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Space junk threatening space station, 3 residents

American

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By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn, Ap Aerospace Writer – 2 hrs 42 mins ago

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A small piece of space junk is drifting dangerously close to the International Space Station.
NASA has ordered the three station astronauts to seek shelter late Tuesday afternoon in the Russian Soyuz capsule that is docked at the orbiting complex. A NASA spokesman says there's no time to steer the station out of harm's way.
The debris is from a Chinese satellite that was deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a weapons test. It's projected to pass within a couple miles of the space station.
The Chinese are like freaking children. I predicted this when they fired their laser the last time. Look what these idiots have done!
 
The threat has past for now.

I too remember when the Chinese blew this thing up and it was widely reported by people in NASA that this would be a consequence. It's like a time delayed grenade with hundreds may thousands of projectiles just looking for something to destroy.

Have you ever seen the Space junk they have to keep track of? It's amazing.
space-junk.jpg


It's like an LA Freeway during rush hours only this crap is going almost 18,000 mph not a snails pace.
 
The Chinese are like freaking children. I predicted this when they fired their laser the last time. Look what these idiots have done!

To be fair, it's not just the Chinese doing this. Most of the space junk up there is ours.
 
We need the orbital chapter of Greenpeace on the job... what a mess up there, and it is only going to get worse...

Kandarhar -- but this particular debris set IS from a satellite the Chinese destroyed in a weapons test...
 
To be fair, it's not just the Chinese doing this. Most of the space junk up there is ours.

Yeah, but we know where our **** is. The Chinese are showboating by taking potshots at space junk, not knowing what the **** they are doing.
 
Yeah, but we know where our **** is. The Chinese are showboating by taking potshots at space junk, not knowing what the **** they are doing.

You know we blew up a satellite in a very similar fashion not long after that. Launched off an F-15 if I remember right!
 
Yeah, but we know where our **** is. The Chinese are showboating by taking potshots at space junk, not knowing what the **** they are doing.

We don't really know what we're doing either, nor could we do anything about it if our own space junk wandered too close to the ISS. I agree with Ludahai, this problem is going to get worse. And as we put more crap into orbit, the problem doesn't just get worse...it gets EXPONENTIALLY worse. This is because every time two objects in orbit crash into each other, there are 100 new pieces of space junk instead of just 2.
 
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We don't really know what we're doing either, nor could we do anything about it if our own space junk wandered too close to the ISS. I agree with Ludahai, this problem is going to get worse. And as we put more crap into orbit, the problem doesn't just get worse...it gets EXPONENTIALLY worse. This is because every time two objects in orbit crash into each other, there are 100 new pieces of space junk instead of just 2.

There is a govt group that watches this ****, what the hell are you talking about? The Chinese couldn't find their asses with a map.
 
There is a govt group that watches this ****, what the hell are you talking about? The Chinese couldn't find their asses with a map.

Ok you need to educate yourself on the technological limits of space junk tracking, then educate yourself in basic math,

Here's what you are missing without said knowledge:
1) You don't realize that not many but the vast majority of space debris is too small to track, therefore there is no gov't agency that watches this ****, they attempt to watch this proverbial **** but cannot do so due to lack of technological ability. On top of that if something explodes or is destroyed in space stuff spreads fast, if no one is looking at it when it explodes it may be impossible track a lot of material moving away from the explosion site.

2) Basic math will tell you that an object can be very small but still do serious damage, like a bullet for example. Force is a function of mass and velocity, and a small object can deliver an extreme force, which can cause extreme damage, if its traveling fast enough.

For example here's what a fleck of paint did to the window of a space shuttle

File:Space_debris_impact_on_Space_Shuttle_window.jpg


Go ahead and tell me the US or anyone has technology that can track the movement of a small speck of paint hundreds of miles away floating through space.
 
For example here's what a fleck of paint did to the window of a space shuttle

File:Space_debris_impact_on_Space_Shuttle_window.jpg

I bet that that fleck of paint was Chinese.
 
Ok you need to educate yourself on the technological limits of space junk tracking, then educate yourself in basic math,

Here's what you are missing without said knowledge:
1) You don't realize that not many but the vast majority of space debris is too small to track, therefore there is no gov't agency that watches this ****, they attempt to watch this proverbial **** but cannot do so due to lack of technological ability. On top of that if something explodes or is destroyed in space stuff spreads fast, if no one is looking at it when it explodes it may be impossible track a lot of material moving away from the explosion site.

2) Basic math will tell you that an object can be very small but still do serious damage, like a bullet for example. Force is a function of mass and velocity, and a small object can deliver an extreme force, which can cause extreme damage, if its traveling fast enough.

For example here's what a fleck of paint did to the window of a space shuttle

File:Space_debris_impact_on_Space_Shuttle_window.jpg


Go ahead and tell me the US or anyone has technology that can track the movement of a small speck of paint hundreds of miles away floating through space.

