| [HN Gopher] Launch HN: Turion Space (YC S21) - Space debris remo...
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Launch HN: Turion Space (YC S21) - Space debris removal and
satellite servicing
Hi HN, we're Ryan, Tyler, and Patryk, the founders of Turion Space
(https://www.turionspace.com/). We're building spacecraft to remove
orbital debris and provide services to existing satellites.
Orbital debris poses a significant risk to mankind's future in
space. There are currently over 250k objects in space that would
destroy a satellite if a collision were to occur. Large
uncontrolled objects like depleted rocket upper stages and dead
satellites pose the greatest risk because of the potential to break
upon impact with small debris into thousands of smaller pieces.
There is currently no system in operation that can deorbit large
amounts of space debris. If this problem is not addressed in the
next 5-10 years, it could render entire orbits unusable for
generations. Our spacecraft (which we've decided to call the
"Droid", shoutout to Star Wars!) aims to remove debris by docking
with it using robotic arms and dragging the debris to a lower orbit
using the ion propulsion system we are developing under a NASA
technology transfer license. Once the debris is in a low enough
orbit, upper atmospheric drag will cause the debris to naturally
decay in altitude until it burns up during atmospheric reentry.
Critically, the Droid would undock with the debris after dragging
it to a low orbit, then orbit-raise, and go on to perform other
missions. In other words, our solution is a reusable approach,
designed from the beginning to complete multiple missions during
its lifetime. Our team encountered this problem when brainstorming
ideas to answer the question, "with the rapidly declining cost of
getting things into space, what can we do now that has never before
been possible?" Asteroid mining seemed like the obvious answer, but
the capital required to start a business on that premise seemed
like a longshot to say the least. We found the most important
problem we could solve while building the foundation to asteroid
resource extraction was to create a satellite system capable of
removing orbital space debris. Our team has extensive experience
working on operational space flight hardware and building software
products from the ground up. Ryan comes from an 8.5-year run at
SpaceX, working primarily on propulsion development and dynamics
analysis of the Merlin, Superdraco, and Raptor engines. Tyler comes
most recently to ATA engineering, working as a consultant for
various aspects of thermal, structural, and dynamics analysis
across a wide range of now-operational space-flight projects. He
also worked at Electroimpact, where he designed and built
aerospace-assembly-automation systems using robotic arms. Patryk
comes most recently from Marshall Reddick real estate where he
developed the company's in house CRM that was vital to the
company's growth over the last 5 years. We expect to begin
servicing sometime in 2024. We have gained interest in several use
cases through conversations with customers to complement our
orbital debris removal efforts, beginning with low-earth-orbit
operations. For low-earth-orbit satellite operators, we can raise
their altitude or modify the inclination of their orbit. We have
also partnered with launch providers to expand their mission
capabilities by offering our last mile tug service for their
payloads. For example, suppose a small launcher can only lift a 200
kg satellite into a 500km orbit altitude, but that payload wishes
to end up at a 1200km altitude. In that case, we can dock with the
payload once it has been deployed from the launch vehicle and bring
it to its final orbit. Check out the services section of our
website at https://turionspace.com/satellite-tracker and track
satellites or get pricing estimates for different mission
scenarios! We'd love to hear feedback and chat about orbital debris
removal!
Author : rwesterdahl
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-08-04 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _Our spacecraft aims to remove debris by docking with it using
| robotic arms and dragging the debris to a lower orbit_
|
| Sounds _exactly_ what ClearSpace is doing under their ESA
| contract.
|
| https://clearspace.today/
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Yes we aren't the only team in this space but we believe
| multiple organizations need to be working to address this
| problem with different approaches.
| thrill wrote:
| Your timing for this niche is probably spot on. Any missions that
| scavenge falling systems could be called Jawas. Maybe this will
| be an entry to the asteroid mining with the knowledge gain of
| moving stuff around. Sounds fun.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Jawas. Love it. And you are spot on, this is the first step
| towards expanding to Asteroid resource extraction!
