Short sighted homo sapiens

 Whatever we touch, we ruin it. The latest example of our stupidity is the space.

Nothing can be more exciting than space travel, one of the ultimate achievements of humans. After completing this milestone of human adventure of space we have now diversified to other aspects like communication, GPS, weather forecasting, spy satellites and even permanent stations in the orbit. We all now so dependent on these things that we hardly understand and see the problem it has created for the future generations. We are cresting our giant prison called earth.

Every rocket and satellite we deploy on the orbit is creating a trap for us. And with the increasing number of satellites deployed every year things are getting messier and deadlier. If things go on this way then we might get trapped inside for decades and centuries.

Getting into space is extremely difficult, first it has to go very fast to bypass the gravity and then it has to tilt to get into the lower orbit, still very fast. Once in the orbit it has to maintain a speed, again very fast to counter the residual gravity so that it doesn’t fall back on earth. This is the source of all problems. Rockets are metal cylinders and metal parts; they require fuel which is stored in these cylinders. When ac cylinder gets empty it is released from the rocket and then it floats in the space. Only some parts fall back to earth or burn up.

After 50 years of space travel the lower orbit has become a junk yard of useless satellites, its boosters and millions of other small parts which are moving around the lower orbit. There are around 2800 defunct satellites, 10000 objects bigger than a computer monitor, more than 22000 objects larger than an orange, 500000 pieces the size of a marble and millions of pieces that are too small to be tracked. All these are moving at around 30000km/hr. This speed is so fast that it would feel like being shot by a plasma gun with a pea size object. On impact it vaporizes and leaves a small hole enough to destroy a satellite.

So we are putting trillion dollar space infrastructure zone in a debris zone. 2 to 3 satellites get destroyed every year. We expect about 10 fold increases in the number of satellites and so much debris. We might just be approaching a tipping point. Worse than those small pieces of junk would be a chain reaction caused by two colliding satellites in just the right way. When two satellites collide they don’t fall of the sky. Orbital speeds are so fast that two colliding satellites can create a wall of space debris that can create a domino effect destroying everything in its path. With more satellites being destroyed, more debris is created and the destruction increases exponentially. By the time we will realize what happened it will already be too late.

Within the next few decades we might just create our prison earth. With a debris layer around earth consisting of millions of pieces and impossible to track, future space travel may become unviable and dangerous. Our dreams of creating moon and mars base may be set back by decades. More over the loss of satellites will send us back to the sixties and seventies.

Things require changing and scientists are suggesting some measures to retrieve or destroy this debris before it gets out of hand. There are many ideas that are floating around some of them are being seriously considered. One such idea is to send rockets with nets to catch this debris and propel it to earth. For bigger objects harpoons can be used and with a big sail, the speed can be reduced to make it fall on earth. Other sci-fi ideas including giant electromagnets that will work as a magnetic tug with the satellites magnetic equipment which help them orient and stabilize the satellites as per earth’s magnetic field. This seems better than the nets and harpoons as here there are no chances of accidently creating more debris. For the very small one laser can be used to vaporize them. For bigger objects laser can used to ablate them.

Whatever method we use, it is time to act now or those millions of objects will surely kill the dream of humans of future space travel. Now is the time when we are dreaming big about space travel than ever before. Let us not shoot at our foot and cripple those dreams from becoming a reality. The scientist and engineers alone cannot do it unless there is global consensus of political leaders in this direction.

We have done enough stupidity on this earth, its time to take lessons and amend till we have time.