You don't go doing what the Chinese have done, okay? It's as simple as that, and takes no math at all. Those clowns are going to cause a huge accident one day with this showboating.
 
You don't go doing what the Chinese have done, okay? It's as simple as that, and takes no math at all. Those clowns are going to cause a huge accident one day with this showboating.

I didn't mention what Chinese have done because I wasn't trying to express an opinion on their actions. See, I was talking about what I was talking about in simplier terms for you. My point is you seem to think if it werent for the Chinese we'd have total control of this space junk situation, and that there would be no threat from it while in space.
 
I didn't mention what Chinese have done because I wasn't trying to express an opinion on their actions. See, I was talking about what I was talking about in simplier terms for you. My point is you seem to think if it werent for the Chinese we'd have total control of this space junk situation, and that there would be no threat from it while in space.

The problem is that with their experiment in shooting up a satellite into a gazillion pieces, not only is there far more small space junk that is hard to track, the trajectory of the space junk is far less regular than it would otherwise be, thus adding to the difficulty in tracking...
 
The problem is that with their experiment in shooting up a satellite into a gazillion pieces, not only is there far more small space junk that is hard to track, the trajectory of the space junk is far less regular than it would otherwise be, thus adding to the difficulty in tracking...

O by no means do I think what the Chinese are doing is good for anyone or anything, especially space exploration.
 
There is a govt group that watches this ****, what the hell are you talking about?

They don't track most of it, nor can they do anything about the stuff that they *do* track.

American said:
The Chinese couldn't find their asses with a map.

Nor could the United States or any other country who has crap in orbit.
 
They don't track most of it, nor can they do anything about the stuff that they *do* track.



Nor could the United States or any other country who has crap in orbit.

But is the U.S. recklessly creating new tiny space junk with satellite shootdowns???
 
You know we blew up a satellite in a very similar fashion not long after that. Launched off an F-15 if I remember right!

But the U.S. shootdown was of a satellite that had failed and posed a danger to people on earth if it had NOT been shot down.

from a 2008 article on Space.com

The spy satellite USA-193, also known as NROL-21, was launched aboard a Delta II rocket on Dec. 14, 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Shortly after the satellite reached orbit, ground controllers lost contact with it. Though the satellite's objective is secret, many believe it is probably a high-resolution radar satellite intended to produce images for the National Reconnaissance Office.

On Feb. 14, senior U.S. government officials at a Pentagon press briefing described a Defense Department plan to try and shoot down the defunct satellite, after becoming convinced that the spacecraft's toxic hydrazine fuel posed an unacceptable risk to people on the ground. The attempted strike could come Wednesday evening.
From the same source...

The plan comes on the heels of the intentional destruction last year of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite, which produced a flurry of concern over the hostile-or-not nature of the firing as well as a serious load of shrapnel littering Earth orbit. That debris is still in space, frustrating mission managers and satellite operators forced to dodge the potentially debilitating bits.
 
But is the U.S. recklessly creating new tiny space junk with satellite shootdowns???

Yeah, actually we are. And we're also recklessly creating new tiny space junk by launching too much stuff into orbit in the first place (some of which will eventually collide with other stuff and create lots of new tiny space junk). Eventually we're going to need some international agreements limiting the amount of crap we're allowed to put into orbit and regulating the proper disposal of old satellites, or else the entire area around the earth will eventually become unusable for satellites and impassible for spacecraft.

I think this will probably become our first non-terrestrial environmental issue.
 
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Yeah, actually we are. And we're also recklessly creating new tiny space junk by launching too much stuff into orbit in the first place (some of which will eventually collide with other stuff and create lots of new tiny space junk). Eventually we're going to need some international agreements limiting the amount of crap we're allowed to put into orbit and regulating the proper disposal of old satellites, or else the entire area around the earth will eventually become unusable for satellites and impassible for spacecraft.

I think this will probably become our first non-terrestrial environmental issue.

The US has had reckless satellite shootdowns? The only one I could find was of a satellite that was dangerously failed and would have endangered people on earth had it NOT been shut down...

I do agree that we need a plan to dispose of old satellites. However, getting up there and cleaning up is even harder than cleaning Everest... and there is quite the mess up there too...
 
Yeah, actually we are. And we're also recklessly creating new tiny space junk by launching too much stuff into orbit in the first place (some of which will eventually collide with other stuff and create lots of new tiny space junk). Eventually we're going to need some international agreements limiting the amount of crap we're allowed to put into orbit and regulating the proper disposal of old satellites, or else the entire area around the earth will eventually become unusable for satellites and impassible for spacecraft.

I think this will probably become our first non-terrestrial environmental issue.
Have you told them? They probably have no idea they are doing wrong. :roll:

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