots to salvage parts from decommissioned satellites as soon as 2015. First step: figuring out how to recycle parabolic antennas, which have no moving parts or electronics and thus tend to outlive the satellites they’re attached to. Eventually robots could scavenge solar-power arrays and internal components, too.[/quote] Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/how-robots-could-recycle-dead-satellites-in-orbit[/url] Click the link for an diagram for it. For whatever reason, it won't load properly here.
It'd be nice if the complete process was carried out in orbiting refineries and could just be used to start constructing modules in space. Eventually they could just use cannons to fire lumps of iron into orbit at low cost, and then just scoop them with the refineries.
[QUOTE=SCopE5000;38830731]It'd be nice if the complete process was carried out in orbiting refineries and could just be used to start constructing modules in space. Eventually they could just use cannons to fire lumps of iron into orbit at low cost, and then just scoop them with the refineries.[/QUOTE] Better yet, harvest asteroids for iron
nom nom nom :v:
:v: [IMG]http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/114/8/e/living_asteroid_smiley_by_transientsprite-d3es9t1.gif[/IMG]
Man, I know I've said this before, but DARPA is fucking awesome in the shit that it does.
That's pretty goddamn awesome. On an unrelated note, I keep confusing DARPA with DRPA and wondering how they started coming up with good ideas, much less ones related to space.
Link is broke. Story was removed.
We need this to clean up all that junk in orbit; having recycler droids up there will be helpful.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.