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Is space filled with junk? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you think the planet Earth is getting
0:11
Speaker 1: too crowded? Well, you know, we live in southern California,
0:14
Speaker 1: so we do experience a good amount of traffic, even
0:17
Speaker 1: though I get to wear sandals all year long. Well
0:19
Speaker 1: does it make you want to move out of Southern California? Well,
0:22
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be hesitant to give up the sandals,
0:24
Speaker 1: but I'd love to live in outer space. Well yeah,
0:26
Speaker 1: do you think community would be easier in space? Well,
0:28
Speaker 1: it can't be much worse than it is down here
0:30
Speaker 1: in southern California. Well, I think you better move up
0:32
Speaker 1: there soon because space might be getting more crowded than
0:36
Speaker 1: you think. Are you talking about Elon Musk's Tesla that
0:39
Speaker 1: he launched out there? There's gonna be a traffic jam
0:41
Speaker 1: off Tesla's up there pretty soon. Hi. I'm Jorhea, a
1:00
Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. I'm Daniel. I'm
1:04
Speaker 1: a particle of physicist. But I love all things space,
1:07
Speaker 1: even if they don't have aliens in them. And so
1:10
Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:13
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
1:15
Speaker 1: a mental tour of the universe zipping from neutron stars
1:19
Speaker 1: to black holes to alien planets, and even talk about
1:23
Speaker 1: tiny things here on Earth like little particles, electrons and
1:26
Speaker 1: quantum tunneling. And the key is to share with you
1:29
Speaker 1: the wonders, the mystery, the majesty of this universe in
1:33
Speaker 1: a way that's explainable and hopefully makes you laugh and
1:36
Speaker 1: maybe cringe once or twice. That are bad jokes only
1:39
Speaker 1: but only once or twice. You cringes per episode, and
1:42
Speaker 1: then you're cut off, and then you that's right, Then
1:45
Speaker 1: you have to keep listening in silence. But yeah, it's
1:49
Speaker 1: about all the amazing things we can see from this
1:51
Speaker 1: planet Earth that we're sitting on in traffic, right, we're
1:55
Speaker 1: sort of in the traffic of the Solar System, right
1:58
Speaker 1: behind Mars Venus, next to the crowded asteroid belt. Yeah,
2:03
Speaker 1: we're in an unusually dense part of the universe. You know,
2:06
Speaker 1: if you took like an average cubic kilometer of the universe,
2:10
Speaker 1: it would be pretty empty. Most likely, you just get
2:13
Speaker 1: like a chunk of space in between galaxies. Even inside
2:17
Speaker 1: the galaxies, most of them don't have planets in them.
2:19
Speaker 1: So our neighborhood of the universe is pretty dense, we
2:22
Speaker 1: have a star, We've got a bunch of planets. There's
2:24
Speaker 1: a lot of rocks out there. Yeah, I hate it
2:26
Speaker 1: when the asteroids hunk behind me. It's so annoying. Well, look,
2:30
Speaker 1: they've been doing it for billions of years, so they
2:32
Speaker 1: hate when like nubies come in and mess up their commute.
2:35
Speaker 1: You know, that's right. It's people who don't signal as
2:39
Speaker 1: the Earth signal. Lately, which way it's turning, I don't know,
2:41
Speaker 1: but we keep launching up stuff into space out there,
2:44
Speaker 1: messing up everybody else's commute. So, yeah, we imagine there
2:46
Speaker 1: are a lot of you out there listening to this podcast,
2:49
Speaker 1: maybe sitting in your cars in traffic, and you're probably
2:52
Speaker 1: wondering where all these people came from. Are there too
2:55
Speaker 1: many people on Earth? And is it too crowded out here? Yeah?
2:58
Speaker 1: Maybe you feel like law eaching all those people out
3:01
Speaker 1: into space and you have the four oh five to yourself. Yeah,
3:04
Speaker 1: and so we were thinking, are there alternatives? Could you
3:07
Speaker 1: live out in space to get away from it all?
3:09
Speaker 1: But you might be surprised to discover that space actually
3:12
Speaker 1: has a bunch of stuff in it as well. It's
3:14
Speaker 1: not a pristine territory. It's the final frontier, but it's
3:19
Speaker 1: also filled with traffic. It's getting crowded out there, right,
3:22
Speaker 1: that's right. You probably heard about Elon Musk's plans to
3:25
Speaker 1: launch thousands and thousands of new satellites to improve your
3:29
Speaker 1: download speeds. Yeah, and not just the stuff that's going
3:32
Speaker 1: to be launched, but there are a bunch of stuffs
3:34
Speaker 1: out there already floating out there right in space. Yea.
3:36
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd dive into this topic between the
3:40
Speaker 1: Earth surface and the rest of the universe and talk
3:43
Speaker 1: about how much stuff is there out there? So to
3:46
Speaker 1: the on the program, we'll be tackling the question is
3:53
Speaker 1: space crowded? How much stuff is up there? How much
3:57
Speaker 1: room is there? And do you need to get a
4:01
Speaker 1: fast carporal late cast just to get out to get
4:04
Speaker 1: out to Marrows these days, well, traffic in space at
4:07
Speaker 1: least would be more complicated because you got another dimension
4:10
Speaker 1: to move in, right. I mean, I don't know how
4:12
Speaker 1: they will plan to organize it, but you can always
4:14
Speaker 1: go over with the car in front of you. That's
4:16
Speaker 1: like a double nightmare for me. It's like multidimensional traffic.
4:20
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's a zillion more ways to get
4:22
Speaker 1: into an accident. I feel like, at least here on Earth,
4:25
Speaker 1: if I'm stuck in traffic, I still I can still
4:27
Speaker 1: fantasize about flying upwards or digging down and getting away
4:31
Speaker 1: from it all. But if you're in space and it's
4:32
Speaker 1: space jam, in a traffic jam, uh, you've got nowhere
4:37
Speaker 1: to go. I think you owe Michael Jordans ten cents
4:39
Speaker 1: for mentioning that was bucks, buddy. Yeah. But you may
4:43
Speaker 1: have heard the news that Elon Musk is planning to
4:45
Speaker 1: launch a bunch of satellites. They recently deployed a hundred
4:48
Speaker 1: and twenty two satellites into low Earth orbit to test
4:53
Speaker 1: their Internet from space idea, and his plans are to
4:57
Speaker 1: launch a bunch more, not a hundred more, not to
5:00
Speaker 1: hundred more, not a thousand more, but something like ten
5:03
Speaker 1: thousand in the near future, stretching up to maybe forty
5:07
Speaker 1: thousand in the far freiture. And it's all part of
5:09
Speaker 1: his plan to create the space fornet. Is that what
5:13
Speaker 1: he's calling it? That isn't what he should have. That
5:16
Speaker 1: is the best possible there. You know, we got space force,
5:19
Speaker 1: why not space Internet? Yeah, and you're probably thinking, hey, look,
5:24
Speaker 1: space is big right, I mean, the universe is vast.
5:26
Speaker 1: Daniel was just saying how space is mostly empty, how
5:29
Speaker 1: could space ever get crowded? And you're right, there is
5:32
Speaker 1: a lot of space up there. You know, a quick
5:33
Speaker 1: calculation up to high Earth orbit and there's like two
5:37
Speaker 1: hundred trillion cubic kilometers of space just surrounding our planet.