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| What advantages/disadvantages do you have compared to
| Restore-L/OSAM-1?
| tpierceturion wrote:
| We plan to leverage some of the technology on-board the
| Restore-L via technology license agreements with NASA. There
| are a lot of potential solutions and different approaches and
| we hope to be one of them. The space requires a decent number
| of these satellites in-space and NASA's not in the market of
| producing and operating large fleets of satellites. To answer
| your question, It's too early to say what the ultimate
| advantages or disadvantages will be from different players.
| heyjoke wrote:
| Lol. Terrible idea.
| carabiner wrote:
| Isn't "droid" trademarked by LucasFilm? Are you using the term
| under license from them?
| onychomys wrote:
| I had this phone back in the day...
|
| https://www.phonedaddy.com/products/motorola-droid-maxx-veri...
| ChrisClark wrote:
| They've sued over it before too.
| outworlder wrote:
| Probably only an issue if it says "roger roger" after receiving
| commands.
| anamexis wrote:
| Trademarks apply to specific goods and services. LucasFilm's
| trademark for "droid" applies to:
|
| Interactive entertainment software and accompanying instruction
| manuals sold as a unit, namely, computer game software and
| manuals sold as a unit, video game software and manuals sold as
| a unit; video game software, computer game software, and pre-
| recorded CD-ROMs and DVDs featuring games, films, music,
| computer game software, and video game software; downloadable
| video game software and downloadable computer game software
|
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77580336&caseType=SERIAL_...
| pierre wrote:
| Interesting concept! A few reflexions :
|
| - How do you ensure that you have approval from the debris
| 'owner' before de-orbiting it? Or could I use your service to
| target competition satellites? (or is it part of the business
| model?)
|
| - What is the minimal size of a debris? It is my understanding
| that small debris such as screw can do lot of damage in space (as
| everything is moving fast), but not sure if it will be easy to
| catch a 1 inch debris with a robot arm.
|
| - I really like the idea of raising the orbit of an old but
| functioning satellite, as this could expend their service life.
| However not sure if this will still have value once cost of
| access to space decrease?
| nynx wrote:
| Are you hiring?
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| We will begin our hiring ramp up soon so check the website
| again next month!
| tpmx wrote:
| Do you think it could make economic sense any time soon to safely
| bring home historically interesting satellites for museum
| displays and research? Think Vanguard 1 (1958), Telstar 1 (1962)
| etc. Something you ever thought about?
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Yeah we've actually talked about this with Inversion Space. We
| would be very interested in bringing vanguard back to earth but
| there needs to be a re-entry vessel available to put it in.
| sitilge wrote:
| Do you need some helping hands from DevOps guys?
| photoemulator wrote:
| Not to be a spur under your saddle, but why not just collect the
| junk to a higher orbit for reuse at a later date; maybe as extra
| parts for space station repair? It's expensive to get material up
| there, so why send it down into an incinerator so no one can use
| it?
| _moof wrote:
| No one's going to use parts made out of someone else's
| materials that have been exposed to extreme, uncertain thermal
| stresses. And that's just talking about the big stuff. A lot of
| space junk consists of things like fragments of exploded bolts.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Not a spur at all, you are spot on! With higher orbits like GEO
| (35,000 km altitude) it actually makes more sense to take
| debris and dead satellites out even further to what is known as
| the 'graveyard' orbit. We can also see a future where we take
| parts off dead satellites (ie solar panels) and move them to a
| hub where they can be repurposed. On that note take a look at
| what the company Arkisys is doing!
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Amazing! Super awesome team and very useful technology.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Why not pattern-match the debris over clouds and shove it with a
| solar charged laserpulse down into atmosphere?
| tpierceturion wrote:
| There are a few ideas like this floating around and this may be
| a viable solution for small objects in the future. You might
| have countries calling you up asking about space warfare
| concerns though.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Anything in space with a booster is by definition a weapon :D
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> the Droid would undock with the debris after dragging it to a
| low orbit, then orbit-raise, and go on to perform other missions.
|
| What altitudes do you propose for this? De-orbiting something
| from geostationary orbit this way would take a huge amount of
| fuel. But deorbiting targets from lower orbits would provide
| little time for your droid to accelerate and avoid itself being
| slowed at the low end of the new orbit.
