Our current design is capable of just over 1 year of continuous propulsive operation. Feel free to mess with our services tool on the website to simulate various missions to see how many operations a single droid could perform! But to answer your question, yes, several orbital inclinations are highly populated with operational satellites and debris. A mission such as going from 55° inclination to polar would be possible but very expensive (ie would likely drain a significant amount of life out of the Droid on a single mission). This is why we want to build a constellation of vehicles spread across many inclinations.
Your grandad speaks truth! Couldn't agree with the vision you laid out more, this is exactly how we see ourselves being an enabler for other businesses and enterprises operating in space.
Great question and I suspect you are correct regarding the impact being small (Tim Dodd the everyday astronaut, made a great youtube video about rocket launch pollution, check that out for sure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4). He concluded that even with increased launch rates, the pollution remains small compared to other industries such as the airline industry. Not the same thing, but I'd argue the impact from satellites and debris burning up is less than the rocket it took to get up there in the first place. All that being said, we at Turion Space don't want to build a sustainable future in space at the cost of polluting Earth. For the first missions, we will drag the debris down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, but long term, we plan to utilize reusable launch vehicle upper stages (think Starship, Relativity, and others) to bring stuff back down for us. It's a bit of an essay for a simple question, but regardless of how polluting it may be, with fully reusable launch vehicles coming online in the same time frame we are looking at performing missions, we will use those to bring stuff back down.
Exactly! It is a total chicken and egg problem. What I mean is, who will pay to remove stuff if regulations are not set up accordingly? And if nobody will pay to remove stuff, how do you build a business with that premise? The bridge to reaching that point for us is utilizing our spacecraft for satellite servicing at first. Specifically orbit modification, loss mitigation repairs, and asset inspection.
Right now we are primarily focused on building something to address the big stuff because of the possibility of breaking up into thousands of smaller debris. At some point the smaller debris will need to be addressed, in which case its possible something like this would work. That being said Space Lasers may also be a contender, but that comes with the caveat of being classified as a weapon. Either way it will be interesting to see different ideas come to fruition over time, both from our playbook, and from others!
I am super stoked about all the other companies working on solutions to the debris problem, and see this problem as too important to leave to any single entity / team (including ourselves!). What differentiates us from some of the other ideas is our overall approach to vehicle design. Besides robot arms, or other capture mechanisms what are we fundamentally trying to do? Move things around. What is the key design parameter for moving things around in space? dV. Our approach to optimizing for this number is unique (more on that another time, can't spoil all the fun just yet!). Our team will move rapidly, copying the Elon playbook approach to building hardware which I'm quite familiar with (8.5 year SpaceX veteran). In regards to hiring, next month we'll begin our hiring ramp so keep an eye on the site if you are interested!
Right now NO ONE. Crazy right? Well not really. If you forced people (satellite owners) to pay for someone to deorbit their stuff, before an affordable service exists, that'd be a quick way to put a major damper on the booming space economy. It is crucial to develop the technology quickly, and do so with a system that is affordable. Only after this will regulators be willing to move towards enforcing more strict policies for deorbiting your satellite if it dies. Until then, anyone need an orbit modification? :)
1. We are utilizing highly efficient electric propulsion that eliminates the need for refueling to make money, but when refueling in orbit does become available you bet we'll be at the front of the line at Space Chevron
2. YC has been an enormous help with getting us started. They drilled the single most important thing into our skulls for really any startup - talk to customers. Besides their amazing network, the group partners have really helped us focus on what is important in order to make our vision a reality. If you are considering, apply to YC!!
Currently - no one (in the US). Europeans and Japanese are ahead of the game compared to the US, but it'll come from the Office of Space Commerce / DoD / NASA. Until then, we plan to build the technology by providing orbit modification services to existing satellites, inspection services, etc.
Oh yeah. One situation we will avoid - deorbiting other peoples things without their permission. Its international waters out there and if you attempt to dock for example with a Russian rocket upper stage, (as a US company) that would be an act of war. No bueno. Lots of regulatory innovation needs to (and we think will) occur over the next 5-10 years to ensure a sustainable space environment!
Robotic arms are more general purpose, but we likely will end up doing both at some point (plan on testing both for our demonstration mission). The only downside to electromagnets is you need to pre-emptively install something on the satellite before its launched to make use of it.
Not a spur at all, you are spot on! With higher orbits like GEO (35,000 km altitude) it actually makes more sense to take debris and dead satellites out even further to what is known as the 'graveyard' orbit. We can also see a future where we take parts off dead satellites (ie solar panels) and move them to a hub where they can be repurposed. On that note take a look at what the company Arkisys is doing!