＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Addition on 7/28/2022>Another Large Booster of a Chinese Rocket Falls to Earth?
On July 24, China successfully launched its Long March 5B rocket, sending off the experimental module Qiandeng, which will be installed in the Tiangong space station under construction.
However, the large booster rocket that will put the experimental module into orbit is likely to fall “out of control” to the earth’s surface in the not-too-distant future.
Simply put, a 23-ton, 10-story-high rocket is circling above the Earth, gradually falling toward the surface. It eventually hits the surface and there is no way to maneuver it to land in the ocean or any other remote safe location.
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell confirmed on Twitter that the first stage rocket has reached orbit. This means that unless some unreported design changes have been made to the rocket, it is now just drifting and waiting to fall to Earth. There is no way to reignite the rocket’s engines, so there is no way to guide it into a safe re-entry orbit.
McDowell added that the rocket would likely disintegrate, and “based on past experience, a large amount of debris, 30 meters long, would hit the surface at several hundred kilometers per hour.
This is becoming a common practice in China’s space program; something similar happened in May 2021 with the same type of rocket. The launch vehicle that time eventually fell into the ocean. When China’s largest rocket was launched in 2020, it rained debris on West Africa, but no one was injured.
Then, just a few months ago, in April 2022, a small rocket from the same Long March family made an uncontrolled and unplanned reentry, scattering debris over parts of India.
It is extremely difficult to predict where the debris from an uncontrolled object under the control of gravity will go. Roughly speaking, space debris will fall on the surface of the earth around 41.5 degrees north and south of the equator. This means that some megacities such as Los Angeles, New York City, and Sydney are not safe.
Still, the probability of a person being injured by falling “space junk” is negligibly small. As far as is known, this has not happened in the 60 years that humans have been launching anything into orbit.
Today, however, there is an unprecedented amount of debris in orbit, and one recent study warns that there is a 10% chance of uncontrolled re-entry casualties over a 10-year period.
1. What is Space Debris?
As countries around the world advance space development, “space debris,” or the debris left over from rockets and satellites, has become a major problem.
At present, there are believed to be 20,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 cm in diameter that could lead to “catastrophic destruction of satellites and other objects,” 500,000 to 700,000 pieces of space debris larger than 1 cm that could lead to “termination of space missions,” and over 100 million pieces of space debris larger than 1 mm that could lead to “satellite failure and other problems” in outer space.
As an aside, the “simulation model that straightforwardly explains the dangers of space debris” is the Kessler Syndrome. It is called this after one of its proponents, NASA’s Kessler.
I frankly feel that no matter how vast and boundless the universe is, it is “full of garbage. It is only natural, since we have not cleaned up until now…
2. Japanese Government Initiatives
In March 2019, the Japanese government launched a “task force of relevant ministries and agencies” to study countermeasures. Not only space agencies such as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) but also the private sector will participate in space debris removal, aiming to make “space debris removal services” a “business from Japan” and to stimulate space utilization in the world through space debris removal.
JAXA is conducting research and development on space debris observation, future prediction, collision avoidance, removal, etc. for the development of a space debris removal system.
In this context, JAXA is working with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. to demonstrate the technology for a space debris removal service using the upper stage of a rocket as the removal target.
On the other hand, it is expected that the private sector will take the lead in space debris removal for small satellites that are being developed by the private sector and universities. Astroscale, a Japanese space venture company (headquartered in Singapore; Mitsunobu Okada, President), aims to launch the space debris removal demonstration satellite ELSA-d in early 2020.
3. Mr. Daisuke wrote a novel titled “A Story about Making a Business out of Space Garbage Cleaning
This is an online novel (science fiction novel) published on “Novelist’s Letter”.
I am a novice, so I don’t know much about the details, but this novel concretely describes novel ideas such as the concept of cleaning space debris with “laser beams” and the ultra-small, lightweight “Picosat (postage stamp satellite)” the size of a postage stamp.
The novel also introduces the following three broad categories of current orbital debris removal methods. (1) push out, (2) catch, and (3) catch and slow down.
The representative of the “push-out” method is the “laser” method, which targets fairly small debris.
The “catch” method is for rather large debris, and can be achieved with “robot arms,” “nets,” “magnets,” “adhesives,” etc.
The “catch and slow down” method is for smaller debris, and can be done by sprinkling gas or sand on the orbit, or by sprinkling a jelly-like substance on the orbit.
When Sakyo Komatsu’s science fiction novel “Sinking of Japan” was first released, I was skeptical, wondering if it really had any scientific basis. However, after experiencing the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the Northern Osaka Earthquake, I had no choice but to change my mind.
As for Mr. Daisuke’s novel, I cannot make a proper evaluation at this time, but I understand that he has studied space debris in considerable detail. Is Mr. Daisuke a “handmade author” who has a separate day job and writes novels as a “side job”?
4. Mitsunobu Okada, who is serious about turning “space waste cleanup” into a business
Mitsunobu Okada, 46, is a graduate of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Agriculture. After working for the Main Accounting Bureau of the Ministry of Finance, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, and is now the CEO of AstroScale, an independent company.
The company is a space venture aimed at removing space debris.
When he was 15 years old, he participated in NASA’s junior program and received a handwritten message of encouragement from Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese astronaut, who said, “Space is where you will be active,” which made his dream of working in space come true after 30 years.
The company has developed a technology to remove space debris by catching drifting space debris with a magnet attached to the satellite and burning them together in the atmosphere.
5. difficulty of the “space trash cleanup business
The “space junk problem” has been pointed out for some time, but it is a “blue ocean” (an untapped market with no competition) that no one has tackled yet. This is because of the following difficult problems.
(1) It is difficult to “prove” and “verify” that space junk has been removed.
(2) Difficult (or rather impossible) to determine which country’s space debris is from
(3) Difficult to commercialize except by collecting funds from countries that are developing space (mainly the U.S. and Russia)
I believe that the U.S., China, and Russia should take the lead in this kind of “space debris removal service” or “space debris cleaning project. This is not something that Japan should get involved in.
No matter how earnest Japan’s efforts are, the irresponsible President Trump, President Xi Jinping, and President Putin, like Hitoshi Ueki’s “irresponsible man,” will simply say to Japan, “Good work, you do it hard! I can’t help but feel that Japan will end up looking like a fool.
6. history of the space race
In the 1960s, during the era of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963; presidential term: 1961-1963) and Soviet Premier Mikhail Khrushchev (1894-1971; prime ministerial term: 1953-1964), the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union was fierce.
At first, the Soviet Union was in the lead. Gagarin, who flew alone on Vostok 1, the world’s first manned space flight, famously said, “The earth was blue”.
Meanwhile, the U.S. space race reached its zenith in 1969 when Apollo 11, with Captain Armstrong and three others aboard, succeeded in landing the world’s first human on the moon. Captain Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. It is said that the late President Kennedy had longed to be the first man to land on the moon.
Since then, the “space race” has gone downhill with the end of the Apollo program in 1972, but the space race between the U.S., China, and Russia appears to have been rekindled as China, aiming for global hegemony, successfully landed an unmanned probe on the far side of the moon in January 2019.
Is Chinese President Xi Jinping tired of just hegemony on Earth, and is he trying to conquer space as well? Is he going to build a manned military base on the moon and illegally occupy the moon?
Isn’t it time to put an end to the insane “space race”?