| tpierceturion wrote:
| We've looked into both, in GEO it would be just moving to
| graveyard orbit, In LEO there are large objects in the 1100 km
| range that we'd like to bring down to ~400km before going back
| up.
| erwinh wrote:
| Great initiative! Curious to track your development as a company.
|
| I'm currently developing this web interface to make it easier for
| people to discover all the various objects, satellites and debris
| in orbit at the moment: https://space-search.io/
|
| Happy to connect if there is overlapping interest :)
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Wow that website looks very nice. We built ours using cesium
| but it has a lot of bloat that we don't need. This looks much
| cleaner and faster. We'll connect with you on LinkedIn.
| geenew wrote:
| Are there any international law hurdles for this type of
| operation? I recall seeing mention of prohibition or at least a
| grey area around satellite docking / movement by government
| agencies because of the potential military applications.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Oh yeah. One situation we will avoid - deorbiting other peoples
| things without their permission. Its international waters out
| there and if you attempt to dock for example with a Russian
| rocket upper stage, (as a US company) that would be an act of
| war. No bueno. Lots of regulatory innovation needs to (and we
| think will) occur over the next 5-10 years to ensure a
| sustainable space environment!
| onion2k wrote:
| _There is currently no system in operation that can deorbit large
| amounts of space debris._
|
| If there's some debris in space, who pays to clean it up? Is it a
| company that wants to use an orbit that might be affected? Or is
| debris attributable and the 'owner' pays to clean up their own
| mess? Or is there a fund that a consortium of governments and
| businesses that use space should (will?) pay into?
|
| I can imagine that the tech to do clean up is eminently
| achievable, and getting something to orbit to actually do the job
| is likely to be cheap enough soon, but I can't quite imagine why
| anyone would actually be a customer of a space cleaning company.
| paulsutter wrote:
| The owner of a satellite under threat from some specific debris
| would have a strong incentive to pay. I'm surprised if the data
| is good enough to detect this, but otherwise its hard to
| imagine the business model. Love to hear more from the founders
|
| https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Good points we have been thinking about ourselves for a long
| time. The business model for orbital debris removal doesn't
| really exist at this point. We are starting with a solution
| that can provide satellite services and using that to create
| a foundation for a economic removal of large space-debris
| objects. Once the solution is available with data
| demonstrating costs - government bodies will likely come on
| board.
| cbanek wrote:
| As terrible and backward as this sounds, I wonder if who wants
| to take the spot next needs to clean up after the first person.
| Given the limited number of available slots for certain orbits
| like geosync, it might make sense to send something else up to
| push the previous satellite out to the dead orbit (if it failed
| to get there itself). In this way you're kind of more buying
| the "land" and have to demolish the previous house.
| ericb wrote:
| I think the smart move is to put a regulatory requirement to
| either fund removal via a satellite tax, prepayment, or require
| a 1-up-1-down trade. Selling a satellite cleanup credit like
| companies do with carbon or EV credits could work.
| f6v wrote:
| The problem is space doesn't belong to anyone in particular.
| Who's going to enforce it? I suppose the UN could, but,
| unfortunately, it's completely powerless.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Join in, or the debris we take down might be your
| satellite."
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The problem is space doesn't belong to anyone in
| particular. Who's going to enforce it? I suppose the UN
| could, but, unfortunately, it's completely powerless.
|
| Countries can just tax them at launch time based on the
| payload
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The UN is also mostly rather useless...
|
| One model is that certain orbits _do_ become owned by some
| major power or private company.
|
| When you own certain orbits, it's your responsibility to
| keep them clean.