5:43
Speaker 1: And currently humans have launched about two thousand operational satellites,
5:47
Speaker 1: So that doesn't seem like much. I mean, do the math.
5:50
Speaker 1: You get about ninety billion cubic kilometers per operational satellite.
5:54
Speaker 1: That seems like a lot, right, And it seems that's
5:57
Speaker 1: like the ratio between space and currently how many satellites
6:01
Speaker 1: there are out there. Yeah, we've got two thousand satellites
6:04
Speaker 1: that are running that are doing something that are helping us,
6:06
Speaker 1: that are like, you know, telling you where your phone are,
6:09
Speaker 1: or spying on North Korea or whatever. It takes all
6:12
Speaker 1: the amount of space out there in sort of high
6:15
Speaker 1: Earth orbit, and you get ninety billion cubic kilometers per satellite,
6:20
Speaker 1: So it seems like plenty of room. It seems like
6:22
Speaker 1: plenty of room. But I think the problem is that
6:24
Speaker 1: if you run into one of these things in space,
6:27
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad news. Yeah, this is very high speed traffic.
6:31
Speaker 1: So we thought it'd be fun to talk about whether
6:34
Speaker 1: there really is room out there? How dangerous is it
6:36
Speaker 1: to launch a satellite? And how long do you have
6:39
Speaker 1: to wait after you put on your left turn signal
6:41
Speaker 1: before you know it's clear to pull your tesla into
6:44
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit? Yeah, because you definitely don't want to
6:47
Speaker 1: have a bumper to bumper collision here with a satellite
6:51
Speaker 1: going in hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour. No,
6:54
Speaker 1: you certainly don't. I'm pretty sure your insurance doesn't cover it.
6:57
Speaker 1: Definitely not the one you got on your rental car.
6:59
Speaker 1: So they're about two thousand satellites right now operating out
7:03
Speaker 1: in space. But it's not just satellites out there, right,
7:06
Speaker 1: there's also space junk. Yeah, So I was wondering if
7:10
Speaker 1: people were aware of this problem. Do people know that
7:12
Speaker 1: space has more than just operational satellites on it? Do
7:15
Speaker 1: people think space is totally empty and there's lots of
7:18
Speaker 1: room out there for frontiers people to go out and
7:21
Speaker 1: claim their chunk, or do people think that space is
7:23
Speaker 1: mostly crowded and already filled with Elon Musk's garbage? What
7:28
Speaker 1: are you gonna say, Elon, munk's junk, I should have
7:33
Speaker 1: said that that was much better. Maybe he's planning a
7:37
Speaker 1: business where he takes your junk and dumps it in space. Oh,
7:41
Speaker 1: there you go, one nine hundred got space jusk junk?
7:48
Speaker 1: Must what what must I do with my junk? And
7:51
Speaker 1: if he didn't plan that, he's probably a listener to
7:54
Speaker 1: this podcast because it's awesome and now he's planning it.
7:57
Speaker 1: So Elon, we had one percent sticks. So as you show,
8:00
Speaker 1: Daniel went out there into the streets and as random strangers.
8:03
Speaker 1: If they thought that space was getting too crowded, here's
8:06
Speaker 1: what people had to say before you hear their answers.
8:08
Speaker 1: Think to yourself, do you think space is overcrowded or
8:13
Speaker 1: is there a lot of room for more stuff? I
8:15
Speaker 1: would say probably filled with satellites and crowded. Yeah, I
8:19
Speaker 1: think it's like dangerous to be up there. I don't
8:21
Speaker 1: know if it's totally crowded, but it's probably getting there,
8:24
Speaker 1: I would imagine. I would say it was empty, mostly empty,
8:27
Speaker 1: so like room for lots more stuff. Yeah, I think
8:30
Speaker 1: it's definitely still mostly empty. See you, there's lots of
8:33
Speaker 1: room for more satellites. Well, I don't think we should
8:37
Speaker 1: put a lot more satellites, but I bet there's more
8:40
Speaker 1: room of food needed to Oh. I think there's already
8:42
Speaker 1: a lot of satellites, and I think more will have
8:44
Speaker 1: a big impact on the light quality that astronomers can
8:48
Speaker 1: collect data from. Mostly empty mostly empty wise that because
8:52
Speaker 1: of the size of space and how you can put
8:56
Speaker 1: the satellites in different layers, in different orbits. Do you agree, yes, there,
9:04
Speaker 1: I think it's filled with satellites. It feels like that's
9:06
Speaker 1: sort of relative, but it's probably as room for more.
9:10
Speaker 1: I guess that there's a lot of space junk out there,
9:13
Speaker 1: but there's so much. I know there's a lot of
9:16
Speaker 1: space up there, so I don't think it's too crowded.
9:20
Speaker 1: I know there are collisions, but I don't think they
9:21
Speaker 1: happened that often. Um, but I'd say in the near
9:24
Speaker 1: future that probably could be a problem. So why do
9:27
Speaker 1: you think it's mostly filled up? Just because the amount
9:30
Speaker 1: of communication that we have and data exchange, there's gotta
9:34
Speaker 1: be satellites, old satellites to suppose satellites. So is there
9:38
Speaker 1: like a danger of satellites bumping into each other and stuff?
9:40
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but I don't know what they'll do anything,
9:42
Speaker 1: But I don't know if they're made of you know,
9:45
Speaker 1: but I've heard rumors of space trash too, you know.
9:49
Speaker 1: All right, people don't seem too concerned about the crowdedness
9:52
Speaker 1: of space. No, but I'm not sure how many of
9:54
Speaker 1: these folks actually had like plans to launch anything. So
9:57
Speaker 1: it's a bit of an abstract question for them, you know, Oh,
10:00
Speaker 1: I see, I see. Do you think that maybe they're
10:02
Speaker 1: trying not to be alarmist or maybe they're thinking, Man,
10:06
Speaker 1: I got too many things to worry about here, I
10:08
Speaker 1: got finals coming up, I got rent to pay. Who
10:11
Speaker 1: cares about space junk? M you didn't get a lot
10:14
Speaker 1: of concern here. No, but maybe if I told them
10:17
Speaker 1: all about space junk and made them worry about the
10:19
Speaker 1: future of those satellites, they'd be worried about the next
10:21
Speaker 1: time they got on an airplane, whether the satellite that's
10:24
Speaker 1: navig that's helping their flight and navigate, is um potentially
10:29
Speaker 1: being exposed to high speed garbage. All right, well, let's
10:32
Speaker 1: um let's talk about it. The idea is that maybe
10:34
Speaker 1: space we're throwing too many things out there into space,
10:38
Speaker 1: like as a species, you know, It was exciting when
10:41
Speaker 1: we sent the first satellite out there, and it was
10:43
Speaker 1: exciting when we sent people out there. But now I
10:46
Speaker 1: think there's sort of a growing concern that are we
10:49
Speaker 1: basically treating our orbital space as the next big junkyard. Yeah, exactly,
10:56
Speaker 1: not a landfill, but a space fill, a space space film. Well,
11:02
Speaker 1: I guess technically landfills are space field. Everything is a
11:06
Speaker 1: space field from that perspective. Well, I was surprised. I
11:09
Speaker 1: did a bit of research, and I was surprised to
11:11
Speaker 1: discover sort of the small number and the large number
11:15
Speaker 1: of stuff that we have in orbit. Really it's both
11:17
Speaker 1: a lot and little. Yeah, it is. I mean the
11:20
Speaker 1: small number is the number of operational satellites. Like, we've
11:23
Speaker 1: been launching satellites for fifty years, and I know it's expensive.
