Re: Slow Re-entry

"Paul F. Dietz" <dietz@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Mad Bad Rabbit wrote:
>> For spy-sats there's another, much more serious limitation
>> of geosynchronous orbit: you can only be in the equatorial
>> plane when looking at the targets. The enemy can just build
>> their interesting stuff on the north slope of a hill (or
>> south, if they're in that hemisphere) and completely block
>> your line-of-sight from geosynchronous orbit.
>
> You're confusing geo*synchronous* with geo*stationary*.

My bad. You're right, you should be able to put satellites into
inclined geosynchronous orbits, and they won't hit the beanstalk
if they keep to their assigned longitude.

> There's no reason (in this scenario) you couldn't have some
> spy satellite in inclined orbits, although you'd have to
> be careful they don't shed too much debris and also remain
> controllable/recoverable.

I'm thinking the beanstalk could have debris-control lasers
so if a lost socket-wrench is forecast to strike the tower,
they can just zap it and vaporize some of the leading surface;
to slow the object and drop it into an orbit that intersects
the atmosphere. For bigger debris, maybe chunks of dry ice
can be fired at them, or a maintenance tug can go intercept
really big debris (such as dead multi-ton satellites).


--
>;k
.

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