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Good point. It's a lot like international waters at this
| point but there is a very interesting aspect regarding
| this. Currently the FCC is the primary governing body in
| the space realm and requires all international satellites
| to abide by their rules in order to access the US
| telecommunications market. This translated to ~90% of all
| satellites following their rules due to monetary
| incentives.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Right now NO ONE. Crazy right? Well not really. If you forced
| people (satellite owners) to pay for someone to deorbit their
| stuff, before an affordable service exists, that'd be a quick
| way to put a major damper on the booming space economy. It is
| crucial to develop the technology quickly, and do so with a
| system that is affordable. Only after this will regulators be
| willing to move towards enforcing more strict policies for
| deorbiting your satellite if it dies. Until then, anyone need
| an orbit modification? :)
| lkbm wrote:
| As I understand it, the majority of junk is 1. 480 million
| copper pins the US military put into orbit[0] and 2. 150k
| pieces of junk from the Chinese anti-satellite weapon
| test/demonstration[1].
|
| So if we're going to charge someone for this, first and
| foremost are the US and Chinese militaries.
|
| Who's going to make them pay up?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-
| satellite_mi...
| aikinai wrote:
| Thanks for linking to the interesting story, but it doesn't
| agree with your comment. Wikipedia says there are only 36
| clumps of needles left in orbit.
| lkbm wrote:
| Good catch. I didn't fully reread it before posting. I
| was also unsure if the individual needles were still
| around, but the article says they'd have decayed after ~3
| years, so it's just those few clumps that are relevant.
| jcims wrote:
| I've been wondering lately if you could use little puffs of gas
| fired from a satellite at very high velocity to impact smaller
| debris and take some kinetic energy from it.
|
| It sounds ridiculous but v^2 scales quickly and if you can
| achieve anything close to the exhaust velocity from ion thrusters
| combined with retrograde orbit you can start knocking on the door
| of 100km/s impact velocity. That's ~5J per microgram.
|
| Obviously a tremendous number of challenges (puff coherency over
| great distances, accuracy over same, stationkeeping, etc) but
| interesting to me nonetheless.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Right now we are primarily focused on building something to
| address the big stuff because of the possibility of breaking up
| into thousands of smaller debris. At some point the smaller
| debris will need to be addressed, in which case its possible
| something like this would work. That being said Space Lasers
| may also be a contender, but that comes with the caveat of
| being classified as a weapon. Either way it will be interesting
| to see different ideas come to fruition over time, both from
| our playbook, and from others!
| switch_ wrote:
| Lasers were my first thought since it requires so much energy
| to change orbits in order to interact more directly with the
| debris. What properties are considered when classifying
| lasers as weapons? Would a lower power laser still be
| feasible for small debris?
| erybodyknows wrote:
| Interesting problem space and solution. Question, is there any
| value in the raw materials contained in the debris? Would it be
| feasible to aggregate/collect a certain, let's say, "value
| threshold" of debris that makes it economically reasonable to
| return a bulk payload back to earth? Even if the answer is
| currently "no", it seems like harvesting essentially free
| materials and suspending them en masse in a controlled orbit
| makes a lot of sense. Eventually groups will want to fabricate in
| space, and you could have the raw materials ready to provide.
| kartikkumar wrote:
| This is quite a popular idea but there's a lot of challenging
| economics that haven't been figured out yet.
|
| CisLunar Industries [1] for example wants to harvest and
| process metal from debris on orbit.
|
| Their initial application is to create metal fuel rods for
| thruster technology being developed by Neumann Space [2].
|
| [1] https://www.cislunarindustries.com
|
| [2] https://neumannspace.com
| syedkarim wrote:
| Who is currently paying for the service of debris removal? Who
| will likely be paying in ten years?
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Currently - no one (in the US). Europeans and Japanese are
| ahead of the game compared to the US, but it'll come from the
| Office of Space Commerce / DoD / NASA. Until then, we plan to
| build the technology by providing orbit modification services
| to existing satellites, inspection services, etc.
| bagels wrote:
| The biggest problem I see with space debris removal is with the
| business model. Who will pay for the removal of it?