11:26
Speaker 1: It's not just like anybody can launch them, but they're
11:28
Speaker 1: not that rare anymore. And you know, governments and spy
11:32
Speaker 1: agencies and armies all have their own satellites and companies do.
11:37
Speaker 1: So I was surprised to discover there are only about
11:39
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hud eighteen operational satellites in orbit. That's
11:44
Speaker 1: not really that many. Really, do you think that's not
11:46
Speaker 1: a lot. I think it's not a lot. I mean,
11:48
Speaker 1: these days it's not that expensive to launch a satellite.
11:51
Speaker 1: You know, elementary schools can fund us a micro's cube
11:54
Speaker 1: sat that ends up in orbit and takes pictures of stuff.
11:57
Speaker 1: So the prices are really coming down. So two thousand,
12:00
Speaker 1: two D eighteen not just like the big ones you
12:03
Speaker 1: see with the giant solar panels. But it could be
12:05
Speaker 1: just like little tiny satellites. Yeah, some of those are
12:07
Speaker 1: pretty small. Some of those are pretty small. But we
12:09
Speaker 1: only got two thousand, two hundreds. You know, like how
12:11
Speaker 1: many cars are on a freeway at any moment. It's
12:15
Speaker 1: much bigger number than that, and so, and space is
12:18
Speaker 1: really big, and so at first you think, wow, there's
12:20
Speaker 1: not that many satellites and space is huge, so there's
12:22
Speaker 1: plenty of room for more traffic. Nothing to worry, nothing
12:25
Speaker 1: to worry. But but but the problem is that it's
12:29
Speaker 1: not just operational satellites that are out there, right, it's
12:32
Speaker 1: first of all, unoperational satellites, and then bits of satellites,
12:37
Speaker 1: junk of satellites, a little bits of rockets that blew up,
12:41
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that astronauts dropped while they were on spacewalks.
12:45
Speaker 1: It turns out there's a lot of junk up there
12:48
Speaker 1: really and it's all man made? Or is it also
12:50
Speaker 1: like you know asteroids to somehow got caught in our
12:53
Speaker 1: orbit or things like that. This is just man made
12:56
Speaker 1: space junk. I mean there are meteors right that hit
12:59
Speaker 1: the Earth and burnham the atmosphere and you see that
13:01
Speaker 1: kind of stuff on a nice night when you're seeing
13:03
Speaker 1: meteor showers, etcetera. But this is just man made stuff
13:07
Speaker 1: that's in or wow, how many do how much? How
13:10
Speaker 1: much of this stuff do you think is out there?
13:11
Speaker 1: So they did a calculation and you can't count this
13:14
Speaker 1: stuff because a lot of it is too small. But
13:17
Speaker 1: you know, we have two thousand operational satellites right, but
13:20
Speaker 1: in terms of space junk, there's at least twenty thousand
13:24
Speaker 1: trackable objects that's just like chunks of stuff that you
13:27
Speaker 1: can see that you can see that like you know
13:30
Speaker 1: Norad and the Department of Defense and how those folks
13:33
Speaker 1: are keeping track of Wow, don't they wonder what they are? Like?
13:38
Speaker 1: Could there be spy cameras from aliens? Is what I'm
13:40
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this, Daniel Man, I would love
13:45
Speaker 1: if there was a spike camera. But if I was
13:46
Speaker 1: an alien and I wanted to build a spy camera,
13:48
Speaker 1: I would just put it in a rock, you know,
13:50
Speaker 1: hide it and make it look like a big asteroid
13:52
Speaker 1: or something. But this is just the stuff they're tracking,
13:54
Speaker 1: you know, because they don't want their two billion dollars
13:56
Speaker 1: spy satellite or ten billion dollars space telescope or whatever
14:00
Speaker 1: to bump into a piece of junks. And they track
14:02
Speaker 1: this stuff. But that's only the stuff that they can track.
14:05
Speaker 1: They track it so that they can so it doesn't
14:07
Speaker 1: so they can maneuver around the other space drunk. Yeah,
14:10
Speaker 1: it's like air traffic control, right, you want to get
14:12
Speaker 1: this out of the lands, you have to make sure
14:13
Speaker 1: now the other planes are too close by, and so
14:16
Speaker 1: you've got to manage it. And so they keep track
14:18
Speaker 1: of all this stuff. But it's a ten to one ratio. Right.
14:21
Speaker 1: Did the two thousand operational objects include the secret space
14:25
Speaker 1: spy satellites that they don't really want us to know?
14:28
Speaker 1: Or are those in the unknown category? Um, that doesn't
14:31
Speaker 1: include the things that the government doesn't want us to know.
14:34
Speaker 1: But you know, a reasonable estimates based on launches and
14:37
Speaker 1: stuff like that, because it's pretty hard to hide a launch,
14:39
Speaker 1: so they can track twenty thou objects. And are these
14:42
Speaker 1: small or these like you know, a bolt from that
14:45
Speaker 1: slipped out of the space station, or are they pretty big?
14:48
Speaker 1: These things are pretty big. You know, they're more than
14:50
Speaker 1: ten centimeters across. You know, the largest um fifteen hundred
14:54
Speaker 1: of these things wigh a total of nineteen hundred tons,
14:59
Speaker 1: and the largest ten thousand of them weigh like five
15:02
Speaker 1: thousand five tons, So it's a pretty big amount of stuff.
15:06
Speaker 1: And again, this is just the stuff that we can track.
15:09
Speaker 1: The stuff falls apart and get smaller, and then the
15:12
Speaker 1: numbers get crazy, and this is all just human junk
15:15
Speaker 1: in space. Like we've been. We've been that careless in
15:18
Speaker 1: space that we have twenty thousand bits of junk out there.
15:23
Speaker 1: You showed like a national park and this is like
15:25
Speaker 1: littered with people's picnic garbage. I guess if you're out
15:30
Speaker 1: in space, what do you do with your junk? Well,
15:33
Speaker 1: actually what you do is you drop it on Earth.
15:35
Speaker 1: The best thing to do with space junk is to
15:37
Speaker 1: push it down into the atmosphere because the atmosphere will
15:40
Speaker 1: burn it up. Anything from space is moving pretty quickly,
15:43
Speaker 1: and if it hit the atmosphere, you'll just get fried.
15:46
Speaker 1: So the best thing to do is to drop it
15:48
Speaker 1: on the Earth. The worst thing to do is to
15:49
Speaker 1: leave it in orbit around the Earth. I see. The
15:52
Speaker 1: best thing to do is to burn it in the
15:54
Speaker 1: atmosphere so it rains down in innocent people. Nobody, almost
16:00
Speaker 1: nobody has ever been heard by falling space jump. The
16:02
Speaker 1: atmosphere is a really good force field against space junk.
