Accidental collision

[LCHIEN]

I was blithely cruising down the nearly deserted freeways of space at 18,000 mph in my 1997 model Iridium when out of nowhere this Russian truck came and blindsided me doing 20,000 mph.

Really, I think that satellites have been steadily improving reliability for 50 years but now they are gong to start dying for no apparent reason. There are estmated 10,000 pieces of this collision spawn (and not even counting last year's Chinese shootdown) going in all directions, still at 18,000 mph. A piece of material 1/2" x 1/2" travelling at 18,000 mph has about 400 times the kinetic impact energy of a .45 caliber bullet. That can take out other satellites and they'll never even see it coming. They expect that debris to orbit another 10,000 years going at the same speed.

[jackellis]

Humans have this bad habit of making messes and not cleaning them up, don't they?

Unfortunately, I don't see how we can send up the space equivalent of a trash truck to take care of the junk.

[Ed62]

That does it for me. I'm not going up in space anytime soon.

Ed

[Mr__Bill]

don't worry, sometime soon someone will figure out that all that junk is valuable and then some space trawlers with seine nets will collect it all for profit. we will have to have international treaties to monitor it......

but since we are all eating Steve's fries we won't be around to fight over it.

bill,

[BerniePA]

Someone will go up there with a giant vacuum and vacuum all the junk up -- wait a minute -- space is a vacuum -- can you vacuum a vacuum -- Oh, Oh thinking too much, head hurts. Need to find something to drink and a dark place to lie down.

[poolhound]

Someone will go up there with a giant vacuum and vacuum all the junk up -- wait a minute -- space is a vacuum -- can you vacuum a vacuum -- Oh, Oh thinking too much, head hurts. Need to find something to drink and a dark place to lie down.

Just send a HF DC into orbit I am sure it could handle it

[shoottx]

Yeah but would you have to add a cyclone, blast gates and straight tubing to make it work

[poolhound]

No we really are brainstorming. Just think, there is a whole untapped resource of vaccum up there. If you could just stretch a long bit of S&D up there and you could have a permanent DC setup and all the dust just gets sucked into outer space. WOW I'm off to HD tomorrow to get some pipe

[LinuxRandal]

This is a good reason for steroids in baseball, then we convert the team to astronauts, catching all the ..............

[Wood_workur]

Apparently a paint chip from one of the Saturn V rockets embedded its self halfway through a window in the space shuttle.

[LCHIEN]

Here's a weird side effect - unusually high number of reports of meteroites/shooting stars.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/200902...rkentuckytexas

They've given advisories to airlines recommending that they be on the lookout for possible falling debris. Like they could avoid it if they saw it.

Wouldn't it be odd if the satellite collision was the cause of the Buffalo Colgan/Continental accident falling debris knocked the plane down- a 1 in 10 billion chain reaction of collisions. Or an accident yet to happen...

[Mr__Bill]

From NASA, here is how it happened. Seems someone failed to yield the right-of-way.


Bill

[LCHIEN]

From NASA, here is how it happened. Seems someone failed to yield the right-of-way.


Bill

As far as I'm concerned, a fast moving, dead, inoperable satellite that's bigger than you and has lost all human and internal control has the right of way over a steerable, operating satellite with high value.

Much as a illegal alien, (presumably) without a drivers license or insurance papers, driving a rusty, dented, 1970 Buick LeSabre speeding down the street erratically will always get the right of way from me.

You just gotta see 'em coming.

[shoottx]

I think it is time to start "lighting them up". We have ground based lasers capable of eliminating the junk. Time to start melting them! Same with

a illegal alien, (presumably) without a drivers license or insurance papers, driving a rusty, dented, 1970 Buick LeSabre speeding down the street erratically