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Exactly! It is a total chicken and egg problem. What I mean is,
| who will pay to remove stuff if regulations are not set up
| accordingly? And if nobody will pay to remove stuff, how do you
| build a business with that premise? The bridge to reaching that
| point for us is utilizing our spacecraft for satellite
| servicing at first. Specifically orbit modification, loss
| mitigation repairs, and asset inspection.
| spfzero wrote:
| This is what I'm thinking: One day this might be a business.
| Someone has to pay to remove debris, and I'm just wondering who
| will pay enough?
|
| Even here on the surface there are places with debris not
| cleaned up, because the cost is too high.
|
| I think the services aspect is the way to go. Forget about
| debris. Yes that's a big problem, but it doesn't seem to have a
| sufficiently motivated customer.
| kartikkumar wrote:
| Congrats on your launch!
|
| Back in 2015, I was part of an EU Marie Curie ITN network called
| Stardust [1] working on something similar.
|
| We utilized robotic arms and a novel non-contact, detumbling
| technology (using eddy currents) to approach and remove Ariane
| rocket bodies [2].
|
| It was a fascinating project and I subsequently worked on
| investigating mission analysis approaches to compute multi-target
| rendezvous sequences, specifically assessing the impact of
| orbital perturbations on the use of semi-analytical transfer leg
| design algorithms [3].
|
| You might be interested in the follow-up to the Stardust network,
| dubbed Stardust-R [4]. Happy to connect you with any of the
| organizations involved if it's helpful.
|
| It was the frustration of trying to manually deal with collecting
| information for component, subsystem, and system trade studies
| that led to me wondering if an 'amazon for space' [5] wouldn't
| help engineers focus on the really hard engineering instead of
| Googling :) [shameless plug]
|
| Would love to learn more about your Droid platform if you're
| interested in chatting!
|
| [1] https://www.stardust2013.eu
|
| [2] https://www.dfki.de/web/forschung/projekte-
| publikationen/pub...
|
| [3]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02731...
|
| [4] http://www.stardust-network.eu
|
| [5] https://satsearch.com
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| I'm curious about your decision to use robotic arms. Why arms and
| not, say, (electro)magnets? Or perhaps both - they aren't
| mutually exclusive. Or maybe you are doing both...
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Robotic arms are more general purpose, but we likely will end
| up doing both at some point (plan on testing both for our
| demonstration mission). The only downside to electromagnets is
| you need to pre-emptively install something on the satellite
| before its launched to make use of it.
| mabbo wrote:
| > the Droid would undock with the debris after dragging it to a
| low orbit, then orbit-raise, and go on to perform other missions
|
| I'm not orbital mechanic or anything, but my experience with
| Kerbal Space Program taught me that orbits are really hard to
| change and match. How many worthwhile pieces of debris are in
| similar enough orbits that a spacecraft with limited fuel can
| even reach both of them?
|
| ie: if Droid is at a 55 degree inclined orbit, I can't imagine it
| could ever reach another object that was at, say, a polar orbit
| or an equatorial orbit?
| ericbarrett wrote:
| One thing I can think of is debris from satellites that
| explode, which tends to stay in the same inclination. This
| happens from time to time even in deactivated satellites due to
| Hydrazine and other unstable propellants.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Our current design is capable of just over 1 year of continuous
| propulsive operation. Feel free to mess with our services tool
| on the website to simulate various missions to see how many
| operations a single droid could perform! But to answer your
| question, yes, several orbital inclinations are highly
| populated with operational satellites and debris. A mission
| such as going from 55deg inclination to polar would be possible
| but very expensive (ie would likely drain a significant amount
| of life out of the Droid on a single mission). This is why we
| want to build a constellation of vehicles spread across many
| inclinations.
| punnerud wrote:
| Similar service was done for the first time on a Norwegian TV-
| satellite a couple of month ago, to give it prolonged lifetime:
| https://www-romsenter-no.translate.goog/Aktuelt/Siste-nytt/G...
|
| " On March 12, 2021, the Mission Extension Vehicle 2 (MEV-2)
| satellite docked with the THOR 10-02 communications satellite in
| geostationary orbit, more than 36,000 kilometers out in space."
| quadcore wrote:
| Would that emit large quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere?
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| Super cool!
|
| 1. I know there are a few other startups/companies working on
| similar technology. What differentiates y'all? I think Turion is
| the only one I've seen come out of YC though.
|
| 2. Don't see a careers page on your website. Are you hiring?