16:05
Speaker 1: It's so good that what we should do with our
16:07
Speaker 1: space junk is throw it against the atmosphere to you know,
16:10
Speaker 1: atomize it. Oh, I see. So this is stuff that
16:12
Speaker 1: has maybe falling off the space station or slipped out
16:15
Speaker 1: of an astronaut's hand, but that stayed in orbit. Yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: and also the products of other collisions. And if you
16:21
Speaker 1: look at even smaller stuff, there are nine hundred thousand
16:25
Speaker 1: things that are smaller than ten centimeters. That's almost a
16:28
Speaker 1: million pieces of space junk, little tiny bits. But those
16:32
Speaker 1: they can't track, and they that's just an estimate. These
16:34
Speaker 1: are not tiny bits. I mean ten centimeters. You know,
16:36
Speaker 1: we're talking to something the size of a baseball. Like
16:39
Speaker 1: that thing going at ten kilometers per second is not
16:42
Speaker 1: a tiny anything. But you're right, these things are too
16:44
Speaker 1: small for them to track. That's a lot of baseballs.
16:46
Speaker 1: It's a lot of baseballs. And then if you just
16:48
Speaker 1: say like any piece of junk, no matter what size,
16:51
Speaker 1: then there are more than a hundred million bits of
16:54
Speaker 1: space debris. And so where did all this stuff come from?
16:57
Speaker 1: Is it all just from you know, our astronauts being
17:00
Speaker 1: litter bugs or litter space bugs. Yeah, you know astronauts
17:04
Speaker 1: like the flame and hot cheetohs and they just crumple
17:06
Speaker 1: up the package and toss it over their shoulder. No,
17:11
Speaker 1: it comes from like satellites falling apart, you know, bits
17:14
Speaker 1: of paint flaking off of satellites. Also, we fired a
17:18
Speaker 1: lot of rockets into space, and we just sort of
17:20
Speaker 1: like leave those spent rocket stages and little bits of
17:24
Speaker 1: like frozen fuel that didn't get used up. We just
17:27
Speaker 1: generally haven't been thinking carefully about what kind of stuff
17:30
Speaker 1: will be left from our exploration of space because we thought, hey,
17:33
Speaker 1: space is so big and empty, it doesn't really matter
17:35
Speaker 1: if you create a thousand little shards of ice that
17:38
Speaker 1: are flying at really high speed. Wow, so it is
17:41
Speaker 1: getting crowded with joke. I mean, there aren't that many
17:43
Speaker 1: satellite but there's millions of bits of stuff out there.
17:46
Speaker 1: There are millions of bits of stuff out there, Yeah,
17:48
Speaker 1: flakes of paint, little bits of rocket motors, frozen coolant,
17:52
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes it's stuff that was created sort
17:55
Speaker 1: of on purpose. Like in the sixties, the US and
17:58
Speaker 1: Russia had anti satellite weapons. We built special missiles we
18:02
Speaker 1: could fire at like the enemy's satellites because you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: maybe you don't want them flying their spy satellites over Colorado,
18:09
Speaker 1: and so you want to fire a missile to take
18:10
Speaker 1: out their satellite. Interesting space wars, space wars wars, Yeah,
18:15
Speaker 1: and China got in the game about ten years ago.
18:18
Speaker 1: They built a system and they tested it and they
18:21
Speaker 1: destroyed one of their own satellites, but it created a
18:24
Speaker 1: million pieces of space debris that are still up there.
18:27
Speaker 1: They blew something up as a test. Yeah, they fired
18:30
Speaker 1: a missile into space in two thousand seven, blew up
18:32
Speaker 1: one of their own defunct satellites and it created a
18:35
Speaker 1: million pieces of space junk. Great, thank you, China. And
18:45
Speaker 1: sometimes it is astronauts, you know, like there was one
18:47
Speaker 1: time an astraw lost a bag of tools. You know,
18:50
Speaker 1: you're out there on a spacewalk, you forget to clip
18:52
Speaker 1: it and the oops, it just sort of drifts away
18:54
Speaker 1: from you. And that was a Sandra Bullock movie. I
18:59
Speaker 1: seen that movie. Then that's the one part of that
19:02
Speaker 1: movie that was correct. Um An astronaut ones like lost
19:05
Speaker 1: spare glove, you know, so that kind of stuff is
19:07
Speaker 1: floating out there, but it's dwarfed by this sort of
19:10
Speaker 1: like a little just pieces of junk from satellites that
19:13
Speaker 1: are broken or smashed into each other. I wonder how
19:16
Speaker 1: that happens. You're like, you're out in space, you might die,
19:19
Speaker 1: but you take off your glove just just to like
19:21
Speaker 1: pick it a little something, and then whoops. You let
19:24
Speaker 1: you gotta open your flame and hot cheetos package, right,
19:26
Speaker 1: and you can't do those and those really thick gloves, yeah,
19:29
Speaker 1: those big thick fingers, and then you take the cheetos
19:32
Speaker 1: up and sort of bang them up against your space helmet.
19:34
Speaker 1: You know, this thing through the shooting use velcro fore
19:38
Speaker 1: the cheetos. No. I think there must have been an
19:42
Speaker 1: extra glove or something. But occasionally astronauts have job stuff
19:45
Speaker 1: that's not a big contribution to the space junk. Most
19:48
Speaker 1: of it is like flakes of paint and little bits
19:50
Speaker 1: of rocket cooliant and stuff like that, but it's still dangerous.
19:53
Speaker 1: And how much of that is our space cheetos? There
19:56
Speaker 1: are no Cheetos in space that I'm aware of. That's
20:00
Speaker 1: her first for you. Also, great, so that that's a
20:03
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out there, and so I guess now
20:05
Speaker 1: the question is it a problem? Is it going to
20:07
Speaker 1: be a problem, and what can we do about it?
20:09
Speaker 1: So let's get into that. But first let's take a
20:11
Speaker 1: quick break, all right. I know, so there are millions
20:27
Speaker 1: of pieces of debris out there in just in our
20:30
Speaker 1: immediate orbit, and some of them might be space cheetos,
20:33
Speaker 1: some of them might not be. We don't know what
20:34
Speaker 1: the Chinese or the Russians have been developing out there
20:38
Speaker 1: or testing. Maybe they have a system to launch cheetos
20:41
Speaker 1: into space at our satellites. Yeah, maybe cheetos are especially
20:45
Speaker 1: good at taking out spy satellites, you know, I mean,
20:48
Speaker 1: until you do the experiment, you never know the answer.
