Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk

submitted by magnora7 from (bbc.com)

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newinsightfulfun

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    It doesn't exist

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Not sure if this helps much with the space debris problem honestly, but it's interesting nonetheless.

    [–]jet199 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    I was thinking "surely things don't rot in space."

    Of course in WW2 they started building planes out of wood as they ran out of steel so they likely have some tech left over from that.

    [–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    This article is 99.9999% nonsense.

    Every single launch releases a copious amount of toxic shit.

    A feather and a bullet at 1000+mph will have virtually the same effect in the vacuum of space. At very extreme speeds an explosion occurs which is why most craters are not oval, tear-dropped, long gashes, etc. The moon is covered in circular craters because they were all explosive.

    Further, very limited amounts of space debris does not burn up in the atmosphere upon re-entry actually making it to Earth. Earth is so vast that most space debris falls completely unnoticed. Unless they're going to make another huge Space Lab (didn't fully burn up) up there's no point in using wood.

    And then there are the extreme temperatures in the sun and in the shade with extreme expansion and shrinkage - never good for wood.

    The real problem with space junk is that it will remain in space for decades, centuries, or even millennia - and during that time it has opportunities to hit other things and be smashed into exponential fragments on many more trajectories - all potentially critical interacting with other things.

    This field of debris manifests the Kessler effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

    This remains one of the handful of excuses for urgency in my Bittersweet Seeds story.