Orbital debris removal concept - would this work?

[sfjcody_]

Came up with this a few months ago. Would this work? If not, could it be made to work with a few changes? Would it be worthwhile?

[sfjcody_]

Second set of slides.

[sfjcody_]

Final slide

[speedevil]

I suggest you use words, not pictures. This is not a graphic novel.
In short - yes, in principle impacting orbital debris with gas clouds can work.
It will tend to disperse very rapidly and be extremely hard to target more than one object with, meaning you will have massive costs in delta-v and uplift mass least to do this, meaning it requires much reduced launch costs.

There is no particular reason for the gas puffer to reenter, a small ion engine to allow it to change orbits and meet up with another bit of debris, or come in for re-gassing would perhaps be rather more optimal.

[sfjcody_]

There is no particular reason for the gas puffer to reenter, a small ion engine to allow it to change orbits and meet up with another bit of debris, or come in for re-gassing would perhaps be rather more optimal.

Thanks, great point! The only reason I didn't do this was out of a fear of creating more orbital debris, but it should be capable of re-entering with an ion engine.

[Vahe231991]

The ELSA-d (End-of-Life Services by Astroscale) spacecraft was launched in March 2021 and is designed to capture a piece of space junk.

Links:
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/21/979815691/new-effort-to-clean-up-space-junk-prepares-to-launch
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/this-debris-removal-company-is-on-a-singular-mission-to-clean-space-debris

[redneck]

There is no particular reason for the gas puffer to reenter, a small ion engine to allow it to change orbits and meet up with another bit of debris, or come in for re-gassing would perhaps be rather more optimal.

Thanks, great point! The only reason I didn't do this was out of a fear of creating more orbital debris, but it should be capable of re-entering with an ion engine.

Your original being suborbital suggests that it is not in orbit and therefore cannot change orbits to meet more targets. This actually a point in favor as the suborbital craft can operate with far less DeltaV than an orbital craft. 4,500 m/s for suborbital instead of 9,500 m/s orbital allows a single stage to operate economically.

Your gas payload may be constrained by a fast deployed balloon to allow earlier puffing without excessive gas spread before contact. The more accurate your intercept capabilities, the smaller and lighter the balloon constrained gas payload could be. One ton of debris hitting one hundred kilos of gas at orbital velocity should bring down the debris in under half an orbit.

4,500 m/s (WAG requirement) with a decent hydrocarbon/LOX engine should be able to realize a mass ratio of less than 5. That leaves >20% of GLOW for payload, hardware, and landing systems. If a 100 kg balloon and gas payload is sufficient, and that payload is 5% of Glow, then your vehicle would be a couple of tons fueled and loaded. Should be relatively economical. I would think Vandenberg for a westerly launch and deployment with RTLS.

Not mentioned was that this would be great for subscale testing of your future orbital technologies. One issue would be collision induced orbit raising of debris pieces as has happened in some collisions. Also that this might be seen as ASAT testing.