20:50
Speaker 1: You gotta keep an open minding science, right, Yeah, you
20:52
Speaker 1: want you want that um you know that cheesy powder
20:56
Speaker 1: that they have to get into the enemy's satellite mechanism,
21:00
Speaker 1: And that's the worst, the worst of those gyro mechanisms. Yeah,
21:03
Speaker 1: that's especially designed by food scientists to be a space weapon,
21:08
Speaker 1: gets all over your your spy leans and then it's
21:10
Speaker 1: all ruined. Space junk really is a problem. Okay, so
21:14
Speaker 1: it is. It is a problem that scientists are concerned
21:16
Speaker 1: about right now. It really is. Yeah, And it's a
21:18
Speaker 1: problem sort for two reasons. One is that it's a
21:21
Speaker 1: danger to the stuff that's out there, and the other
21:24
Speaker 1: is that it's likely to make more of itself. So
21:27
Speaker 1: first of all, you worry just like is the stuff
21:29
Speaker 1: going to bump into something valuable? I mean, you build
21:32
Speaker 1: your complicated space telescope or spy side light or whatever,
21:36
Speaker 1: and you shoot it up into space, and then somebody's
21:39
Speaker 1: junk comes along like ten to fifteen kilometers per second
21:43
Speaker 1: and just trashes it. Wow, fifteen kilometers per second? Like,
21:48
Speaker 1: is that if it's in a different orbit or like
21:51
Speaker 1: you know, like in um you can't tend to think
21:54
Speaker 1: in space it's everything being kind of at the same
21:56
Speaker 1: speed that you are. But is it possible for things
21:58
Speaker 1: to be in a different orbit and come at you
22:00
Speaker 1: at that speed? Absolutely? This is not organized self driving
22:03
Speaker 1: cars in space right where everything is moving along with
22:06
Speaker 1: no relative velocity. There's lots of different orbits that cross right,
22:10
Speaker 1: and there's no traffic lights, and so you can free
22:12
Speaker 1: for all. It's a free for all exactly. There's no
22:15
Speaker 1: cops up there whistling to people to stop or anything,
22:17
Speaker 1: and so your orbit path could totally cross somebody else's
22:20
Speaker 1: orbital path. That's a problem. Even a flick of paint
22:22
Speaker 1: would probably do some harm to your solar panel or
22:26
Speaker 1: Cheeto's bag, for sure. A tiny fleck with paint going
22:29
Speaker 1: at fifteen kilometers per second is like getting punched by
22:33
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson, right, and nobody wants their satellite getting punched
22:36
Speaker 1: by Mike Tyson, especially in space. That would be extra embarrassing.
22:40
Speaker 1: Maybe NASA should do that, you know, they should have
22:42
Speaker 1: like last pre flight check, Mike, please come down and
22:44
Speaker 1: punch the satellite and see how it goes. But it's
22:49
Speaker 1: a real problem. And you know, sometimes you can protect
22:52
Speaker 1: parts of your satellite, we'll talk about that later, but
22:54
Speaker 1: some parts you just can't. Like you don't want to
22:56
Speaker 1: build a shield in front of the lens of your
22:59
Speaker 1: space telescope, that's why you built it right to look
23:02
Speaker 1: out into space, or you have these big solar panels.
23:05
Speaker 1: You can't really do much to protect them. They're supposed
23:07
Speaker 1: to be out there gathering sunlight, so you're really vulnerable.
23:11
Speaker 1: And even if you put armor on your satellite, that's
23:13
Speaker 1: just gets more expensive, right because every little ounce you
23:16
Speaker 1: send it to space because like right, yeah, you can't
23:20
Speaker 1: armor your solar panels because that blocks them and that
23:22
Speaker 1: they don't work. So it's a real problem. And they
23:26
Speaker 1: try to keep track of this stuff and because they
23:28
Speaker 1: don't want their expensive satellites to get hit by space junk,
23:31
Speaker 1: and so they have you know, as we were saying,
23:33
Speaker 1: tracking on like twenty thousand of these things. And they
23:36
Speaker 1: observe a lot of close calls. There's something like twenty
23:39
Speaker 1: close calls every day between a satellite and some piece
23:43
Speaker 1: of trackable junk. Like every day times there's somebody freaking
23:47
Speaker 1: out in some control room going turn left, turn left,
23:50
Speaker 1: watch out for that space to Yeah, And they're pretty
23:52
Speaker 1: careful about this stuff, and so they have to like
23:54
Speaker 1: contact the owners of the satellite and say, hey, some
23:57
Speaker 1: piece of junk is coming your way. You might want
23:58
Speaker 1: to move up or down or let to write or
24:00
Speaker 1: just any direction really to get out of the way.
24:04
Speaker 1: Oh wow, are there like traffic controllers or space can
24:07
Speaker 1: you can I study to be a space traffic controller. Yeah.
24:10
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty stressful job. But the Defense
24:13
Speaker 1: Department does this, you know, because they've got a lot
24:15
Speaker 1: of satellites up there that are pretty valuable and pretty
24:17
Speaker 1: important for national security, and so they keep track of
24:19
Speaker 1: this stuff and they contact satellite owners if their satellite
24:22
Speaker 1: is in the path of some junk. Oh wow, imagine
24:25
Speaker 1: getting that call. I think it's not too unusual, you know.
24:29
Speaker 1: I think most satellites a few times a year have
24:31
Speaker 1: to maneuver around space junk because it's getting kind of
24:34
Speaker 1: crowded up there. And we've even had collisions. Really, and
24:38
Speaker 1: what happens You just obliterate the satellite or yeah. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: that's the problem is that when to like defunct satellites
24:44
Speaker 1: hit each other or when a piece of space junk
24:47
Speaker 1: takes out of satellite, what do you get more space
24:50
Speaker 1: junk more? Right, that's the other problem you're saying, And
24:53
Speaker 1: he said junk gets junk. Yeah, It's like if you
24:58
Speaker 1: litter in the park, somebody else walks are like, Oh,
25:00
Speaker 1: looks like this park isn't cleaned up too much. I'll
25:02
Speaker 1: just dump all my trash here. Um, But I'm not
25:06
Speaker 1: sure that analogy works, but the idea that it's wondering
25:09
Speaker 1: how that works. It's more like if you if you
25:11
Speaker 1: find a piece of litter in the park and you
25:13
Speaker 1: go to grow it, it it turns into two pieces of litter, right, yeah,
25:17
Speaker 1: I guess so, or this literal taxi and breaks you
25:19
Speaker 1: into pieces of literal in park right covers you and
25:23
Speaker 1: Cheetos does It's terrible, um, But the idea is that, yeah,
25:27
Speaker 1: that if a piece of space junk is a satellite,
25:29
Speaker 1: it causes more space junk, and then the number of
25:33
Speaker 1: pieces of space junk grows, and then you have a
25:35
Speaker 1: higher chances of making more space junk, which of course
25:38
Speaker 1: just makes more space junk. And so you can see
25:40
Speaker 1: this sort of cascade effects possible. You get enough stuff
25:44
Speaker 1: out there, the chances of collision grow very quickly, and
25:47
Speaker 1: then the chances have become almost certain, and then you
25:49
Speaker 1: just have spaces just totally filled with junk, right, dangers
25:53
Speaker 1: junk right that you can't get through. Yeah. And so
25:56
Speaker 1: some sort of space groups, advocacy groups predictlarly sort of
25:59
Speaker 1: tipping point where we're gonna get too much junk pretty
26:02
Speaker 1: soon that you're gonna get this cascade effect, and it
26:05
Speaker 1: might destroy a huge number of things in orbit and
26:08
Speaker 1: basically make space unusable. You can actually kind of extrapolate
26:12
Speaker 1: and and see the point where it's just the jungle
26:14
Speaker 1: just multiply beyond making space reachable. Yeah, because you can't
26:19
Speaker 1: fly a rocket with people in it through space if
26:22
Speaker 1: it's totally filled with space junk. You can't launch a
26:24
Speaker 1: satellite into that orbit if it's totally filled with space junk.
26:28
Speaker 1: And if all the satellites that we had out there
26:30
Speaker 1: right now ended up getting hit by space junk and
26:32
Speaker 1: turning into more space junk, you have an enormous number
26:35
Speaker 1: of pieces of junk, and it would make space basically unusable.
