B. Miscellaneous The ET could also be used for a number of additional orbital tests, missions, and roles (25). For example, a number of identically configured empty tanks could serve as orbital decoys. A tank could be used as a ’Junk ASAT*. The ET could be manuvered into the flightpath of a target satellite and destroy it on impact. The tank could be melted and foamed on-orbit. This metallic foam could serve as a blast and impact shield. The ET can also be used as a target for SDI R&D experiments or demonstrations. The idea here is to deorbit the ET and shoot it on the way down. The tank is large enough to take more damage than conventional satellites and thus may be an advantage to the military use of space. The real advantage in using the ET as the basis of a military space station is that it keeps military activities seperate from the civilian activities. This is politically a very important advantage. IV. Orbital Cleanup An ET based OTV could clean out each individual orbit of space junk and debris over a period of time (25). This could be done by two methods. The first one would use a soft rendezvous with a minimal Delta-V and could use tethers or a very precise rendezvous to clear the required altitudes of debris. The retrieval would be slow and controlled and likely very fuel intensive. The second could be somewhat larger and more massive and be used as a hard target with the appropriate use of foamed metals, netting, or nested cylinders and capture the debris by impact. This is an idea worth consideration that has not had anything more than very preliminary work done on it. V. Future Resource The ET is also a potential resource for a wide variety of presently unknown, wildly speculative, and unanticipated applications. As has been demonstrated by a number of other space based activities in the past, the present discussions of ET and ET/ACC applications will likely serve as a starting point and nothing more. There have been several less than mundane or •far out' proposals for the ET that may be of great importance in the near or not so near future. One proposal is to use the STS or an STS derived vehicle to eliminate nuclear waste by launching it from the surface and storing it in
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