Bye Bye Space Junk?

This picture always amazes me, and I am very pleased to hear that there is an effort to try and address this issue.  Kudos Boeing!

To clear space junk without creating more in the process, Boeing wants to slow pieces of orbiting degree by intercepting them with a cloud of dense gas.

Aerospace giant Boeing has developed a novel means of clearing space junk from low Earth orbit: A cloud of ballistic gas. Most space junk-clearing schemes involve launching something up there to physically de-orbit debris, but this means launching rocket stages into orbit that then become more orbital debris. Boeing’s solution: Launch a rocket full of cryogenic inert gas right to the very edge of space, then forcibly eject tons of vaporized gas further upward into an orbiting debris cluster. The initial density of the cloud will create enough drag to slow the debris just enough to de-orbit it, and the launch rocket would remain low enough to fall harmlessly back to Earth.

Source

Future of U.S. Manned Space Flight

Boeing CST-100 Boeing

The aerospace firm is planning to send its own employees to the International Space Station on the first crewed mission of its CST-100 ship, the company said Friday. Apparently internal interviews are already ongoing, because Boeing wants its astronauts to help drive further development of the space capsule.Riding aboard an Atlas V rocket —  the CST-100 will launch three times in 2015, starting with two unmanned launches. One launch will take it into orbit and a second will involve an aborted orbit attempt, in a test of the capsule’s escape abilities should something go wrong during launch.

If all goes well, it will launch a third time with a two-person crew, who will dock it with the ISS. That would pave the way for frequent CST flights to the ISS by 2016, BBC reports.

The company has never announced a name for the vehicle, which has been dubbed CST-100 since its unveiling last year — for “crew space transportation” and 100 kilometers, which marks the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Boeing will use the Atlas V, the same rocket that sent Juno spaceward earlier this month, because of its 100 percent success rate so far — and it doesn’t hurt that Boeing is part owner of the rocket maker, United Launch Alliance. Boeing said that had no bearing on its decision, according to BBC.

Boeing is developing the capsule as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program, which is seeking private space taxis to ferry astronauts to space now that the shuttles are all retired.