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| I am super stoked about all the other companies working on
| solutions to the debris problem, and see this problem as too
| important to leave to any single entity / team (including
| ourselves!). What differentiates us from some of the other
| ideas is our overall approach to vehicle design. Besides robot
| arms, or other capture mechanisms what are we fundamentally
| trying to do? Move things around. What is the key design
| parameter for moving things around in space? dV. Our approach
| to optimizing for this number is unique (more on that another
| time, can't spoil all the fun just yet!). Our team will move
| rapidly, copying the Elon playbook approach to building
| hardware which I'm quite familiar with (8.5 year SpaceX
| veteran). In regards to hiring, next month we'll begin our
| hiring ramp so keep an eye on the site if you are interested!
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| Thanks for the response, y'all sound like a cool group of
| people. Wish you the best of luck, and I might sneak an
| application in once you get that hiring page up.
|
| Godspeed!
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Super excited for this launch. What a fantastic team, and
| honestly capabilities that have been missing from the space
| ecosystem!
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Thank you Laura, you and your teams support means a lot, and
| its because of other innovators like yourselves that make
| something like this possible!
| aurizon wrote:
| To deorbit a LEO object, adding drag is viable. The original
| launcher could add activatable drag items, balloons, inflatable
| streamers - in the stowed flat state = low drag. Deployed and
| inflated by a material that evaporate/sublimed it could be made
| to multiply drag by 10x or so. In the lower orbits this would
| hasten decay. Higher orbits - not so much. That will need added
| drive power. Most efficient is a solar cell package with a
| directable array that powered retro force of rocket (ion jet) of
| small size, but running a lot of the time. LEO = hard to avoid
| shade, but while the sun shines the persistent drag will lower
| the orbit = the lower the better and at some point it will be
| torn off just before it piles in. The so called gravity tug
| concept is not at all viable. Mating and a solar powered ion
| drive is the only good way.
| tpierceturion wrote:
| We have looked into drag and solar sails, EM tethers, as well
| as installing modules to provide retrograde propulsion. We
| agree though, the best approach right now is just docking and
| moving at the moment.
| f6v wrote:
| > with the rapidly declining cost of getting things into space
|
| Are there some graphs with current and projected costs per kg to
| different orbits?
|
| Couple more questions:
|
| 1. Do you need to refuel your fleet in orbit? Does that require a
| new tech, or that already exists? I suppose ISS gets regular
| shipments as well, but your approach probably needs to be
| unmanned?
|
| 2. What do you hope to get out of YC? Do they have some
| particular expertise or connections?
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Great chart from Cathie Woods 'Ark Innovation Report' showing
| project costs per kg to LEO
| https://seekingalpha.com/article/4418916-arkx-space-etf-top-...
|
| 1. We are utilizing highly efficient electric propulsion that
| eliminates the need for refueling to make money, but when
| refueling in orbit does become available you bet we'll be at
| the front of the line at Space Chevron 2. YC has been an
| enormous help with getting us started. They drilled the single
| most important thing into our skulls for really any startup -
| talk to customers. Besides their amazing network, the group
| partners have really helped us focus on what is important in
| order to make our vision a reality. If you are considering,
| apply to YC!!
| Etheryte wrote:
| Perhaps I'm slightly out of the loop here, but reading
| through the list of holdings [0], this feels more like a
| generic tech ETF, just actively managed and with high fees.
| It's entirely possible that I've just missed some news in
| this space, but what do Nvidia, Netflix, etc have to do with
| space?
|
| [0] https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2021/4/12/4978259
| 8-1...