26:38
Speaker 1: You know what we need, I think, Daniel, we need
26:40
Speaker 1: like a giant space vacuum that would totally suck space
26:43
Speaker 1: already has a vacuum. Why doesn't space just suck it
26:48
Speaker 1: up into outer space? Suck it up space? Um, But
26:52
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's already sort of a problem. Like
26:54
Speaker 1: we have people out there in space right now in
26:56
Speaker 1: the space station, and these folks a few times a
26:59
Speaker 1: year or have to move the whole space station like
27:02
Speaker 1: into a higher orbit in order to avoid some piece
27:05
Speaker 1: of junk that's coming nearby. They're actively doing, you know,
27:08
Speaker 1: like Frogger is like changing names all the time. It's
27:11
Speaker 1: space space. Yeah, and sometimes they have to like rush
27:14
Speaker 1: the astronauts into one of those escape capsules because the
27:18
Speaker 1: big pieces of junk is coming that didn't spot soon
27:20
Speaker 1: enough and can't get out of the way, and it
27:22
Speaker 1: might like you know, debilitate the space station and those
27:25
Speaker 1: folks that have to basically fly back down to Earth.
27:28
Speaker 1: I feel like you're quoting that Tender Bullet movie again.
27:31
Speaker 1: I think it might go the other way around. I
27:33
Speaker 1: think the Sandra Bot movie is based on real events.
27:38
Speaker 1: So and I think it also happened with the Space
27:40
Speaker 1: Shuttle ones right, like it like it actually did some
27:42
Speaker 1: damage through the Space Shuttle. All the time, every Space
27:44
Speaker 1: Shuttle comes back is pitted with space junk. You'll find
27:47
Speaker 1: like holes in the wings, they find scratches in the windshield.
27:51
Speaker 1: It's not unusual when the Space Shuttle comes back to
27:54
Speaker 1: find like, you know, bits of stuff embedded in the
27:56
Speaker 1: windshield all the way down to like half the depth
27:59
Speaker 1: of the wind She old, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're like,
28:02
Speaker 1: what is that squeak squick? Is that Cheetos? What how
28:06
Speaker 1: did that get in there? Yeah, it's a it's a
28:08
Speaker 1: dirty environment out there, and so you know how you're
28:10
Speaker 1: driving down the highway you end up with like a
28:11
Speaker 1: bunch of bugs on your windshield. Imagine those bugs were
28:15
Speaker 1: going you know, ten times a speed of sound or something,
28:19
Speaker 1: or they were like ball bearings just over the highway.
28:23
Speaker 1: That would be pretty dangerous. Yeah, it would be pretty dangerous.
28:25
Speaker 1: And so it's a real problem. We got to make
28:27
Speaker 1: sure there's not too much space junk up there, and
28:29
Speaker 1: we've got to clean it up sort of before it
28:31
Speaker 1: gets too late, before it starts to multiply out of control. Okay,
28:34
Speaker 1: have a new product idea for elon musk already, I'm
28:39
Speaker 1: sure I'm not ready. Giant space windshield wipers. That's what
28:45
Speaker 1: we cleanse the atmosphere. Well, you know, we're going to
28:50
Speaker 1: talk about solutions to the space junk problem. And that's
28:53
Speaker 1: not the dumbest one that's on the list. Oh really,
28:56
Speaker 1: all right, it's already taken. It was already in a
28:58
Speaker 1: movie with Sender Bullock. So that affects our ability to
29:02
Speaker 1: go out into space. Does it affect actually us here
29:05
Speaker 1: on Earth if space gets filled with junk? Well, this
29:08
Speaker 1: sort of the direct problem and the indirect problem. The
29:10
Speaker 1: direct problem is, like, do you have to worry about
29:13
Speaker 1: a piece of junk falling out of space and conking
29:16
Speaker 1: you on the head? Right, Well, there's about one piece
29:19
Speaker 1: of space junk per day that falls out of orbit
29:22
Speaker 1: and into the atmosphere, but those burn up. Right, as
29:26
Speaker 1: we were saying before, it's actually a good thing for
29:28
Speaker 1: space junk to hit the atmosphere because it gets fried,
29:31
Speaker 1: it gets shredded, and it's just a nice you know,
29:34
Speaker 1: another meteor in the night sky. It's pretty rare for
29:37
Speaker 1: this stuff to actually hit the Earth. There was once
29:39
Speaker 1: in a woman in Oklahoma was hit by a piece
29:43
Speaker 1: of rocket, but usually you don't worry about it. Like
29:45
Speaker 1: the Air Force when they launch rockets, they don't even
29:47
Speaker 1: really care where they go because they just mostly burn up.
29:51
Speaker 1: Of course it had to be Oklahoma, I feel, where
29:54
Speaker 1: else are you saying Oklahoma deserves it? Or just like
29:57
Speaker 1: weird stuff happens in Oklahoma? And say I was if
30:00
Speaker 1: I was writing a Steven Spielberg movie where a piece
30:02
Speaker 1: of dunk kids the womin in the head, it would
30:04
Speaker 1: probably be an Oklahoma. Alright, that's good to know, but
30:07
Speaker 1: I think the more direct issue for people out here
30:10
Speaker 1: is that we rely on stuff in space. When your
30:13
Speaker 1: flight is taking off, it's using a navigational system that
30:16
Speaker 1: relies on satellites. When your phone is locating itself because
30:20
Speaker 1: you got lost while going for a hike, it's using GPS.
30:23
Speaker 1: So our society really relies on space technology. And if
30:27
Speaker 1: all that was destroyed or became unusable, you know, hey,
30:31
Speaker 1: listening to Daniel Jorge explain the universe would take longer
30:34
Speaker 1: to download, you would get laws trying to get to
30:36
Speaker 1: some WiFi or something. Yeah, precisely. So it's important part
30:40
Speaker 1: of our society. We want to maintain it. It's not
30:42
Speaker 1: really a direct danger to you unless you're an astronaut,
30:45
Speaker 1: but it's important that we take care of the space
30:47
Speaker 1: near the Earth. Right, it's not good. It's not good.
30:50
Speaker 1: It's not good. All right, let's get into what we
30:52
Speaker 1: can actually do to maybe clean up some of the
30:55
Speaker 1: space junk maybe or prevent it or um work around it.
30:59
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, Then
31:14
Speaker 1: space is a little bit of a problem, and you're
31:16
Speaker 1: also telling me it's kind of a problem or it
31:18
Speaker 1: might become a problem for astronomers too. Right, like people
31:22
Speaker 1: trying to study space. Yeah, there's been a big uproar
31:25
Speaker 1: recently because of Elon Musk's plans to basically fill space
31:29
Speaker 1: with satellites. He's launched, you know, something like a hundred
31:32
Speaker 1: and twenty these things so far and then sort of
31:35
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit and they streak across the sky. And
31:39
Speaker 1: if you have really valuable time on a telescope because
31:42
Speaker 1: you want to study something super far away and you've
31:45
Speaker 1: been waiting months for your like ten hours of telescope time,
31:48
Speaker 1: and then Musk satellites you sort of zooming from the lens,
31:52
Speaker 1: you know, then you get a big streak. You don't
31:54
Speaker 1: want that photo bomb. You don't want that photo bomb.
