Originally Posted by
Eric F
Unrelated to bike frames of CF material....My dad was a design engineer at JPL involved with the Galileo project in the mid-late '80s. His team was responsible for the design and construction of the "space blankets" that protect sensitive parts of the spacecraft from debris during its voyage. Obviously, there are some exposed parts, but space debris is a definitely a concern.
Sounds like they ended up using something akin to Whipple sheilds and/or improved versions of same. That would have been my guess as to the next step beyond a sacrificial outer layer (or maybe in place of same). Makes sense.
Your dad apparently did a good job. As I recall, Galileo lasted well beyond its design lifetime and ended up being intentionally de-orbited into Juipter's atmosphere.
Not downplaying concerns about space debris. My understanding is that it's definitely a concern during launch and while in earth orbit. We (mankind) have put up a lot of "junk" that remains in orbit hazarding anything launched. But I also understand that threat goes way down once you get out of the vicinity of the Earth.
Still: there's a limit to what can be done in the way of providing protection for, well, anything if you want the resulting item to be usable. Some very low-probability risks simply have to be accepted because avoiding them entirely and/or protecting against same just isn't feasible.