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Comment by 7777fps | Hacker News Reader

And if that works, and we restore a more normal cycle, how do we avert the next ice-age with all that space junk?

L1 is unstable, and the disks will be pushed away by the solar wind, so I suppose theses disks will disperse eventually.

I think some amount of clumping might be expected before dispersal, depending on material properties.

Lots of objects in space are designed using origami, so if we have a motor or little piezo-electric strip to apply tension, we could reverse the folding process and have them go from max size to minimum size on signal.

If it isn't automatic the case, the material for the discs could be designed such that it dissolves in the normal solar radiation after a decade or so.

Can't dissolve without a solvent.

Do you know what happened to USA flags which astronauts installed on the Moon?

I don't- but if it "disappeared" it would likely be disintegration and dispersal, or possibly sublimation.

But it certainly didn't dissolve.

Sorry, that is nonsense. You are over-interpreting a term. Put a plastic bag into the sun for some months and it will break into tiny pieces on the slightest touch. The radiation outside the earth atmosphere is way more dissolving than the sun shine on the ground. So a material could be chosen so that it desintegrates, if you don't like the term "dissolve", in a certain timespan in space. Actually, it will be a challenge to make sure that those disks hold up long enough.

Sorry, I thought we were having a science based discussion where words have meanings...

We're talking about retrieval difficulty in a worst case scenario. Even if it disintegrates, you've left a cloud of particulate matter that's going to create even more unintended consequences and is more difficult to collect / move / mitigate.

I think it was plenty clear what I was trying to say. I am not a native English speaker, but in German, the term "auflösen" literally means to dissolve in a solution, yet, no one would have misunderstood it in the context of space. For most people it is quite obvious, there is no solvant in space.

So if you feel the need to correct my use language, please do it in a constructive manner.

We remove it?

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