Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we're gonna nerd out together a little bit, as
you know I like to do.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I saw an interesting piece at a website.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Called universetoday dot com and the headline is a bi
directional plasma thruster could deorbit space junk safely.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Uh, Shannon.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
That sounds a little bit like the and tabulator right
a little bit. And then I found another piece over
at space dot com Kessler syndrome and the space debris problem.
So joining us talk about it is Uh is Andy?
And I want to make sure I pronounce your name
exactly right, Thomas Wick or Thomas Wick?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
How do I which? Well? Okay, Andy, Thomas Wick.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And Andy is a writer and an engineer and and
a nerd like like like all of us. And he
wrote that Universe Today piece that I just referenced a
moment ago. So first of all, thanks for making time
for us.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I appreciate it. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Let's let's start with the big picture. What is Kessler syndrome?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
So Kessler syndrome is the way way to describe it is,
think about what would happen if you were playing pool
and every time you hit the ball, Every ball would
break up into thousands of fragments and under the ball
of those.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Unto thousands of fragments. So imagine that that happened in
lower third of the satellites. That is Kessler syndrome.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
All right.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So basically it's it's what would happen if all of
the satellites would end up in a chain reaction of
failure that caused them all to destroy each other.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
All right, So before we continue, I want to ask
if maybe you can do something to improve your audio,
either being close to the mic or changing microphone or something.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Sure, thing, is that better?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's yeah, that's a little better. It's a little bit echo.
Wee like there's some kind of sound effect thing going on.
But okay, so let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So you said, so what you described Kessler syndrome is
there be stuff in space hitting other stuff in spray
in space, breaking up to more stuff in space, and
then of course that'll bump into things or destroy things
that you want to put into space. What is what
is the origin of the first stuff that is now
(02:15):
bumping into other stuff that is and creating more and
more stuff. But where did the first stuff come from?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
So I think there's three main sources of it, one
of which is defunct satellite, so stuff we launched up
in the sixties that just failed after decades in orbit,
now we don't have any control over it anymore. It's
just hanging out of there and it's not falling to
Earth to burn up in the atmosphere like we would
want it to. So that's that's one. Another is stuff
(02:44):
that failed on launch. So if you hear about a
failed rocket launch or sometimes you know, a booster doesn't
quite get back down, those are just orbiting up there
as well and weren't able to control them or do
anything with them. So that's another potential source. The third
one is actually anti satellite weapons tests. So there are
a couple of countries that have intentionally destroyed satellites as
(03:05):
like a military proof of concept. So there's debried from
those experiments that they've done over the last couple of
decades that cause potentially harmful debreed to run into other satellites.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I mentioned I mentioned Russia before. Russia is one of
those countries, right, who.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Else Russia's yes, they definitely have, and who else China,
India and US actually, so the US has as.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well Okay, So just sticking with the real nerdy aspect here,
if yeah, if everything were in geosynchronous orbit, then nothing
would bump into each other.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, probably not as likely. I wouldn't say nothing. But
the geosynchronous orbit is much much higher than like the
International Space Station that's in lower orbits. So the overall
amount of space in geosynchronous where like GPS satellites sit,
is much much much larger than lower th orbit where
the ISS and a lot of these like Starlink satellites.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Okay, so the Kessler syndrome is more about lower Eth
orbit and of course lower th orbit if you can,
and just to listeners, right, if you imagine a big
ball with a small ball inside of it, the surface
of that small ball is much smaller, right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If it's well inside the big ball.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So if we're talking about you know, space debris, you
could be talking about a much higher concentration of stuff
if you're talking about lower th orbit than higher th orbit.
So so how is this stuff? So this stuff is
not geosynchronous and it could be just random pieces going
in random directions at random speeds.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, so it's not geosynchronous. Most
of it's not. Most of it's in lower orbit, so
you know, thousands of kilometers rather than tens of thousands
of kilometers above the surface, and it is going at
random speeds, although most of them that are consistently a
problem or going fast because they have to be to
maintain orbit. So if something's going too slow, it'll eventually
(05:04):
their orbit will degrade and will burn up in the atmosphere.
