Sounds like a job for Harry Broderick at Salvage 1 (p)

Yes, and tracking it is becoming an issue.

submitter: Fred Sanford enroute

Hope he stops at Fatburger first.

Oh man! I came in here to make a Salvage One reference. Damn you curmudge!

/impotently shakes fist in air

Trash and junk can be found everywhere on earth people have ever gone. Junk in space should be no surprise. Humans are like a plague.

Let's get the military to shoot it down.

How does an astronaut lose a glove???

I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Where is Lamont? Grady?

How many pieces of junk?

ziascycles: How does an astronaut lose a glove???

He was flipping off Neil Armstrong at the time.

i wonder how many sex toys are floating around in orbit...

Rocket Launchers???

ziascycles: How does an astronaut lose a glove???

Must not have had the up the sleeve and over the shoulders string.

Send in Roger Wilco.

nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. Study some orbital mechanics, then you will begin to see how impractical this really is in RL.

A friend of mine spends a lot of time tracking space debris and coming up with ways to mitigate the problem that usually have no chance in hell of getting funded because, let's face it, space garbage men are orders of magnitude less sexy than super-cool spy satellites.

Aunt Esther: Fred Sanford, the wrath of God will strike you down!
Fred Sanford: And this Louisville slugger will knock you out!

This doesn't even count the estimated 150,000 pieces of Chinese satellite from their anti-satellite missile test.

any fellow geeks here read Planetes?

this is your time to shine!

/perfect thread for this discussion

the_chief: Let's get the military to shoot it down.

Yeah...hitting a bus-sized satellite is hard enough. Did that. Hitting the 40 inch fuel tank? Did that. China passed a stone. Knock a pair of pliers out of orbit and they will assplode.

/still loving that we did it with a lightly modified standard issue missile.

WHAT 9000!?

Don't Fark at Work: nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. Study some orbital mechanics, then you will begin to see how impractical this really is in RL.

I thought that all that stuff comes off satellites, which are mostly in the same orbit, right? But, yeah, I realize it's impractical. It's just an image that stuck in my mind.

ziascycles: How does an astronaut lose a glove???

That second stage sounds to be headed for East 3rd Street...



...get the truck Lamont!

/nice slug subby

World War III will come down to who can dodge the space junk best.

nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Space Lobsters?

/Ok, I'm sorry for that.

Cue Futurama's flaming trash ball in 3...2...1

nativefloridian: Don't Fark at Work: nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. Study some orbital mechanics, then you will begin to see how impractical this really is in RL.

I thought that all that stuff comes off satellites, which are mostly in the same orbit, right? But, yeah, I realize it's impractical. It's just an image that stuck in my mind.

I actually had to do a project in college like this, come up with ways to clear out space garbage or figure out a way to mitigate damage from impacting garbage. It basically came down to protecting your spacecraft outright from hypervelocity impacts, and designing it in such a way that little pieces don't break off when the spacecraft gets f-ed up.

Mark my words, space junk will a thorn in our side when we finally become a space faring civilization.

/Waste Management: Orbital anyone?
//Start building your green and yellow space craft now, we will need them in the future.

nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Well, as said, "space is big". Good, because the satellites sitting up there for decades don't keep running into stuff.

The thing is, the debris can come from satellites or whatever that were orbiting in another direction. Like head-on.

As such the larger 9,000 pieces are hardly the only issues. Even a tiny droplet of liquid coolant or a paint chip can carry more energy and penetrating power than a bullet. We have a hard time seeing a paint chip as doing that because in the air a supersonic paint chip fired from a gun will lose speed in only feet or inches, probably disintegrating to smaller bits which halt completely; not so in space. These could be going MANY times the speed of a bullet. The Chinese anti-satellite weapon that blew up one of their own satellites created 35,000 pieces 1 cm or larger and 1 million pieces 1mm or larger. That's a scary, scary cloud of bad news for exposed solar panels, lenses, and even the hulls if the relative velocity is right.

Well as you can see this debris won't simply be floating there waiting to be plucked up. If you're in an equatorial Low Earth Orbit at 1000 kph you might see something go past you from a polar orbit at 1400 kph. Or head-on at 2000 kph. Not only will a lightweight net not catch it, it's hard to even find a material that would armor an asset against it much less catch the debris and do so without spalling off even more bits of debris.

Andy Griffith in Salvage

rburp: How many pieces of junk?

That may be the first time I've ever laughed at that meme.

FTFA:To date, only one person has been injured by space debris, however: an Oklahoma woman who was hit in the shoulder by a piece of a Delta rocket's fuel tank, but who was uninjured by this extraterrestrial attack.

IMO it would be pretty neat to be that woman, at least you've always got SOMETHING to mention when talking to strangers, if you aren't one for small talk.
"hey, I'm the only person injured by space debris... yup yup, fuel tank right in the shoulder."
Also, why does it say that "only one person has been injured by space debris", but then go on to say that she was uninjured.

So? I get hit with 9,000 pieces of junk email like every month.

I prefer the story of how mass satellite collisions will keep us foul humans on this rock of death forever...Ha HA Ha.

9,000 pieces of orbiting junk including pliers, cameras, rocket launchers, a glove and over 200 dead satellites.

Don't forget the international space station.

Aunt Esther: Who you calling ugly, sucker?
Fred Sanford: I'm calling you ugly, I could push your face in some dough and make gorilla cookies.

re:Don't forget the international space station.

yeah. and phlegmmo's momma.

/momma so fat - gravity - orbit - etc

Yeah, space is big...but so was the ocean, by yesteryear's standards...and we managed to muck that up a bit.
I'm sure there's some perspective that I don't grasp (farkers, feel free to chime in/educate), but it bugs me that we're contaminating frontiers now before we've actually inhabited them. Blowing up the fuel tank in space? Yay, no Hydrazine re-entering the atmosphere! But...would an explosion in space have eliminated all of the hydrazine, or is it permeating space as we speak?

/ive based my life on freds teachings

Don't Fark at Work 2008-02-24 12:20:19 AM
nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. Study some orbital mechanics, then you will begin to see how impractical this really is in RL.

I'm too lazy to do the math, but if you were to add up the cubic volume of space between just us and the moon, it's already just a stupidly large number.

/mouse at the door

How to get kids off your lawn:



/stay up there, you little bastards

They've been biatching about space debris for the last 8 years.

You'd think they'd at least come up with a plan by now.

What about those folks out in Siberia who are downrange of the Russian shooting gallery? They've built farm structures out of Proton parts, ignorant (wilfully or otherwise) of the hydrazine hazard and are reportedly ahead of the curve in the cancer race.

modelcitizen: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is.

Don't Fark at Work: nativefloridian: I know that active satellites make this impractical, but I've always had an image of a giant net being dragged through orbit to catch all that crap.

/can you imagine what they'd find?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. Study some orbital mechanics, then you will begin to see how impractical this really is in RL.

I bet you loooove digital watches.

I love that shot from the WALL•E trailer...


/scatter!