<story><title>Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit</title><url>https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/apple-founder-wozniak-space-debris-company-b1919747.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>So here&amp;#x27;s a potential business model for this: salvage rights.&lt;p&gt;When ships sink, the owner generally still retains ownership of any property. Sometimes the location of the wreck is known. Sometimes it needs to be found. It can cost a lot of money to find a wreck and recover any property.&lt;p&gt;So salvage rights are a principle of maritime law such that whoever does this is entitled to a reward commensurate with the value of the goods recovered (eg 10%).&lt;p&gt;I imagine there are orbital slots that are essentially unusable because of space debris (eg Project West Ford [1]). If orbital slots are sufficiently scarce then these could have value. At some point it may become commercial to spend the effort cleaning up an orbit and making it available. Companies could then be compensated for the value they create this way.&lt;p&gt;I do believe this will still require a dramatic decrease in launch costs, as in orders of magnitude more. But we&amp;#x27;ll see.&lt;p&gt;My personal belief (and hope) is that the future of getting into orbit is orbital rings [2]. If so, that completely changes the game because cleaning up an orbit essentially becomes a problem of just holding up a giant &amp;quot;paddle&amp;quot; (for lack of a better word) that is fixed to a point on Earth (essentially) and just letting the debris hit it.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_West_Ford&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_West_Ford&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>laumars</author><text>There was a Korean movie about a vaguely similar topic: salvaging space debris that I enjoyed&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.imdb.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;tt12838766&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.imdb.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;tt12838766&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit</title><url>https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/apple-founder-wozniak-space-debris-company-b1919747.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>So here&amp;#x27;s a potential business model for this: salvage rights.&lt;p&gt;When ships sink, the owner generally still retains ownership of any property. Sometimes the location of the wreck is known. Sometimes it needs to be found. It can cost a lot of money to find a wreck and recover any property.&lt;p&gt;So salvage rights are a principle of maritime law such that whoever does this is entitled to a reward commensurate with the value of the goods recovered (eg 10%).&lt;p&gt;I imagine there are orbital slots that are essentially unusable because of space debris (eg Project West Ford [1]). If orbital slots are sufficiently scarce then these could have value. At some point it may become commercial to spend the effort cleaning up an orbit and making it available. Companies could then be compensated for the value they create this way.&lt;p&gt;I do believe this will still require a dramatic decrease in launch costs, as in orders of magnitude more. But we&amp;#x27;ll see.&lt;p&gt;My personal belief (and hope) is that the future of getting into orbit is orbital rings [2]. If so, that completely changes the game because cleaning up an orbit essentially becomes a problem of just holding up a giant &amp;quot;paddle&amp;quot; (for lack of a better word) that is fixed to a point on Earth (essentially) and just letting the debris hit it.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_West_Ford&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_West_Ford&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SonicScrub</author><text>This could work, but would limit effectiveness to the orbits that MUST be very specific to work. For most satellites this doesn&amp;#x27;t matter. If 500 km is clogged, you design your mission to work at 505 km. I could see something like this working for geostationary orbits and sun-synchronous orbits as they require specific altitudes and inclinations,  but not for much else.</text></comment>