Australian conference on space junk

[simmo]

Caught a segment on this topic on the abc news this morning.

Would be quite a different world if satellites are unoperable due to the amount of junk in the atmosphere.

I didn't realise it had got to the point that space walks had been canned due to the dangers of junk impacting the astronauts.

Dr Greene being interviewed this morning commented that the I.I.S was hit recently by a particle no more than a couple of mm wide which damaged one of the windows. I recall the same thing happened a few years ago to a space shuttle when a paint fragment also damaged a window.

I suppose this brings a sober truth to the movie "Gravity" as Dr Greene points out that an impact from space junk to a satellite creates a thousand more particles.

Anybody know the what latest ideas being discussed will be on how to dispose of the debris up there?

Link to abc website

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-31/space-junk-collision-a-growing-threat-for-satellites/7463520"]http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-0...llites/7463520[/URL]

[goober (Doug)]

A podcast last in the last week or two covered this (Space Nuts, or Space Time) - I was amazed to hear one nation had blown up a piece of hardware in space as part of a test, and thus created a large cloud of the stuff.

As for a clean up - how could they?

[75BC (Brendon)]

Sorry for the rant to follow but this sort of thing saddens and frustrates me. We say humans are the most intelligent life form on this planet, but we do this sort of thing to our surroundings.

And if / when we do travel to or colonize other worlds are we going to do the same thing there? Take something pristine and trash it. My guess is we will.

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by 75BC

Sorry for the rant to follow but this sort of thing saddens and frustrates me. We say humans are the most intelligent life form on this planet, but we do this sort of thing to our surroundings.

And if / when we do travel to or colonize other worlds are we going to do the same thing there? Take something pristine and trash it. My guess is we will.

That's why we should leave Mars Martians.
Clean up our own filthy pile before going somewhere else and doing the same.
Inner orbits are so cluttered with junk and are getting more cluttered everyday,literally millions of bits of space junk ,from a couple of mm to whole satellites and crap in between,it will take years for even a small portion to return toward earth and burn up in the atmosphere.
Cheers

[simmo]

Yeah great way to solve the problem. I think they were watching mythbusters previous and decided just to blowup whatever they could.

Perhaps as funny as it seems but a large ball of chewing gum that sticks to whatever hits it.

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

Brendon, you are not alone in your thoughts - many years ago I wrote a short story title, The small planet that polluted the universe.
The rant is required!

Originally Posted by 75BC

Sorry for the rant to follow but this sort of thing saddens and frustrates me. We say humans are the most intelligent life form on this planet, but we do this sort of thing to our surroundings.

And if / when we do travel to or colonize other worlds are we going to do the same thing there? Take something pristine and trash it. My guess is we will.

[Nightshift]

NASA could just use a vacuum cleaner......couldn't they?

Sorry, I'll go back to lurking now.....