| theionman wrote:
| I'm really curious, since the way you want to remove the debris
| is by making it burn during atmospheric re-entry, won't this
| pollute the atmosphere? I can imagine it's impact would be very
| small, but I'm curious if there is any info or study on that.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Great question and I suspect you are correct regarding the
| impact being small (Tim Dodd the everyday astronaut, made a
| great youtube video about rocket launch pollution, check that
| out for sure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4). He
| concluded that even with increased launch rates, the pollution
| remains small compared to other industries such as the airline
| industry. Not the same thing, but I'd argue the impact from
| satellites and debris burning up is less than the rocket it
| took to get up there in the first place. All that being said,
| we at Turion Space don't want to build a sustainable future in
| space at the cost of polluting Earth. For the first missions,
| we will drag the debris down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere,
| but long term, we plan to utilize reusable launch vehicle upper
| stages (think Starship, Relativity, and others) to bring stuff
| back down for us. It's a bit of an essay for a simple question,
| but regardless of how polluting it may be, with fully reusable
| launch vehicles coming online in the same time frame we are
| looking at performing missions, we will use those to bring
| stuff back down.
| parksy wrote:
| My grandad always used to say "where there's muck there's brass"
| and I always imagined at some point that would include cleaning
| up space debris, whether to recycle the materials or simply clear
| space for others.
|
| I actually love the idea of being able to hire someone to shift
| an orbital object into various orbits. It opens up the
| possibility of launching a proof of concept satellite or
| telescope, and not needing to worry about fitting it out with
| heavy fuel and thrusters. Just pay someone else to deal with
| that.
|
| With a transport & servicing network in place, that opens the
| field for a range of centralised operations as well - refuelling
| depots, recycling services, production lines, it doesn't make
| sense for all of these to have their own dedicated transport
| networks.
|
| Good luck with your enterprise, as space activities become more
| abundant, roles become increasingly specialised, and having a
| service dedicated to wrangling heavy objects about the place
| seems like a logical next step.
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Your grandad speaks truth! Couldn't agree with the vision you
| laid out more, this is exactly how we see ourselves being an
| enabler for other businesses and enterprises operating in
| space.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| This was always one of those pitches I was telling friend at a
| bar...you know when you go like - HEY I BET THIS IS GONNA BE A
| THING! Glad y'all are working on this! Super exciting venture!
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Appreciate the love Orliesaurus, wish us luck!
| orliesaurus wrote:
| good luck!!!
| orky56 wrote:
| Ryan and team, fellow space & space debris nerd here in OC as it
| seems like you're all based in SoCal. Would love to connect
| offline and share some (somewhat dated) research I've done in the
| space and see how I can help you all out. My email is in my
| profile.
|
| Some initial questions I had:
|
| -How are you dealing with fragmentation that is natural once
| incidental contact is made with space debris?
|
| -What types of space debris are you targeting based on original
| designs, what can be potentially salvaged, etc.?
|
| -What federal and international agencies have you had to deal
| with for permission, funding, and just general education to
| ensure your ideas get off the ground?
|
| -What is the timeline between now and tomorrow where a clean sky
| is no longer possible to ensure this problem gets addressed
| sooner than later?
|
| Very excited to see your progress with this vision!
| tpierceturion wrote:
| Hello! We would love to chat with you offline, you can message
| us your contact information through our website with your email
| or email us at info@turionspace.com.
|
| I'll try to answer these:
|
| -Fragmentation I'm assuming you are referring to the debris
| clouds of small objects after a conjunction. This is a very
| hard problem. We are starting with removal of large-
| uncontrolled objects before they collide. The solution to
| removing those small pieces of debris might be something very
| different such as insertion of clouds of inert gas or giant
| balloon type sweeps.
|
| -Initial design is based on orbit modification of operational
| satellites then moving to defunct satellites or spent upper
| stages. Salvaged material could hopefully be entire satellites
| in the future. We have some friends at Inversion space working
| on re-entry vessels. The possibility of space-based recycling
| centers is also exciting.
|
| -We have talked with Space Force, US department of Space
| Commerce, NASA, consultants. One of our advisors on the team is
| Kevin O'Connell to help with this. We also joined the group
| started by DARPA called CONFERS to work with others in the
| industry to develop standards.
|
| -The timeline has been fairly well modeled by aerospace corp
| using monte-carlo simulations. You can find an old version of
| this in the "Catcher's Mitt" report. The models will
| drastically under-predict the problem if more conjunctions
| occur like the Iridium incident, however so it's really hard to
| say. The short answer is that ~10 high-risk objects need to be
| removed per year to stabilize the issue.
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