So it has to be going fast enough to be
able to maintain a lower of orbit.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Has there been significant damage to important items already?
Speaker 5 (05:18):
So some In some cases, yes, there was an incident
in like two thousand and nine where a couple of
satellites collided and it knocked out like an Iridium satellite,
which was a precursor.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
To a GPS and like Global communications satellite. Luckily, a
lot of the stuff we've avoided so far. So the ISS,
the International Space Station has had to like move its
its orientation and avoid debris before, but it hasn't actually
been hit by it yet as far as I'm aware.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
All Right, one more question then we're gonna get to solutions.
What is what is the range of sizes and what
is the median size of a piece of space debris.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, so it could be anything from like a paint
fleck that came off of a booster engine as a
was going into orbit. But it's traveling at seventeen thousand
miles an hour, so it has the equivalent force of
like a bowling ball all the way up to like
large scale satellites. Right, So things that way multiple tons
of you know, essentially just metal and electronics at this
(06:17):
point because there's no communication and no fuel left. I'd
say on average, it's probably on the smaller side, just
because there's so many smaller things floating around. Like if
you you know, have a piece fall off that creates
a whole bunch of potentially you know, hazardous small things.
It's probably on the order of kilograms is the average size,
(06:39):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, right, but kilograms going at high speed if it
crashes into something that is not going in the same
direction also at some high speed right at the relative
velocity of the two, could cause even a small thing
to do immense damage.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
As you see a.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Lot of energy there, a lot of energy there a
lot of energy.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
We're talking with Andy Thomas and he writes at Andy
thomas wick dot com t M a s w I C.
K Andy thomas Wick dot com. And by the way,
all this stuff we're talking about is linked on my
blog at Rosskaminski dot com, so you can find Andy's
page and the articles we're talking about. So, Andy your
article at Universe today dot com. A bidirectional plasma thruster
(07:20):
could d orbit space junk safely.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So what does that mean in English?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah? So what that means in English? So, plasma thruster
is a type of engine that's only useful in space
because it doesn't have a whole lot of thrust, but
it can it can last for a very long time.
So basically plasma in this case is ions of material,
so are gone in the case of this particular one.
This article is based on get thrown out the back
(07:50):
of an engine, and according to the laws of motion,
any force has an equal and opposite force, So as
an engine gets thrown out or as the particles get
thrown out one direction and the engine goes the other direction. Basically,
what this idea was is put a plasma engine next
to a orbiting satellite and hit it with the exhaust
(08:11):
plume of the plasma engine. So if it's orbiting, it
gets hit with plasma and therefore slows itself down. The
interesting thing about this one, in particular is that they
added another equal and opposite engine on the other side
of the spacecraft to counterbalance the force from the original
plasma engine that's being used to slow the satellite down.
(08:33):
So essentially it can maintain its position without losing the
force that it has on the satellite. So you have
two different plasma engines going in opposite directions. The exhaust
from one of the plasma engines is hitting a satellite
and slowing it down so it can safely door it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Okay, so you don't know this, but I'm president of
the Bad Analogy Club, So okay, all right, So here's
here's my analogy. You've got a let's say, a car
with no brakes and and it's and it's going and
you want it, and and it's gonna keep going, and
(09:13):
it's gonna run into something that it's not allowed to
run into.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's gonna run into a nuclear power plant.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
You gotta slow it down, so you drive another car
in front of it, and initially you drive another the
other car in parallel to it, and just very very
slightly faster than the thing. You're trying to slow down, slowly,
get in front of it at the same speed, and
then slow the car down that's in front just a
(09:39):
little and as an a gradual thing until eventually you.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Get the car that you wanted to stop to stop?
Is it? Is it something like that?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Does it not need by the way, does it not
need to slow down to zero miles per hour? Could
it just slow down to some slower speed after which
it'll fall out of orbit?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah? Yeah, So to answer that, and yeah, it needs
to go below orbital velocity, right, So we were talking
about how things have to go fast and maintain lowerth orbit.
