Related Sections: Space
Space junk forces astronauts to cower in escape pods
There's tons of junk swirling around our planet, so much that the International Space Station (ISS) astronauts had to sleep in escape pods in case some of it punctured their orbiting home. When NASA detected an approaching piece of space debris last week, the six-person ISS crew spent the night in two Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked at the ISS. Those capsules are fortified enough to use as escape pods.
Luckily, the small piece of space junk ended up not even coming close to the space station. Still, this is getting to be a tremendous problem.
Jeez. Why do we humans — quickly earning a reputation as Earth's most damaging weed species — have to make such a mess of everything we touch? It seems inevitable that one of those pieces of debris will slam into the space station at tens of thousands of miles per hour. In fact, the U.S. Air Force plans to drop $500 million next year to help clean up this mess. At this rate, we'll never get to Mars.
Via Daily Tech
By Neotyguy40 at 1:54 PM ON 11/11/09
Bu-But... We don't even live there yet!
By Mr. Gumsandals at 2:06 PM ON 11/11/09
How ironic. We truly are our own worst enemies. Not to mention slobs of the universe. I suspect interstellar travellers at least pick up after themselves esle they never get beyond their earlier examples of space flight detritus circling their planets.
By TearEmUp at 3:37 PM ON 11/11/09
I guess it would have been best if we had just stayed in our caves then, huh? Making a mess out of everything we touch is terrible. That's it!! All of our irrigation stuff needs to be torn down now! No more air conditioning! No more cars! We need to kill all of the animals too, methane gas, don't you know. Lets just all commit suicide and save the planet now!
Human arrogance never ceases to amaze me....
By AngryJonny at 3:43 PM ON 11/11/09
Jeez, the problem is solved simply enough with a deflector dish. Oh, wait, it isn't the 23rd century yet...
By dooplex1138 at 4:55 PM ON 11/11/09
quickly earning a reputation?
among whom? is there a committee of really pissed off whales and lions grouping together to rate "Earth's douchiest species"?
By josh spinger at 8:16 PM ON 11/11/09
wow all of you being jerks about it. i bet none of you even recycle
By Neotyguy40 at 11:40 PM ON 11/11/09
Josh, I bet YOU don't even recycle.
Infact I even have a solar panel. Sure, it may not produce enough electricity to power my entire house, but it still saves electricity.
The thing is, some of us actually care about the environment, which is why we get pissed off about this kind of stuff.
By Roadkill at 8:18 AM ON 11/12/09
^Indeed. Especially since recycling just ends up costing money and hurting the environment more than just throwing stuff away and using raw materials...
On a lighter note, space junk is one of the few problems that humans have created which will eventually solve itself, since each piece of garbage has a decaying orbit, it'll all just burn up in the atmosphere.
By seanbtwo at 11:14 AM ON 11/12/09
It seems to me that it's time to start weaponizing space. It's an inevitability anyway, so i think we should start putting equipment on-board our satellites and other important orbital structures so that instead of cowering in escape pods or wasting fuel, we can clean up near space before it becomes impassable. Aside from unintentional threats such as space junk, our entire satellite grid is completely vulnerable to attack! All it would take is a rocket to reach orbit and an easily made explosive container with pieces of metal in it and we'd be done. If you think the current financial crisis is bad, then you'd probably put a bullet in your head if our satellite network was destroyed. Think depression, not recession.
By john at 3:37 PM ON 11/12/09
bad idea, all that would do is cause more debris to be avoided, what do you think most of the debris is, we are talking about items small as the pieces of metal you would use to hit them, they do have some wild ideas on how to sweep the orbits (stickly balloons anyone) , but problem is due to speed even a chip of paint can be dangerous if its moving fast enough. even if you had a powerful laser all you would do is spread out the mass of the item which would help reduce the impact force at one point but at cost of increasng chances of some of it hitting you.
By caleb at 5:00 PM ON 11/12/09
people stop withthis all we doing is seeing our own race fall part any way.
By Timon Singh at 9:56 AM ON 11/13/09
The amount of junk in space is unbelievable. A recent NASA report said there are over 9,000 objects larger than 10 centimetres in diameter are spinning around around the Earth at speeds of up to 22,000 mph.
Apparantely, they could hit the shuttle with the speed of a high impact bullet and completely compromise the integrity of the craft.
There's an awesome infographic here showing the range of junk and what damage it can cause.
http://www.euinfrastructure.com/news/Space-The-Final-Junkyard/
on your cellphone!
Text DVICE to 72434
editor@dvice.com
Timon Singh:
The amount of junk in space is unbelievable. A recent NASA report said there are over 9,000 objects larger than 10 ...More »