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Document Id: 900448
Concept Category / Medium:
Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Intelligence, Communications, or Situational Awareness / SPACE
Concept Title: Space Debris Dust Buster
Description: My idea is to develop a new space system that will remove unwanted space debris (small size, 10-30 cm.) The space system consists of a spacecraft like the shuttle that will fly around space and pick up space debris. The concept is basically like a vacuum cleaner. There would be a set of large bags inside the spacecraft that would collect the space debris, when the bag is full, a space person would remove the full bag and attach another one. Once the spacecraft is full of space debris bags, the space person would load the bags into an expendable space pod that would be ejected from the spacecraft into deep, deep outer space. A more advanced, fully automated, high tech system could be developed that would eliminate the space person in the loop.
Advantages: The space debris dust buster concept would eliminate the unwanted space debris. Space debris is the major culprit in damaging spacecrafts in space. This new concept removes the small size (10-30 cm) space debris and discards it into outer space, because earth is already crowded and there would be no use for this space debris. The system is simple and the vacuum cleaner concept has been around a long time.
Countermeasures: None
Commercial Applications: This concept can be used for military or civilian space debris. Once it is space debris, it will be difficult to tell the source. This space debris dust buster concept would be applicable universally.
Keywords:
DEBRIS