If it falls below that speed, then it will eventually
fall into orbit safely into the atmosphere and blow up basically,
or not blow up, burn up. It's a better way
of putting it. So in terms of the analogy, you're right.
(10:19):
Largely the advantage of this is you don't have to
physically touch the satellite. You can just use the energy
from the exhaust to slow it down. So I think
that's that's one of the major advantages. There are some
other techniques that use like grappling hooks and nets and
stuff that physically interact with the satellite, but this one
doesn't require that, so you don't need to be like
(10:41):
perfectly positioned like you would need to be slowing down
the car.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Last question for you, this plasma thruster, is this real?
Is it just on a is it on chalkboard?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Has it been deployed? What's the status of this thing?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, so plasma thrusters in general are definite real. There's
a bunch of current space missions that use them all
the time. The bi directional one that's talked about in
this particular article is a prototype on a lab. So
they did test it. They set it pretty close to
the to a force meter so they could measure how
(11:18):
much force the plasma plasma exhaust was putting onto the
pro like the example satellite, and you know, it was
relatively close, so it probably need to be actually further
away than that whenever it's in space and you're talking
about you know, tens of meters rather than tens of centimeters.
But they did prove that it works. So they equated
(11:40):
the force between the two plasma thrusters on the on
the platform and make sure it wouldn't change position, and
they showed that they could apply enough force to satellite
to deorbit it effectively. So so cool.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Andy Thomas Wicks article at universetoday dot com a bidirectional
plasma thruster could deorbit space junk safely. That and more
about Kessler syndrome and Andy's personal page as well are
all linked on my blog at Rosskominsky dot com, so
you can find that stuff easily. Thanks for your time,
(12:14):
Thanks for the fascinating story.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
It's just it's.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Incredible what people are thinking of. It's also incredible what
problems are out there that a lot of people wouldn't
think of.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
There's a lot, and space exploration is really really good
to bring them to light.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So there you all right, thank you, all right, that's
great stuff. Oh my gosh, I love that
And we're gonna nerd out together a little bit, as
you know I like to do.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I saw an interesting piece at a website.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Called universetoday dot com and the headline is a bi
directional plasma thruster could deorbit space junk safely.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Uh, Shannon.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
That sounds a little bit like the and tabulator right
a little bit. And then I found another piece over
at space dot com Kessler syndrome and the space debris problem.
So joining us talk about it is Uh is Andy?
And I want to make sure I pronounce your name
exactly right, Thomas Wick or Thomas Wick?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
How do I which? Well? Okay, Andy, Thomas Wick.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And Andy is a writer and an engineer and and
a nerd like like like all of us. And he
wrote that Universe Today piece that I just referenced a
moment ago. So first of all, thanks for making time
for us.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I appreciate it. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Let's let's start with the big picture. What is Kessler syndrome?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
So Kessler syndrome is the way way to describe it is,
think about what would happen if you were playing pool
and every time you hit the ball, Every ball would
break up into thousands of fragments and under the ball
of those.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Unto thousands of fragments. So imagine that that happened in
lower third of the satellites. That is Kessler syndrome.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
All right.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So basically it's it's what would happen if all of
the satellites would end up in a chain reaction of
failure that caused them all to destroy each other.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
All right, So before we continue, I want to ask
if maybe you can do something to improve your audio,
either being close to the mic or changing microphone or something.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Sure, thing, is that better?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's yeah, that's a little better. It's a little bit echo.
Wee like there's some kind of sound effect thing going on.
