Adonis Diaries

Earth outer-space crowded with 17,000 space manned debris: And how Island of Man is contributing?

In 2012, earth outer spaces, constituted of the suborbital (less than 2,000 km high), the Global Positioning System satellites (20,000 km up), and the TV and fixed telecommunication satellites (36,000 km)…is crowded with over 17,000 artificial debris, and not counting the natural debris of asteroids….

To make the situation worse, China destroyed in 2007 one of its satellites by missile, to be emulated by the US in 2008.

Only 7% of the orbiting space vehicles are operational. The remaining rotating debris are waiting for private space companies to collect them and ship them back to the polluters.

About 1,800 launching rockets are left as debris in space.

Over 3,000 are fragments of rockets

Over 4,000 are space vehicles

And more than 8,000 are parts of over 10 cm in length

There is a dividing region between earth and the Moon called Lagrange L1 point where space vehicle are not submitted to any force of attraction, and where gravity is nil…In this point the vehicle need minimal energy to be maintained there, an ideal point for “stationing” space vehicles. This point is closer to the Moon, about 1/6 of the distance from earth to the Moon, corresponding to the respective proportion of the masses of earth to the Moon…

Since equilibrium is unstable in L1, there are no debris (artificial or natural): Debris either fall to earth or on the Moon.  Ken Murphy, president of The Moon Society, explains:

“As we reach the L1 point, space activities will dilate outward. The Moon will be a kid game to land on and to exploit…”

Naveen Jain, an ex-Microsoft billionaire, said:

“The Moon has 20 times more platinum and titanium than anywhere on earth. It has helium 3, a rare isotope estimated to be the future for energy. The Moon is going to be the 8th continent to earth…”

There are currently 23 missions to observing earth, and the projected numbers in 2020 will be reduced to about only 7 missions. Consequently, State funded missions are being phased out to be compensated by private space companies, companies heavily financed by State and Federal contracts, or public money…

For example, Space X of Elon Musk (PayPal founder) signed a contract for $1.6 bn in order to launch 12 missions for re-supplying the International Space Station of 450 kilo of materials and foodstuff, and bring back the wastes…

Space X has already successfully tested a first launch using Falcon 9 rocket (at a cost of $60 million compared to about $700 million by NASA for each launch). Most probably, this low-cost is a bait, waiting for the government to completely stop being a competitor in launching space vehicles and prices will skyrocket…

Orbital Sciences (Virginia) signed a similar contract with NASA

XCOR Aerospace of Richard Bronson is focused on the suborbital missions

Blue Origin is going for inhabited missions

Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace are planning for non-inhabited missions…

It is estimated that many wealthy people are ready to pay $200,000 to observe earth from the stratosphere. In the medium term, it is expected that the stratosphere, in a reduced gravity environment, will be used for quick transport from New York to Tokyo in just 2 hours.

And what of the Island of Man, situated between Ireland, Scotland and England? This Isle has 85,000 inhabitants and vying to be the preferred choice for launching commercial missions and inhabitant missions to the moon, at a cost of $20 million per client.

Of the 54 societies working on satellites, 30 have subsidiary on the island.

Christopher Stott, who worked for Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has decided to set his island into orbit, by reserving Space Parking Lots since the year 2000, in a private/public partnership ManSat. Stott has founded Excalibur Almaz for space tourism and acquiring second-hand Soviet station of the Salyut type.

Note: Inspired from an article in the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatic number 701 by Philippe Reviere