Take it to the Moon: Repurposing Space Junk

By Damien O’Connell

750,000. That’s the amount of space junk larger than 1 cm orbiting our planet. On average, these objects travel at 40,000 kilometers per hour, and when they hit other objects, like satellites, the result’s comparable to a grenade going off.

Outer space refuse has already given us some headaches. The Soviet Union’s Mir Space Station endured several impacts. In 1996 and 2009, debris destroyed active satellites. In 2013, space junk hit a Russian satellite, changing its spin rate and orbit. And just last year, suspected space debris struck the Copernicus Sentinel – 1A Satellite, but luckily caused only little damage.

So far, we’ve been lucky, but that luck may soon run out. As space junks continues to accumulate, we could face the Kessler Syndrome, a situation where space junk becomes so numerous as to destroy all active satellites. As of June 2016, 1,419 satellites currently orbit earth. What if these disappeared? The world would take a very, very hard hit, both in lives and treasure. Beyond this, debris could potentially destroy the International Space Station and even make it impossible for space vehicles to enter or exit the atmosphere.

We’ve got to act. We could try to destroy space junk, sure, but that may very well just create more, leading us, again, to a Kessler Syndrome scenario. So, here’s another thought: Why don’t we repurpose it?

Here’s one idea: Collect the stuff and use it as raw materials to build a colony on the moon. Just last year, leading scientists, to include prominent members of NASA, produced a special edition of New Space journal where they laid out ideas and plans for colonizing the moon. The ultimate purpose for such a colony would be to support missions to Mars. And all that space junk orbiting us? We could use it to build the foundations of this future lunar home.

So, how do we get there? For starters, the government should fund research into finding ways to collect and move space debris. Cooperation with industry likely holds the key to success here. Government incentives could possibly even lead to an entire space debris reclamation sector. Right now, there’s little money in collecting space junk, but with the Moon colony mission (and Mars) on the minds of many leading scientists at NASA, this could change with a few nudges from the government.

Let the race for the first galactic garbage man begin.


THINK BIG: America’s Future-Structure







Think Big: Science and Technology Policy Priorities for the Next Administration

Kathryn Schiller Wurster
Nov 29, 2016











Everyman Powered Science

By Beth Russell


Intellectual exceptionalism. The idea that scientists have a special quality that has been honed and amplified by training on difficult problems over copious hours hit a speedbump this week when video game players beat scientists in a competition to determine the structure of an Alzheimer’s Disease related protein. The game was Foldit, a research-based game designed to allow the incremental process of discovery in protein-folding biochemistry to be worked out by a group of players building on each other’s best ideas. The 469 players were able to deduce the structure faster than two crystallographers and a team of 61 undergraduate students using computer-based modeling, and faster than two computer algorithms for automatic structure determination.

Building highly accurate models of protein structure using crystallographic data is highly labor-intensive and the accuracy of these models can impact downstream science for many years after the initial model is produced. Research games like Foldit have revolutionized our ability to solve problems that required more labor than can be practically obtained. The phenomenal success of these games and other mechanisms for involving the public in scientific research signal a paradigm shift for the research enterprise. What was previously the purview of an elite few highly educated scientists is now, with a little training, the domain of the everyman. We call it Citizen Science. In a brief period, the concept of public participation of scientific research went from a few birdwatchers and butterfly counters to an international phenomenon of such importance that last year the White House issued a memorandum directing federal agencies and American institutions to take better advantage of the opportunities that Citizen Science provides.

The most interesting thing about the most recent Foldit results isn’t that the humans were faster, but they also developed the better model. This poses the curious scientist to ask why? I posit that the gamers beat the scientists and the computers for the same reason that revolutionary science isn’t usually developed from an incremental process, the same reason that we associate the word “Eureka!” with scientific discovery. This reason is plasticity.

Humans really can think outside of the box. Not only can we understand rules, we can also be curious about what happens when we bend or break them. Science has devised these “rules,” properties of different atoms, functional groups, and structural types. Unlike computers who must follow the rules coded in their program or algorithm, or the scientists who drilled the properties into their heads with years of study, the non-scientist can see the new way, the exception, that in the complex world of biology ends up being right pretty often. Throw enough people together, and you’ll get a few of these. Some right, some wrong, but the group is self-correcting and doesn’t take long to find the right combination of bends in the rules to solve the puzzle.

We need the scientists, to collect the data, to build hypotheses, and to integrate complex ideas that require deep knowledge, but we also need the everyman too. As scientists we can’t keep locking the discipline up in our labs and ignoring the power of bringing the citizenry to the table. For some problems, two (or two thousand) heads really are better than one.

The Dark Side of CRISPR

By Kathryn Ziden










The scientific community can add value by:








By Beth Russell








The Power of Imagination

By Charles Mueller




