China has a plan to clean up space junk with lasers

phys.org ^ | 01/17/2018 | by Matt Williams, Universe Today

[Scrambler Bob]

US Satellites are Space Junk to the Chinese.

[bmwcyle]

And sharks also?

[discostu]

Well somebody’s gotta do it, and there’s a long tradition of hiring Chinese to clean up our crap.

[rjsimmon]

And sharks also?

Well, it only makes sense.

[Democrats hate too much]

They mean foreign military satellites as "junk".

[Tenacious 1]

I bet they could be used against all kinds of satellites, not just junk. Let’s not be late to this party.

[C210N]

all signatories agreed to "not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner."

Noticeably absent is lasers that are NOT of mass destruction being placed in orbit. Lots of individual debris on the ground. Some concentrations of them too.

[A Formerly Proud Canadian]

‘Zactly what I was thinking. The Chicoms are bound to launch a number of these, paid for by the UN, to destroy ‘space junk’ and then position them where they can destroy commsats and milsats from the West, especially American ones. All of this, paid for by Western dollars.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

A perfect plan to develop and perfect technology to shoot down our military and other satelites.

[blueunicorn6]

Great.

They’ll hit a Klingon probe and then we’ll have those rascals down on us.

Good thing we have Captain Charmin.

He’s wiped out a lot of Klingons.

[DBrow]

There have been studies done to see if particle beams can be used to vaporize space junk, or hit it so that you impart a delta V to knock it out of orbit.

Eventually some method will need to be deployed.

My proposal to field a large piece of duct tape tucked into a loop was rejected. The study funds went into vacuum compatible katamari.

[Red Badger]

My idea was to build a robot ship to just go around and sweep it all up.........like a giant Roomba................

[fishtank]

“Good thing we have Captain Charmin.

He’s wiped out a lot of Klingons.”

Especially the ones orbiting Uranus.

[PIF]

In the 1980s, China was added to the treaty and is therefore bound to its provisions.

—

or what exactly?

[epluribus_2]

Our coherent light slingers should probably get some range time in, too.

[I want the USA back]

Won’t work. Only way it to pluck them out of orbit, put them in a bag, and take them to the dump, or to make them fall into the ocean. Neither is a solution.

[precisionshootist]

Ya right! Cause china already has their country so clean already they have nothing else to worry about so why not clean up all that space junk. lol

I'm sure it has nothing to do with perfecting technology to shoot down their enemies satellites.

[Delmarksman]

Cue the giant vacuum cleaner.

[DannyTN]

1) We should have laser weapons and jamming weapons ready to launch.
2) They should be capable of removing debris such as Chinese and NK satelites.
3) We should also have replacement satelites ready to launch.
4) Wouldn’t hurt to have some ground based lasers to take out any enemy satelites that pass overhead