One man's trash is another man's treasure
While considering issue of cleaning up space debris from LEO and GEO, I have encountered an interesting business case related to possible use of SpaceX BFR: instead of deorbiting many defunct satellites, why not bring some of them home and (re)sell it through public auctions?
Falcon9/Dragon are only currently possible "rescue" vehicles for such historic artifacts, but with single mission price around 140 million USD they are too expensive for such purpose. Upcoming BFR would provide far cheaper launch and landing opportunity (some estimates go as low as 10 million USD).
There are plenty of assets that could be retrieved and auctioned for prices above a million USD. For example, what would be a value of Vanguard 1, the first american satellite and the longest lived object in space? Or Vanguard 2 or 3? Or TIROS 1, the first meteorological satellite? Or MIDAS-3, first military early warning satellite? Or TRANSIT series of satellites, precursor to GPS constellation? Or Relays - the first telecommunication satellites?
French may be interested in acquiring their Asterix or FR-1. And what would be a value of Alouette 1 for Canadians? While cleaning up GEO/GSO, maybe Syncom-1 or Intelsat 1 could be brought back to Earth? Even a Hubble Space Telescope could be captured and returned to Earth this way before its reentry between 2028-2038.
While this niche will never be a large market valued in billions, recovery of early space age artifacts would prove po possibility of rendezvous with uncooperative target and its capture. Thus it would open door for much larger (and necessary) market niche - cleanup of space debris.
Falcon9/Dragon are only currently possible "rescue" vehicles for such historic artifacts, but with single mission price around 140 million USD they are too expensive for such purpose. Upcoming BFR would provide far cheaper launch and landing opportunity (some estimates go as low as 10 million USD).
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| Vanguard -1 By Hydrargyrum - National Space Science Data Center: Vanguard 1, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37862277 |
French may be interested in acquiring their Asterix or FR-1. And what would be a value of Alouette 1 for Canadians? While cleaning up GEO/GSO, maybe Syncom-1 or Intelsat 1 could be brought back to Earth? Even a Hubble Space Telescope could be captured and returned to Earth this way before its reentry between 2028-2038.
While this niche will never be a large market valued in billions, recovery of early space age artifacts would prove po possibility of rendezvous with uncooperative target and its capture. Thus it would open door for much larger (and necessary) market niche - cleanup of space debris.
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