On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:05:44 Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
you know one of the things i'd like to do is go into the waste removal business in orbit. lots of junk up there...would like to launch a satellite with a long finger attached to it and poke stuff out of orbit. the "nudge". who'd pay? it would be quite an unfornate event if a satellite were mistaken as a piece of debris...or if debris suddenly appeared in a launch window ;)
phillip
There is lots of junk up there. Schemes to de-orbit satellites at the end of their useful life have been put forward but they always fail on the liability issue. Apparently if a satellite falls out of orbit it is an "act of god" and the owner/insurer is not responsible for damages, but if the satellite is deliberately de-orbitted the owner/insurer is on the hook. No one, partiucularly the insurance companies wants to try it. This despite a high degree of confidence in being able to bring a satellite down in a hopefully empty patch of ocean. Insurance companies are very risk averse. Jim Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com