Rules are needed

There are at least two important points requiring a minimum of "regulation".

1. 170,000 orbital debris are a big source of potential accidents. The ISS has been damaged a little by such debris several times since its construction started. Other times it has been forced to move to another altitude because collisions with bigger objects were threatening.

Accidents and collisions in space are a potential source of consequences known from usual traffic on roads, on flight lines and on seaways. Because of this space travellers may try to seek justice at courts. Courts need rules established by the Congress. And it's required that it can be make sure, wether the crews of private spacecrafts respected these rule or not.



2. An increasing number of private launches to space travels means a new source of accidents along the courses to space from the spaceports. To prevent accidents along theses courses special spaceport rules are needed as on airports.



What should these rules look like in detail?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Actually, I see it as a possible profit venue: All that debris is mostly metal and carbon composites, right? So it must be worth something. Send up an orbital vehicle with a big scoop and 'vacuum' the skies clean. Then return to earth and sell the scrap, as well as collecting your commision for the cleanup job.

Yes - you're right.

But the debris shouldn't removed from space at once and totally - perhaps some of them might be reused as a basis of orbital industrie, private space stations or spacecrafts built in orbit which never should go down to surface and only operate between orbits or launch from orbit to moon, mars and interplanetary space and return to orbit of earth.

In other words one should try to recycle debris for use in space as a way to clean orbits.

But rules doesn't become obsolete - there have to be satellites in orbit, that mustn't be removed from it. Sections of orbits have to be declared reserved for satellites etc. and forbidden for travels - other sections have to be declared free for passing by spacecrafts and forbidden for satellites.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

i like your thinking there, zoning for sattelites or manned travel. obviously there would have to be 'gray zones' where both can be, and the zoning would almost certainly have to be based on altitude, not actual position. 'vacuuming' space for debris also seems like a good way of "mining" for resources without having to get to an asteroid, and it'd probably be really easy too (high powered magnet). of course you'd have to make sure that you don't deflect, say, an object massing several kilos and travelling 30,000 kph relative to you into your vehicle, but other than that.... and of course the stuff would be worth tons more in space than it is on land.

RULES!!?

WE DUN'T NEED NO STINKING RULES!

A couple of the shuttles external fuel tanks welded together might make a nice addition to a space station. If they haven't already dropped into atmosphere and burned up. Mmm, fuel tanks, welding, might not be such a great idea. Unless you want be become a glowing item for a few seconds.

Ekkehard's zoning idea may be the only practical means of traffic control for civilian space travel. The main reason being that unlike atmospheric flight, the only radars powerful enough to detect small but lethal space debris belong to the military. The big warning radars of RAF Fylingdales and the NORAD chain will never be released to traffic control duties for commercial operations. NASA have a spacetracking capability but who wants to pay them when they can effectively name their own price? Perhaps a Civil Space Authority (CSA) could purchase some of the old Soviet tracking ships and run as an off-shoot commercial operation like air traffic control?

Please don't rush to judgement that only government (military) can conduct debris monitoring. It was so long ago that they said private companies could not put a man into space.

Even socialist Canada has privatized a portion of their Air Traffic Control; something that should have happened in the US long ago when they finally deregulated the airlines and grew US air travel tremendously.

The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program.

Traveler, why does your location say "DFW"-do you live AT the airport?

Until recently, my daytime address was "DFW Airport", while working for a nearly bankrupt airline. Do the math and guess which one. Hint: It is not Delta.

I now live and work in between Dallas and Fort Worth. Thanks for asking.

Texan, Texas is a big state, where do live or work?

Being that the subject is Rules or Regulations, please let vent my frustration with my old bosses.

Bad management (employee relations) deserves bad, confrontational unions.
Bad management (safety) deserves a severe, confrontational FAA FSDO. Every time management ignored the advise of good Engineers, they paid a heavy price in fines and the shutdown of maintenance facilities.

No one can say that they didn't ask for it.

As much as I rail against rules and regulations, occasionally there is a time and place for Bureaucrats.

I live in southern Ellis County.

I'm personally of the belief that traffic control can be handled by private companies, overseen by organizations like the ISO people, and any lawsuits or damages can be handled by existing courts.

But that's me.

"private organizations"

don't we all

Hello, TerraMrs,

objects massing several kilos or tons and travelling very fast relatively to a private spacecraft may be handled the following way:

Consider disabled satellites that mighr be bought from its owners or leased from them. These satellites have drives.

First these drives get new propellant delivered by private spacecrafts. The crafts onlaud tanks which have the ability to accelerate to the speed their target is moving by and dock to it.

Second the private spacecrafts unload crafty drives and rockets to the orbit where they will be combined to construct a small crafty carrier that is able to the satellites too.

Third the satellites drives and the docked small carriers drives and rockets are fired and this way the satellite will be moved to its new destination.

There are at least two alternatives what this destination might be:

a) The satellite might be used as the geostationary counterweigh of the space elevator mentioned in the technology fore of this message board.

b) The satellite might be separated into its elements to reuse as much of them as possible. Each element itself has much less kilos then the satellite has had.

Alternative b) requires to buy the satellite - the owner perhaps could be offered a share of the revenue if he sells the satellite.

To handle very small debris like screws new technologies are needed I think. This may be a service private spacecrafts are the best solution for.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

It is inevitable that govenernments will regulate the launch industry, it is their airspace, we must just try and keep the regulations to a minimum. We must, however try and keep government regulations out of space itself and establish a property rights based standard for international space law.