31:56
Speaker 1: And he's only launched a hundred He's planning to launch
31:58
Speaker 1: thousands and thou these things. So astronomers are worried. First
32:03
Speaker 1: of all, like easy going to be blocking your view.
32:04
Speaker 1: Is ground based astronomy going to be impossible in the
32:08
Speaker 1: near future just to improve our Internet access. But then
32:11
Speaker 1: also from the space junk point of view, like you've
32:14
Speaker 1: got thousands of things up there, one of them goes
32:16
Speaker 1: wrong bumps into another one, like it could pretty quickly
32:19
Speaker 1: go bad. I mean if it was Bill Murray, you'd
32:21
Speaker 1: be like, hey, that's a cool photo bomb on my photo.
32:24
Speaker 1: But Elon Musk, that's just annoying. Yeah, precisely. And remember,
32:28
Speaker 1: you know, you have ten times as many things up there.
32:30
Speaker 1: It's a hundred times more likely to get collisions because
32:33
Speaker 1: you have many more ways to get collisions. And so
32:37
Speaker 1: he's planning to launch thousands of these things and just
32:39
Speaker 1: a few of them have to go wrong for it
32:41
Speaker 1: to sort of cascade and create a disaster, reached that
32:45
Speaker 1: tipping point where it all just pulverizes everything and it
32:48
Speaker 1: becomes a deadly, deadly barrier for space travel. Yeah, he's
32:55
Speaker 1: thought of this, of course, and he has planned, and
32:57
Speaker 1: you know NASA and f A, whatever say that he's
32:59
Speaker 1: planning is good and essentially involves making sure that any
33:02
Speaker 1: of these satellites that go wrong basically just fall and
33:06
Speaker 1: then they get burned up in the atmosphere. And that's
33:08
Speaker 1: not a terrible plan because that's what we want. We
33:10
Speaker 1: want to push all this stuff, all the space junk
33:13
Speaker 1: down into the atmospheres. The atmosphere does the job for us.
33:16
Speaker 1: So the friction of the atmosphere basically melts all this stuff.
33:20
Speaker 1: So how does that work. So that's one way we
33:22
Speaker 1: can kind of avoid the space junk problem is to
33:26
Speaker 1: make sure it comes down. But how can they do
33:28
Speaker 1: that if it's like, if sanidite becomes disabled, what's going
33:31
Speaker 1: to make it actually maneuver into the atmosphere? Well, you
33:34
Speaker 1: can just get lucky and hope that it's the way
33:37
Speaker 1: that it maneuvered or got disabled makes it fall. But
33:40
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's
33:41
Speaker 1: in stable orbits, and uh, one thing we can just
33:45
Speaker 1: do is wait, you know, stop launching stuff and just
33:48
Speaker 1: wait because eventually all this stuff will fall. Remember, the
33:51
Speaker 1: atmosphere is not just like a turn off. There's no
33:54
Speaker 1: perfect space in near Earth. There's a very slight atmosphere
33:57
Speaker 1: and it drags on stuff and slows it down. Right,
34:00
Speaker 1: But the problem isn't the problem that it's just one
34:01
Speaker 1: piece per per day that falls. Wouldn't that take you know,
34:06
Speaker 1: how would take a long time. So that's not really
34:08
Speaker 1: a solution. So people have some crazy ideas, you know.
34:12
Speaker 1: One of them, of course involves lasers. Of course, Hey, physicists,
34:18
Speaker 1: how should we solve the problems lasers? No? No, I
34:21
Speaker 1: just really want to comb my hair. Oh yeah, do
34:23
Speaker 1: you want to know what the problem is first though,
34:25
Speaker 1: just lasers. Lasers, That's right. The solution is always lasers,
34:29
Speaker 1: and the answer is always aliens. Um No, But lasers
34:33
Speaker 1: is not a terrible idea because if you could shoot
34:35
Speaker 1: a laser at this stuff, you could slow it down.
34:38
Speaker 1: You could You don't even need to blow it up, right,
34:40
Speaker 1: You don't want to blow it up. But you want
34:42
Speaker 1: to do is slow it down a little bit so
34:43
Speaker 1: it drops and then the atmosphere takes over. So you
34:46
Speaker 1: just gotta sort of like a blade it a little
34:48
Speaker 1: bit on the side. I remember we talked about those
34:50
Speaker 1: guys that are also using lasers to maybe save the
34:53
Speaker 1: Earth from incoming asteroids. It's a similar idea. You don't
34:56
Speaker 1: have to blow up the whole asteroid. You just got
34:58
Speaker 1: to sort of shave off a little at city in
35:00
Speaker 1: one side so it misses. In this case, you want
35:02
Speaker 1: to just sort of like rough it up a little
35:04
Speaker 1: bit so that it falls into the atmosphere. Wow. Like
35:07
Speaker 1: literally you'd be like pew pew, pew, pew pew taking
35:11
Speaker 1: stuff out of out of the sky. There for the test,
35:13
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it sounded like. Oh really, well, why
35:17
Speaker 1: imagine that I can foresee what physicists but sound effectively.
35:21
Speaker 1: But you know, shooting death rays into the sky, it
35:24
Speaker 1: would take a lot of death rays. And so this approach,
35:26
Speaker 1: of course has some problems. So people studied about ten
35:29
Speaker 1: years ago, but it doesn't seem like it's really going
35:31
Speaker 1: to solve sort of the larger scale problems of having
35:34
Speaker 1: a hundred million objects. So my son practicing video games
35:38
Speaker 1: all this time just to get ready for that job
35:41
Speaker 1: of shooting down space degree, I should tell him there's
35:43
Speaker 1: no career in that. That's right. Yeah, I think you know,
35:45
Speaker 1: that was very impressive long range planning. But I'm hoping
35:50
Speaker 1: there are other ways that you're something can make money
35:52
Speaker 1: with those skills. Okay, So that's so shooting them down
35:54
Speaker 1: with lasers not a great, uh good long term solution.
35:57
Speaker 1: What are other ways we can have solved this space
36:00
Speaker 1: jump problem. Well, another one is a ship called clean
36:03
Speaker 1: Space one which looks, I'm not joking, like a big
36:07
Speaker 1: net and the idea is to gather space junk together
36:11
Speaker 1: and then again dump it into the atmosphere. Right, it's
36:14
Speaker 1: sort of weird, but we're treating the whole Earth is
36:16
Speaker 1: like a trash can, and the Clean Space up. What
36:19
Speaker 1: you gotta do is gather the stuff and then dump
36:21
Speaker 1: it into the trash can. And so this is maybe
36:23
Speaker 1: your son could operate this thing, you know, steer this
36:25
Speaker 1: thing around, gathering space jump. That's what every parent wants
36:29
Speaker 1: for your son to be a space janitor. Thank you,
36:32
Speaker 1: Daniel Hey, it's pretty glamorous. I mean space janitors. Come on,
36:36
Speaker 1: that's the way you work your way up, right, That's
36:38
Speaker 1: how you become an astronaut. You've got space, you get
36:40
Speaker 1: a job as a janitor, and then you know, step
36:42
Speaker 1: by step, eventually you're piloting the space station I mean spacetaniter.
36:46
Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, barely a step above podcaster.
