Nasa what are you doing?

[timelord]

In this day and age of environmental awareness I could not believe my eyes as Nasa dumped a 600+ kg amonia tank from the space station into space today.
What sort of message is this leaving to the litterers on our polluted planet? Nasa claims a one in 5000 chance of it hitting something or someone when it eventually re enters the atmosphere and lands---I wish I had those low odds in tattslotto!
Correct me if I'm wrong but the space shuttle usually returns with an empty cargo bay, why wasnt it safely shipped back?:eyepop::mad2:
Alex.

[Ric]

I agree Alex, but I think they may be taking the easy way out and probably hoping it will land in the ocean after most of it burns up.

Cheers

[norm]

Apparently NASA has advised there wasn't enough space left in the cargo bay in the shuttle to bring it back, as such the next best option was to dump it. Its expected to stay up there for about 300 days before it will start to re-enter the atmosphere. Meanwhile, they continue to track it.

Admittedly I was disappointed in NASA's stance, but I guess that applies to the other Space agencies too.

[wasyoungonce]

I'm the opposite...i hope it does land in my back yard..ebay fortune coming up;)

[taminga16]

I have always felt that visitors to space should bring back all of their rubbish, after all space is for everyone. How much crap has the US left on the moon and mars?

If they cannot leave footprints then leave nothing at all.

Greg.

[Jupiter]

I think the worse one is all the rubbish at the top of Everest, oxygen bottles everywhere apparently.

[jjjnettie]

NOt just oxy bottles left up there Jup, but human bodies as well, and not just in the cravasses.

[KG8]

Why not recycle it up there I ask? Why not cut it up for a meteor shield or just bolt it on the outside for possible future use. Why? Because the whole space station/we will travel to other worlds scenario is crock! There is no real forward thinking anymore, just NASA contractors lining their pockets with the dwindling budget.

Look at the recent mars rovers, their just 30 year old technology with wheels added. Like the waste of resources during the final lunar landings where they took dune buggies up and played golf. With the payload they had available they could have built a telescope up there to rival the Hubble.
[/RANT OFF]


http://homepage.ntlworld.com/heather.hobden1/moonabout.htm
There were also complaints from scientists when they saw the astronauts fooling about in the limited time they had on the Moon and damaging expensive equipment. On the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard played golf with a soil sample scoop. On Apollo 16, John Young went for a joy ride on the Lunar Rover, skidding at high speed and also ruined a million dollar experiment. These larks, watched on television at home, did not convince the US government that money was better spent on space than war.

[Jupiter]

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-15/hires/iss015e18967.jpg

[iceman]

There was a link to a movie of it on spaceweather the other day, taken by an amateur from earth. It will make quite a sight when it's lower in altitude and ultimately when it (hopefully) burns up.

[xelasnave]

Can we bet where it may fall??
alex

[wavelandscott]

I wonder if this was part of the "still" that folks in the space station were using to make whiskey?

With the recent news on alcohol use and astronauts maybe this was just a pre-emptive move to clean up the station...


I am only joking in my comments and they are in poor taste...neither being runk and operating any machinary nor littering are truly funny...

[Outbackmanyep]

I bet their excuse was that they didn't have a roof-rack on the shuttle or they left the spare ratchet tie-down straps at home....

[timelord]

Watching some of the news reports on the sobriety of some astronauts recently they may well have been on the "turps" and thought it funny to dump rubbish--much the same as happens on country roads when they think they are so remote from everyone else that they think no one will notice??