But okay, so let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So you said, so what you described Kessler syndrome is
there be stuff in space hitting other stuff in spray
in space, breaking up to more stuff in space, and
then of course that'll bump into things or destroy things
that you want to put into space. What is what
is the origin of the first stuff that is now
(02:15):
bumping into other stuff that is and creating more and
more stuff. But where did the first stuff come from?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
So I think there's three main sources of it, one
of which is defunct satellite, so stuff we launched up
in the sixties that just failed after decades in orbit,
now we don't have any control over it anymore. It's
just hanging out of there and it's not falling to
Earth to burn up in the atmosphere like we would
want it to. So that's that's one. Another is stuff
(02:44):
that failed on launch. So if you hear about a
failed rocket launch or sometimes you know, a booster doesn't
quite get back down, those are just orbiting up there
as well and weren't able to control them or do
anything with them. So that's another potential source. The third
one is actually anti satellite weapons tests. So there are
a couple of countries that have intentionally destroyed satellites as
(03:05):
like a military proof of concept. So there's debried from
those experiments that they've done over the last couple of
decades that cause potentially harmful debreed to run into other satellites.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I mentioned I mentioned Russia before. Russia is one of
those countries, right, who.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Else Russia's yes, they definitely have, and who else China,
India and US actually, so the US has as.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well Okay, So just sticking with the real nerdy aspect here,
if yeah, if everything were in geosynchronous orbit, then nothing
would bump into each other.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, probably not as likely. I wouldn't say nothing. But
the geosynchronous orbit is much much higher than like the
International Space Station that's in lower orbits. So the overall
amount of space in geosynchronous where like GPS satellites sit,
is much much much larger than lower th orbit where
the ISS and a lot of these like Starlink satellites.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Okay, so the Kessler syndrome is more about lower Eth
orbit and of course lower th orbit if you can,
and just to listeners, right, if you imagine a big
ball with a small ball inside of it, the surface
of that small ball is much smaller, right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If it's well inside the big ball.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So if we're talking about you know, space debris, you
could be talking about a much higher concentration of stuff
if you're talking about lower th orbit than higher th orbit.
So so how is this stuff? So this stuff is
not geosynchronous and it could be just random pieces going
in random directions at random speeds.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, so it's not geosynchronous. Most
of it's not. Most of it's in lower orbit, so
you know, thousands of kilometers rather than tens of thousands
of kilometers above the surface, and it is going at
random speeds, although most of them that are consistently a
problem or going fast because they have to be to
maintain orbit. So if something's going too slow, it'll eventually
(05:04):
their orbit will degrade and will burn up in the atmosphere.
So it has to be going fast enough to be
able to maintain a lower of orbit.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Has there been significant damage to important items already?
Speaker 5 (05:18):
So some In some cases, yes, there was an incident
in like two thousand and nine where a couple of
satellites collided and it knocked out like an Iridium satellite,
which was a precursor.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
To a GPS and like Global communications satellite. Luckily, a
lot of the stuff we've avoided so far. So the ISS,
the International Space Station has had to like move its
its orientation and avoid debris before, but it hasn't actually
been hit by it yet as far as I'm aware.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
All Right, one more question then we're gonna get to solutions.
What is what is the range of sizes and what
is the median size of a piece of space debris.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, so it could be anything from like a paint
fleck that came off of a booster engine as a
was going into orbit. But it's traveling at seventeen thousand
miles an hour, so it has the equivalent force of
like a bowling ball all the way up to like
large scale satellites. Right, So things that way multiple tons
of you know, essentially just metal and electronics at this
(06:17):
point because there's no communication and no fuel left. I'd
say on average, it's probably on the smaller side, just
because there's so many smaller things floating around. Like if
you you know, have a piece fall off that creates
a whole bunch of potentially you know, hazardous small things.
It's probably on the order of kilograms is the average size,
(06:39):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, right, but kilograms going at high speed if it
crashes into something that is not going in the same
direction also at some high speed right at the relative
velocity of the two, could cause even a small thing
to do immense damage.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
As you see a.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Lot of energy there, a lot of energy there a
lot of energy.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
We're talking with Andy Thomas and he writes at Andy
thomas wick dot com t M a s w I C.
K Andy thomas Wick dot com. And by the way,
all this stuff we're talking about is linked on my
blog at Rosskaminski dot com, so you can find Andy's
page and the articles we're talking about. So, Andy your
article at Universe today dot com. A bidirectional plasma thruster
(07:20):
could d orbit space junk safely.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So what does that mean in English?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah? So what that means in English? So, plasma thruster
is a type of engine that's only useful in space
because it doesn't have a whole lot of thrust, but
it can it can last for a very long time.