36:51
Speaker 1: So at least it's a step up. Um. But that's
36:54
Speaker 1: not a joke. You know, this is an idea. Gather
36:56
Speaker 1: the stuff and then dump into lower orbit and hope
36:58
Speaker 1: that it eventually decay, is down to burn up. So
37:01
Speaker 1: this would be what does this look like like a giant?
37:04
Speaker 1: Like a giant like four rockets holding a giant net
37:07
Speaker 1: in between them. It looks basically, yeah, like a big net.
37:10
Speaker 1: You know, it's got like four big arms and some
37:12
Speaker 1: lines between them, and they would essentially just like reach
37:15
Speaker 1: out like an tuck a huge claw, grab a piece
37:18
Speaker 1: of space junk and then drag it down into lower orbit.
37:22
Speaker 1: But this would work for you know, maybe like the
37:24
Speaker 1: twenty thousand defunct large trackable objects we have, but it
37:28
Speaker 1: wouldn't really help clean up all the other tiny stuff,
37:30
Speaker 1: all right, So then what can we do about those?
37:33
Speaker 1: Not that much? I mean, one thing we can do
37:35
Speaker 1: is we can stop adding more stuff. Right when has
37:40
Speaker 1: it ever worked with humanity? We could start being responsible,
37:44
Speaker 1: I promised, starting today, we're gonna be good. Really this time,
37:48
Speaker 1: this time it's gonna be We're gonna be good. I'm
37:49
Speaker 1: gonna stop eating those cheetos tomorrow tomorrow. But here, actually
37:53
Speaker 1: there's a bit of hope because Americans, at least American
37:56
Speaker 1: space agencies have tried to design their rockets to produce
37:59
Speaker 1: less space junk, so create like smaller number of larger
38:03
Speaker 1: pieces of debris that are more likely to fall into
38:06
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. They don't explode bits of coolant into space
38:10
Speaker 1: because earlier we're like, oh, I don't care whatever it's
38:12
Speaker 1: out in space, But now we do care, And so
38:15
Speaker 1: are more recent rockets produced less space junk per launch,
38:19
Speaker 1: per launch, or per like if you lose it per
38:21
Speaker 1: launcher launch. Every time you launch a rocket there's stages
38:25
Speaker 1: of it that are supposed to burn up and don't.
38:27
Speaker 1: Always there's bits of coolant that you know, that league
38:31
Speaker 1: or solid rocket fuel that wasn't burnt up. And so
38:34
Speaker 1: are more recent rockets are better at that. They produced
38:37
Speaker 1: less junk per launch, but still they do produce junk.
38:39
Speaker 1: So you know that's that's not a way to clean
38:42
Speaker 1: it up. It's just a way to like be bad
38:44
Speaker 1: less quickly. So I think what I'm getting from you
38:46
Speaker 1: is that to solve the space junk problems, scientists have
38:49
Speaker 1: come up with a couple of solutions. One is, wait
38:51
Speaker 1: a million years. That solves a lot of problems. To
38:56
Speaker 1: convince you managed to stop littering that never happened. Or
39:00
Speaker 1: three shoot lasers at it. Yeah, and so we're all
39:03
Speaker 1: waiting for your son to be good enough at the
39:05
Speaker 1: laser to solve this problem. Doesn't sound like there's a
39:07
Speaker 1: good solution here. No, there's not a great solution to
39:10
Speaker 1: cleaning up space junk. And so in the interim, what
39:13
Speaker 1: we've done is just trying to protect our satellites. You
39:15
Speaker 1: put a shield around it to try to protect it
39:18
Speaker 1: and they're pretty clever. This is really cool design. It's
39:20
Speaker 1: called a Whipple shield. And the ideas and don't just
39:23
Speaker 1: like make your satellite really heavy with armor, but put
39:26
Speaker 1: a really light thin shield, but have it be separated
39:29
Speaker 1: from the satellite a little bit. And the idea is
39:31
Speaker 1: that it doesn't destroy the space junk, is sort of
39:33
Speaker 1: deflects it, it turns it, it breaks it up and
39:36
Speaker 1: and changes its direction. Oh interesting, Yeah, and so you're
39:40
Speaker 1: more likely to survive impact with space junk, and so
39:43
Speaker 1: you know, we have some technology to protect ourselves, but yeah,
39:46
Speaker 1: we sort of painted ourselves into a corner here. Space
39:49
Speaker 1: is filled with junk and it's not an easy way
39:50
Speaker 1: to clean it up. Well, hopefully those um maybe in
39:53
Speaker 1: the future space general will be like the most valuable
39:56
Speaker 1: profession on the planet. Yeah. I think we also just
40:00
Speaker 1: need to find some new way to put the cost
40:04
Speaker 1: of making space junk on the people producing it, because
40:07
Speaker 1: right now the cost of space junk is on the
40:09
Speaker 1: people launching a new satellite. Like you have a billion
40:11
Speaker 1: dollar satellite, you have to protect yourself from the space junk.
40:15
Speaker 1: The people who satellite made that, they're free and clear,
40:17
Speaker 1: they don't really care. So somehow we need to make
40:20
Speaker 1: sure that the people who are producing space junk bear
40:23
Speaker 1: the cost of it, and maybe that'll help fund to
40:26
Speaker 1: clean up somehow. Interesting. It's like carbon credits, but for
40:29
Speaker 1: a space junk. Yeah. Or we need everybody have like
40:31
Speaker 1: an insurance card so that when things bump into each other, say, hey,
40:35
Speaker 1: that was your piece of junk. Now you owe me
40:37
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. Oh interesting, So more more like cars
40:42
Speaker 1: actually then, you know, for creating a traffic jam up there. Yeah.
40:46
Speaker 1: We also lawyers to solve this problem. Space lawyers, space lawyers.
40:52
Speaker 1: All right, maybe I'll try to steer my son towards
40:54
Speaker 1: that profession. It sounds like it might have law that
40:57
Speaker 1: that'll impress his grandparents also. All right, Well, it sounds
41:02
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of things out there in
41:04
Speaker 1: space that you might run into, and it's going to
41:07
Speaker 1: get crowdier crowder in the next couple of years. Yeah,
41:11
Speaker 1: and cheesier and cheeto here, that's right, and spicier and
41:15
Speaker 1: flaming and flaming hot. Well, hopefully flaming hot, because that
41:19
Speaker 1: means it's burning up. Yeah, what happens if you drop
41:22
Speaker 1: a space cheeto? Actually, it does get flaming hot. Right
41:25
Speaker 1: as it burns up in your entry. So yeah, in space,
41:28
Speaker 1: all cheetos are flaming hot. There you go. How can
41:34
Speaker 1: we ask for a better adding to So think about
41:37
Speaker 1: that next time you were going to launch your own
41:39
Speaker 1: micro satellite into space. Do you really need that out
41:43
Speaker 1: there or are you just contributing to the problem. So
41:45
Speaker 1: next time you look out there into space at night,
41:48
Speaker 1: think about that beautiful star you might be looking at
41:50
Speaker 1: could be a piece of cheeto. I've got nothing after that.
41:58
Speaker 1: And that's it all right, everybody, Thanks are listening. We
42:00
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it. Then thanks everyone, see you next time.
42:11
Speaker 1: Before you still have a question after listening to all
42:13
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
42:17
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42:19
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42:23
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42:27
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
42:30
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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