Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit
I'm very skeptical of the technical challenges associated with this problem (business model and financing aside). The amount of delta-v required to perform maneuvers to repeatedly "dock" with different pieces of space junk, and then again to de-orbit is very high. You MIGHT be able to de-orbit on the order of magnitude of ~10 pieces of low-earth orbit debris per mission. Maybe. If you're really good. And low-earth orbit junk isn't the major issue since it will de-orbit naturally in a reasonable time-frame. Higher orbit junk is what really matters, and will require much more delta-v to reach, and then again to de-orbit after "docking".<p>Allow me to blindly speculate here: a space-junk company is going to take one of the two following paths:<p>1) Perform low-earth orbit missions to de-orbit a few pieces here and then there, use the good PR to drive funding (let's just assume they can make the finances work via getting governments to pay for it or something). It will technically work, but it will only deorbit pieces that would naturally decay anyways at a meaninglessly low-volume. But the PR will be good and regulatory capture will ensure their investors get paid. The real problem will remain.<p>2) Go after the really big pieces in higher orbits. These pieces tend to be well-tracked and aren't really a large problem, but all the same outcomes in option 1 will occur. Investors will get paid, and of course, the real problem won't be solved.<p>Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I see space-junk removal companies largely relying on the general public's lack of knowledge on how orbits work to drive PR. Maybe Kerbal Space Program 2 will go viral enough to fix that problem? We can only hope