So basically plasma in this case is ions of material,
so are gone in the case of this particular one.
This article is based on get thrown out the back
(07:50):
of an engine, and according to the laws of motion,
any force has an equal and opposite force, So as
an engine gets thrown out or as the particles get
thrown out one direction and the engine goes the other direction. Basically,
what this idea was is put a plasma engine next
to a orbiting satellite and hit it with the exhaust
(08:11):
plume of the plasma engine. So if it's orbiting, it
gets hit with plasma and therefore slows itself down. The
interesting thing about this one, in particular is that they
added another equal and opposite engine on the other side
of the spacecraft to counterbalance the force from the original
plasma engine that's being used to slow the satellite down.
(08:33):
So essentially it can maintain its position without losing the
force that it has on the satellite. So you have
two different plasma engines going in opposite directions. The exhaust
from one of the plasma engines is hitting a satellite
and slowing it down so it can safely door it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Okay, so you don't know this, but I'm president of
the Bad Analogy Club, So okay, all right, So here's
here's my analogy. You've got a let's say, a car
with no brakes and and it's and it's going and
you want it, and and it's gonna keep going, and
(09:13):
it's gonna run into something that it's not allowed to
run into.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's gonna run into a nuclear power plant.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
You gotta slow it down, so you drive another car
in front of it, and initially you drive another the
other car in parallel to it, and just very very
slightly faster than the thing. You're trying to slow down, slowly,
get in front of it at the same speed, and
then slow the car down that's in front just a
(09:39):
little and as an a gradual thing until eventually you.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Get the car that you wanted to stop to stop?
Is it? Is it something like that?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Does it not need by the way, does it not
need to slow down to zero miles per hour? Could
it just slow down to some slower speed after which
it'll fall out of orbit?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah? Yeah, So to answer that, and yeah, it needs
to go below orbital velocity, right, So we were talking
about how things have to go fast and maintain lowerth orbit.
If it falls below that speed, then it will eventually
fall into orbit safely into the atmosphere and blow up basically,
or not blow up, burn up. It's a better way
of putting it. So in terms of the analogy, you're right.
(10:19):
Largely the advantage of this is you don't have to
physically touch the satellite. You can just use the energy
from the exhaust to slow it down. So I think
that's that's one of the major advantages. There are some
other techniques that use like grappling hooks and nets and
stuff that physically interact with the satellite, but this one
doesn't require that, so you don't need to be like
(10:41):
perfectly positioned like you would need to be slowing down
the car.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Last question for you, this plasma thruster, is this real?
Is it just on a is it on chalkboard?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Has it been deployed? What's the status of this thing?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, so plasma thrusters in general are definite real. There's
a bunch of current space missions that use them all
the time. The bi directional one that's talked about in
this particular article is a prototype on a lab. So
they did test it. They set it pretty close to
the to a force meter so they could measure how
(11:18):
much force the plasma plasma exhaust was putting onto the
pro like the example satellite, and you know, it was
relatively close, so it probably need to be actually further
away than that whenever it's in space and you're talking
about you know, tens of meters rather than tens of centimeters.
But they did prove that it works. So they equated
(11:40):
the force between the two plasma thrusters on the on
the platform and make sure it wouldn't change position, and
they showed that they could apply enough force to satellite
to deorbit it effectively. So so cool.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Andy Thomas Wicks article at universetoday dot com a bidirectional
plasma thruster could deorbit space junk safely. That and more
about Kessler syndrome and Andy's personal page as well are
all linked on my blog at Rosskominsky dot com, so
you can find that stuff easily. Thanks for your time,
(12:14):
Thanks for the fascinating story.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
It's just it's.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Incredible what people are thinking of. It's also incredible what
problems are out there that a lot of people wouldn't
think of.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
There's a lot, and space exploration is really really good
to bring them to light.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So there you all right, thank you, all right, that's
great stuff. Oh my gosh, I love that
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.